“It doesn’t seem the time.” His hand slid under her elbow; he stood, lifting her along with him—and realized then how deliberately she did it. Kept her hand on his chest. “You—”
She nodded. “I don’t understand. I don’t think I want to. But I think...” She lifted the pendant, the faintest of gestures, and shrugged.
He looked at the pendant, there in her hand—a small hand, with freckles dusting the knuckles and pale pink, chipping polish on her nails—and his eyes narrowed. “We need to talk.”
“So you said.” Some of her normal asperity returned. “But we haven’t, have we? And I don’t think I’m going to make it very far walking like this.” She glanced at their connection again.
“Sooner or later,” he said, and before either of them could think about it, he stepped aside from her, cleanly breaking the contact.
—fury indignation retribution strikestrikestrike!—
The blade lashed out at him, striking hard—burning an incandescent punishment through the soul of him. He choked on it and stiffened, and his eyes rolled back and his jaw spasmed shut, teeth catching skin; his head jerked back. He clung to the strength of clarity and freedom, so long denied, and he forced his head back down and he forced his eyes open and he gritted out, “Fuck you,” through those clenched teeth.
And Gwen, watching him with worried eyes, expressive brows drawn, seemed to understand perfectly that he wasn’t talking to her.
The blade sent a final spear of flame roiling along his bones and faded into a sulk.
Okay then.
Mac took a deep breath, settled himself into balance, and leaned away from Gwen to spit blood. “Dammit,” he said, probing the cut with his tongue. “That really hurts.”
Gwen laughed—just a little too freely, driven by evident relief. “Baby,” she told him. “Men just can’t deal with pain.” And while he got stuck on that, bemused and trying to reconcile it with his life and especially with his life in the past twenty-four hours, she cast him a devilish look and caught him completely by surprise, whirling to sprint a few playful steps away—and disappointed when he just grinned instead of taking her up on it. “Poke,” she said, in case he hadn’t gotten it. “Now you try to poke me back. Maybe tickle me. At least try to put your hands on me.”
He bent to scoop up her cup of crushed ice from where she’d placed it against the side of the building and waggled it at her. “Maybe I thought I could lure you back into range.”
Her expression fell. “Oh, damn. Strategic error.” She hesitated, hovering between options. “I really, really want that. I deserve it. I stopped that...that...whatever was happening.”
He grinned and held the cup outstretched, a peace offering. “Yeah,” he said. “You really, really deserve it. Let’s see if we can make it back to the hotel before it’s gone. I hear there’s a good diner just up the block, and on a day like today...well, let’s just say I need to get my hands on some food.”
“I’ve heard about that diner, too,” she said, deadpan, and came back to get the cup. She was taken by surprise when he made a lightning-swift grab once it was in her hand, pulling her in close, holding her—just for a moment, just to do it and to feel her against him. To see the delighted surprise in her eyes.
To pretend, somehow, that the blade’s little spill of emotions no longer trickled through his mind and body, but that he was still free.
Gwen took a long pull on the straw, letting cold cherry flavor slide down her throat and striding along the sidewalk with a guy she suddenly seemed to know. Someone with whom in the past twenty-four hours she’d shared a rumble, a mugging, a protest-turned-to-hate crime, and a hate crime turned to failure. Not to mention whatever strange and painful event had preceded quite a wonderful kiss.
“You’re blushing,” he said, not breaking stride.
“I am not!”
But of course she was. And smiling to herself, too.
Complete absurdity. Twenty-four hours, a little action, a little weirdly mystical woo-woo...that’s what it took to make a girl happy? With wallet gone, car broken into, life askew?
Maybe so.
They took the long way around on the way back, looping around the park in a route that avoided the pagans, protestors, and police. They cut away from the stark white concrete of the artificial arroyo, and through the luxury of the grassy park, and past the midday heat of the basketball courts. And then, in a cluster of trees, he stopped her, catching her with the straw in her mouth.
She let it slip away from between her lips as he turned her to face him, stepping up close and running his fingers gently over the sides of her head. Petting her. Watching her.
Damned sweet.
Couldn’t have that.
“What makes you think you can just touch me as you please?” she demanded, one hand on her hip and her head cocked back.
“Mmm,” he said, not considering his response for very long. “Because I want to.”
She gave him a squinty look that should have made him think twice.
Instead, he said, quite seriously, “Because now I know what’s real.” And then he turned away from her, hands jammed into his back pockets.
Somewhere on that tightly muscled body, he’d hidden a Bowie knife.
Right.
He said, “Talk to me, Gwen. What is that thing? Where did you get it?”
The sudden chill down her back had nothing to do with the final slurp of crushed ice she’d just taken.
He looked back over his shoulder, an oblique and mostly hidden gaze. “Because I think that’s how we’ve ended up in this together. You and me and whatever’s going on here.”
She didn’t answer; couldn’t. Not just like that. She walked the stretch of open grass to the nearest trash container, tossed the cup away...and then just stood there.
I am nine years old, and my daddy just tried to kill me.
He didn’t mean it. It wasn’t really him at all. Not with that wild look in his eye, the pure insanity etched across his face.
He wants the pendant. The one he gave me and told me to care for, always. But even as he wants it, he doesn’t.
Or else, something in him doesn’t.
I am locked in the bathroom, bleeding. I have never seen so much blood. I have never seen the tender skin of my stomach cut so deeply. I have never seen anything cut so deeply.
Even through the worst of it, I never thought my daddy would hurt me.
He slams against the door. “I’m sorry, baby!” he cries and sounds like he means it. “I’m so sorry! I thought I could do this!” And slams against the door again. “Run, baby, run! Please run!”
And I am small enough to slip through the window, blood and all. But I am old enough to tell the neighbors that my daddy isn’t home, that I fell on glass.
And I am young enough to cry the whole time.
I never see my daddy again.
“Gwen.” Mac’s voice, but he hadn’t come any closer. He waited in the shade, giving her the option to return.
Still cold from the inside out, she did. Slowly. And returned to him—coming around front to face him square but lifting her chin to warn him off when he would have lightly touched her arm.
She didn’t want to be touched just now.
“I probably can’t even tell you what you want to know,” she said. “But then, I’m not sure, am I? Just how what fits together with what? Because what have you told me?” One more defiant attempt to pretend it all didn’t matter, that her past had nothing to do with this present. “Anyway, it could be coincidence, couldn’t it? We both got restless feet, we both ended up here. Travelers stay at a hotel—that’s what it’s for. Is it such a mystery that we ran into each other?”