Percy was in front of me in a flash and pulled me in for a kiss. His lips were rough as they dominated mine and when his tongue dove into my mouth, my legs wobbled slightly and a shiver escaped me. I felt as Percy's hands came up behind me and grabbed my ass, holding me firmly in place.
It felt far too soon when Percy pulled away from me, but not before licking my bottom lip. "Hush now.”
I gaped, my jaw working but no words coming out for several moments until I successfully stuttered, "But...it... it's still messy in here.”
Percy's eyes narrowed. "Fine. I'll clean it.”
Disappointingly, Percy let go of my ass and picked up one of piles of books and began to put them back on the shelves.
Looking around, I spotted a large comfy chair. I placed Salt down in it, took the bandage that covered my eye off, and picked up a stack of books as well to help Percy. I had to be doubly careful as a lot of these books seemed very old and I was afraid my claws would tear right through them.
For several minutes we worked side by side as we bickered with each other over the best way to organize the books. He was insisting on sorting them by age, color, and size while I argued for the much more reasonable alphabetical order by the author’s last name. He eventually broke, and I won. The fact that he had scooped me off the ground and plopped me into a chair with the orders to 'sit there and stop trying to help' were just the way he showed his appreciation.
“You're being unreasonable," I grumbled and tried to stand.
Percy gave me a hard look which commanded me to settle back down in the chair. "Half of these books are so old the author's name is too faded. My way makes it easier.”
"You could simply look up the author based on the books content and relabel the books," I replied, glaring back at him.
He ignored my glare and picked up more books. "That is far too much work.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He simply scowled and gave me a kiss on the lips. "Just do as I say, please."
“Well, I mean, if you're going to ask nicely." I settled into the chair and played around with Salt for a few minutes before the boredom got to me. Leaning back over the arm rest, I watched from my upside down view as Percy move through the room and sorted books. He was in a crisp white button down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, accompanied with a black vest slacks, and he looked really good. His hair was out of its usual ponytail and a mess though, constantly getting into his face as he picked up books. I spotted a rubber band around his wrist.
"Percy." I called. "Come here.”
His brows scrunched but he didn't move closer to me. I smiled. "Come on.”
He put down the books he was holding and approached me cautiously, as if I were a lion waiting to pounce on my prey. “Yes?"
I sat back up and patted the floor in front of me. "Sit.”
He didn't cock his eyebrow at me like I expected him too. He just sat down in front of me like I asked, trusting without a thought. But he was facing me, so with a smile I put my hand on his shoulder and shoved him until he got the picture and turned away from me. "Your hair’s a mess, I'm going to fix it for you.”
Without a word, he settled back and let me run my fingers through his tangled hair. He was right about Mer and soft hair, because the strands between my fingers felt like silk. I wanted to just continued to stroke his hair, but it was now untangled and I knew sitting on this floor probably wasn't the most comfortable. Reaching down, I slipped the rubber band off of his wrist and slid it onto mine. Gathering up all of his hair, I began to braid it.
“So, Jason told me that you know that we know.”
I stiffened but didn't stop braiding. "I'm assuming you’re talking about the files?”
“Yes."
I bit my lip and took a deep breath. “So, listen. I told this to them already, but I'm not ready yet. And I know you enough to know that you're just as curious as I am and have probably figured everything out but it's not what you think, or maybe it is, and, um—”
"Atalanta. You are rambling.”
“Sorry." I finished his braid and tied it off with the rubber band.
When I tapped his shoulder he leaned back into my legs and tilted his head back to look up at me. "To be honest, yes, I am curious. But at the moment, I really just want to know one thing about it, if that’s okay.”
I stared down at him, trying to keep my expression calm while I mentally freaked out. "...what's that?”
"How many names have you had?”
My eyebrows rose. "Really? I was expecting you to ask me what my real name was.”
"To me, you are the girl who dumped a bunch of books into my lap and convinced me to read trashy romance. Ultimately, who you were in the past does not matter, but I know how much having to pretend to be someone you are not can affect you.”
Oh. I studied him, staring into those brown eyes, wondering when he had to put on a mask and pretend to be someone he wasn’t. With his blunt personality, it was hard to imagine.
As he continued to stare up at me, his head now resting in my lap, I knew answering his question wouldn’t be so bad. He wasn’t asking why we had to use fake identities, only how many times.
I bit my lip and broke eye contact with him. “Thirty-seven."
I saw him blink several times out of the corner of my eye, looking surprised by the number. I had to admit, it was a little satisfying to see the intelligent librarian actually look surprised.
Sitting up, he reached over and pulled a familiar book out of a box. "The girl with no name. When I first read it, I thought it might be some adolescent crisis of identity...but it was because you haven't really felt that you've been able to have an identity for so long, wasn’t it?”
He held out the book to me. It was one of my favorites, the cover severely worn from all of the years I had handled it. It was the first book I had ever gotten signed.
I took the book from his hand and gently ran my hands over the cover. "This is from when we lived in Boston. My name was Elly Nolle. There was an author’s convention going on in the hotel next to where we had been living. I was really depressed and my father had literally dragged me out of the house to try to cheer me up. I hadn't even read the book before but the cover looked nice and the author was really kind.”
I opened the book and showed him the writing that I knew he had already read. "When she asked my name, I sort of blanked. It was really embarrassing, just standing there awkwardly and not answering her. But Jamie Addams, she just gave me this look like she had seen right through me and wrote that. And it spoke to me, you know? After that, it became my go-to whenever I got the chance to go to a convention.”
Percy turned back towards the shelves. "Thirty-seven times is a lot to change ones identity.”
"Yeah," I chuckled. "I was twelve and Cal was almost fourteen when it all started. We were pretty messed up, so keeping our real identities a secret was basically impossible for longer than a month or two. In those first three years alone we had to burn our names 16 times. By that point, we were basically living only in hotels and out of backpacks. Our father didn't know what to do.”
"What changed?” He asked.
My heart pounded at the question. Was I ready? No, I wasn’t, and I didn’t believe I ever would be, but I tried to remind myself that they had already seen. And Percy had yet to judge me so far.
I leaned forward so that my head was on his shoulder and I held out my left arm in front of us. Slowly, I slid the sleeve of my hoodie up my arm. The scales covered most of them but you could still see some of the hideous scaring. "I tried to kill myself. Ended up in the hospital, and then in a mental health facility.”