“To provide for the family she has left, yes.”
“This only works if Amelie doesn’t stay in Savannah. People will recognize her. A new name won’t fix that.” The dybbuk scandal was big news thanks to my involvement, and the debacle too recent for the tittle-tattlers to forget. “You’re sending her away?”
“We think it’s for the best.”
We. Already they were a we.
Already the pair was working together, solving their problems like…a team.
Blurred vision kept me from seeing his expression. “Get off my lawn.”
“Grier,” he pleaded, coming toward me. “You’ve got to believe this isn’t what I wanted for us.”
Us. There was no room for us in we.
“Go.” I shoved him. “Leave.” He barely rocked back on his heels. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Grier,” he whispered.
“No.” I made a fist the way Taz had taught me, and I socked him in the jaw. Something in my hand popped, a knuckle cracking, but I was primed to go again when cool hands landed on my shoulders. I angled my head, catching sight of Linus behind me, and my bottom lip trembled. “He’s engaged.”
The cold fury banked in his ebony gaze as he stared at Boaz should have made me afraid for him. Instead it made me grateful to have Linus by my side. “You’re a fool, and you will regret breaking her heart for the rest of your long life.”
I’ll make sure of it.
Unsure if that last part had been spoken out loud or implied, it still flung open the floodgates. Stupid tears spilled hot and fast over my cheeks. Linus was an auburn blur, his touch the only real thing in this world.
This time, I let Boaz watch. Damn if I was going to hide one ounce of the pain he had caused for his sake. Forget pride. Let him see. Let him live with this. Let him fall asleep tonight and dream about my splotchy face, my tears, my misery.
The shirt I called Old Grier tore, and I split down the middle with it.
A chorus of growls rose in response to my anguish, and the watchmen prowled over to stand with me. Lethe and Midas flanked me, the former nuzzling my hand, while Hood stalked Boaz until he backed away.
“Goodbye, Boaz.” I glanced down at the watchmen. “Escort him off the property, please.” I brushed my fingers down Lethe’s nape. “Allow the Elite to claim my cousin’s body, and then I want them gone.”
With eager barks, they embraced their orders.
“You need to sit down before you fall down,” I warned Linus, looping an arm around his waist to balance him, happy to fuss over him rather than linger over Boaz’s announcement. “Should I call your mother?”
He offered me a weak smile. “Tomorrow.”
Considering I had hidden the car accident from my family, I could hardly complain if he kept his in the dark too.
“I heard about Meiko,” he murmured. “You were right. I should have taken her in hand long before this. It’s my fault she felt entitled to make a move against you.”
“This wasn’t your fault.” I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, wondering if it made him feel any better or if guilt would still cling to his bones as it did to mine. “She made the decision to compromise the Faraday. Not you.”
And she would pay for it in blood.
While there was no love lost between Meiko and me, Heloise had led her astray. My cousin had as much as admitted to manipulating her, knowing the jealous nekomata might appear human, but her instincts were animalistic. So was her reasoning. That didn’t excuse Meiko, but if I spoke on her behalf, it might keep the watchmen from killing her outright.
“Not my fault,” he echoed. “I enjoy saying those words more than hearing them.”
Huffing out a laugh, I murmured, “I bet.”
“Hearing them, even when they’re meant well, doesn’t change anything, does it?”
“Nothing absolves the guilt, but it tells me I’m not alone.” I gave him a gentle squeeze. “You’re not alone, either.”
With his arm slung around my shoulders, I managed to get him to the carriage house. He fumbled the door open, and we sidled in together. As weak as he was, I decided on a mattress over the couch and aimed us toward his bedroom. Once he sat, my knees buckled, and I sank onto the floor in a heap.
“I’m sorry,” Linus said, and it encompassed my entire world and all of its fractures.
Fresh tears plinked on the hardwood, the puddle growing beneath me. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Amelie,” he said, but it wasn’t a question.
“She lied to me.” A watery laugh escaped me then, because it shouldn’t surprise me. Nothing she did ought to shock me anymore. “This hurts worse than the dybbuk.” How pathetic was it that I would take a near-death experience over heartbreak? “She always said she would choose me. That if Boaz and I happened, and then we didn’t happen, she said she would pick me over him.”
A grunt reached my ears as Linus slid onto the planks beside me. He was dragging a blanket behind him, and he wrapped me up tight, insulating me against his cold. I slumped against his chest when he opened his arms, and I cried until I got hiccups, until my snot had washed away his healing runes, until I lost my voice and figured it was a good thing because I had run out of things to say that didn’t boil down to it hurts.
The jagged mass twisting in my chest cut worse than Atramentous, worse than Volkov, almost worse than losing Maud. I kept looking down, thinking I ought to be bleeding to death, but the wounds he had inflicted were invisible, and I was only leaking through my eyes.
With exquisite gentleness, Linus gripped the wrist on my sore hand and turned it palm up. He must have fetched his pen from his pocket. He bit off the cap and held it between his teeth as he drew a healing sigil to fix what I had broken punching Boaz.
“Is there a rune that fixes a broken heart?” I murmured against his shoulder.
Cool lips pressed against my temple. “No.”
“Figures the one time I would be willing to take an out, there’s not one.”
“He’s going to regret you for the rest of his life.”
The urge to wish that miserable future on him was too strong, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I ought to tell Woolly, but I don’t want to do it over the phone, and I don’t feel up to it tonight.” Bitterness swirled through me, draining through the pit of my soul. “She really does love him. This is going to break her heart.”
“Take my bed,” he offered. “I can sleep on the couch.”
“I’ve kicked you out of enough beds.” It’s not like where I started the night mattered much considering where I always ended them. “I’ll take the couch.” I unfurled the cover then helped him up and back in bed. “I won’t be sleeping much as it is.”
Linus shut his bruised eyes before his head hit the pillow, and I stood there for a long time, watching him sleep. Once I convinced myself he wasn’t going to kick the bucket if I turned my back on him, I pulled the sheet up to his chin. A down comforter stretched across the foot of the bed, and I tucked it around him. Recalling his soft admission from weeks earlier, that he got cold, I added the plush gray duvet he had wrapped me in to his layers.
Backing from the room, I left the door cracked behind me so I could listen to him breathe.
Alone in the living room, I couldn’t silence the noise in my head.
Boaz was engaged. My Boaz. Engaged.
No, not mine. Not really. Not if he allowed this to happen.
The sun rose while I sat there, hands folded in my lap, head hanging loose on my neck.
I didn’t know what to do with myself, how a world without Boaz looked, and I didn’t want to see.
When the phone rang, I didn’t want to answer, but a sixth sense prodded me not to let this call pass.
“Ma coccinelle,” Odette sighed. “Today the sea churns with the salt of your tears.”