Hook tilts his head, watching me. “Why does he will it?”
I breathe out, frustrated. “He was getting sexual favors from…” My voice trails, and Jamison’s eyebrows go up. I give him a look. “Your favourite girl.”
His face tugs in confusion. “You?”
I roll my eyes. “Calla.”
“Fuck.” His face falls for me. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
I cross my arms over my chest tightly and breathe out of my mouth because I’m cold.
“Yeah,” I say to the other side of the room before I glance over at him. “It’s okay.”
His brows flicker. “Is it?”
I nod. “I think that it should have crushed me, but it just made me cross.”
He says nothing for a few seconds, just watches me. “Why?” he asks eventually.
“I don’t know?” I shrug. “I’m indignant or something, that he has all these rules and expectations and he’s a hypocrite and a liar and—”
“But yer no’ sad?” Jamison clarifies, holding my eyes with his.
And I can feel it happening as his gaze is on me. The kink in my brow, the scowl that’s been on my face since I saw Peter starts to melt off me, and my face starts to soften to a bloom just because he’s watching me.
I shake my head, but barely. “Not sad.”
His eyes don’t move from me, but he nods before he notices my trembling hands.
My whole trembling self, actually.
“Shit.” He moves towards me. “Ye must be founthered.” He crosses that space that separates me from him and unhooks the cloak that’s around my neck, and it falls heavy and soaked to the floor with a slosh. “We need t’ get ye out o’ these.” He starts undoing the buttons at the front of my dress, and I freeze still because his hands are on me. He gets about midway down my chest before his hand hovers at the button. “Do ye hae anything on underneath that?” he asks that specific button.
I swallow, shake my head.
He nods his head, then he turns, grabs a coat that’s thrown over a chair that’s by him, and holds it up, shielding me from his line of sight.
I undo the rest of the buttons myself, fractionally disheartened, but when am I not with him? Then I peel the wet clothes off my body. They make another loud slap on his floor, and then he brings his coat around my shoulders, and I slip my arms inside.
He turns me around so I’m facing him, and he tugs the jacket closed over me like a robe. “Better?”
I nod, still shivering.
He puts a hand on each of my arms and starts trying to warm me up.
My teeth are chattering away, and Hook frowns at me.
He moves me back into the light. “Yer lips are blue.”
I frown a bit defensively. “I’m cold.”
“Broonie!” Jamison calls out to him. “Now, please. Quickly, come.”
His house fairy appears, looking about as grumpy as he did the last time I saw him.
“Yes, sir?” The brownie looks up at him.
Jamison clears his throat. “Please would ye run her a bath?”
“Yes, sir.” The brownie nods as he walks over towards the bath behind the partition. “Always baths here. No baths at home, filthy girl,” he mutters under his breath, and I catch Jem’s eye and, through my chattering, smile, rather amused.
Jem’s eyes go wide with embarrassment. “Broonie!” he calls after him.
“Sorry, sir,” the brownie calls back but doesn’t sound all that sorry at all.
Jamison breathes out a laugh and then wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly against him, and within seconds, the shivering stops.
“Th-thank you,” I whisper, my voice a bit raspy.
He nods, slowly lowering his chin to rest on top of my head. “O’ course.”
I’ve had his hands on my waist and his hands on my face, but not this. It’s my favourite feeling I’ve ever had in the world, his arms all the way around me.
“You’re a very good friend,” I say, all muffled into his chest.
It comes out more wry than I mean it to, and a hot worry flashes through me that it gives me away, that being his friend isn’t what I want.
He presses his mouth into the top of my head. “Or a shite one.”
I shift in his arms and look up at him.
Our eyes catch.
“Bath’s ready,” says the brownie.
Jamison breathes out, and it sounds dangerously close to a sigh.
His hold on me lags for a few seconds before he releases me, and I follow the brownie over to the bath behind the screen.
I slip into it, and the brownie carries away the coat, giving me an impatient look as he does.
“Better?” Jamison calls after a minute.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good,” he says, and I hear him pull out a seat at his table.
“I saw your mother at the ball,” I tell him, just to make conversation.
“Aye, she told me,” he says back.
“Oh.” I sink lower into the bath and swallow nervously. “Did she tell you anything else?”
“Aye.” He sniffs. “She said a great many things.”
“I see.” I frown at my fingernails.
It hangs there for a minute, a peculiar awkwardness.
“Did my ma say anything to ye?”
I clear my throat. “What about?”
“About…anything?” he says casually, drumming his hands on something. “About me?”
I purse my lips. “Not with her words.”
He sniffs a laugh, and I swallow heavy.
“Jem?”
“Aye?”
“Will you come and sit with me?” I ask.
He says nothing for about two seconds, which mightn’t sound like much, but in context of the question asked, it really does feel like a tiny little eternity.
“There are bubbles,” I add quickly to save what stupid face I have left. “You can’t see anything.”
Again, there’s a pause, and I wonder whether he’d notice if I just drowned myself in his bathtub.
“Would ye min’ clearing off the bubbles then?”
I freeze and my eyes go wide, and without meaning to, I say nothing.
“A’m joking.”
I breathe out, which somehow, miraculously, sounds like a small laugh, but really, I’m just breathing. Barely.
I hear him approaching. He stops on the other side of the divide.
“Decent?”
I look down at myself, fully naked in his bath.
Not remotely. Always not remotely with him apparently.
“Yes,” I say all the same.
He rounds the partition, and our eyes catch and a smile whispers over his face.
“Decent.” He scoffs as he rolls his eyes before sitting down right next to me on the floor. Back against the tub, facing away from me.
He says nothing for what feels like five minutes. He just stares straight ahead, gripping his own wrist.
I look over at him, feeling embarrassed again. “Are you okay?”
He nods. “Aye.”
I nod back even though he isn’t looking at me. “You seem strange.”
“I’m no’,” he says strangely.
I swallow, then sigh. “Should I not have come here?”
At that, he turns to face me with a little frown. “I told ye, you can always come t’ me.”
Our eyes hold for a second, and then he turns away again.
His grip on his own wrist tightens. “Sure anyway, I wanted t’ talk to ye.”
I go a bit stiff. “Oh?”
He nods to himself. “I lied t’ ye before.”
“Oh.” I frown. I shift in the bath a little and sigh.
“What I said to ye the other day, it was shite. You d?nnae bring out the worst in me. I might bring it out in ye but—”