By my dad. Because my dad was home, playing that infernal song.
Sherlock’s playing obliterated whatever I’d been thinking from my mind, and most likely kept him from hearing my answer.
“Nothing.” I dropped my head back to the pillow and tried to ignore the little bruises and cuts I felt. I wasn’t ready to wrap my mind around anything associated with Dad. I felt . . . numb. And I needed it.
I rolled over, putting my back to Lock. I didn’t want to think about him either.
“Do you think . . . ?” he started. “No. I mean, I don’t suppose you could get . . .” I turned back just long enough to watch him shake his head and swing his violin back up under his chin. “Never mind.”
“I’ll get the crime-scene photos,” I said. His walls weren’t painted brown. It was wallpaper. A micropattern that made it all look one color from afar. Was it houndstooth?
“We don’t need—”
“I’ll get them.”
Lock’s hand was suddenly in mine, but when I glanced back at him over my shoulder, he was pondering the still-open window. His violin had somehow crawled back into its case. “Not worth it,” he said quietly. His gaze shifted to our hands. So did mine.
“School in six hours.” Lock’s thumb stroked the back of my hand and then stopped.
I looked up at him, but he was still staring at our hands. I felt the need to speak but didn’t know what to say. I knew what I wanted, just not how to ask. And he was unreadable.
“Do you want more sleep?” he asked.
I shook my head and rolled back over, pulling him down onto the bed with me. For a long time his body was tense against my back, his arm moving every minute or two, like he couldn’t find its resting place. I lay still, waiting. And just when I thought he might finally settle down, he launched himself over me, crawled under the covers, and lay facing me, his nose only an inch or two from mine. “I have something to confess.”
I swallowed, waited. A thousand worst-case confessions slid through my thoughts, emptying my mind. He didn’t say any of them.
“I can’t stop thinking of ways to make him pay for hurting you.” He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me closer. “I thought I was more evolved than that. But my obsession with revenge”—he slid his hand up my back—“with wanting to keep you near me from now on, I fear I’m outing myself as the Neanderthal I never thought I’d be.”
I leaned in and rested my lips against his for as long as I could, partly to shut him up, partly because he was making me cry again, and I couldn’t let him see.
“You should be offended for your entire gender.”
I smiled and this time pressed at least ten minikisses to different parts of his lips before he spoke again.
“You really shouldn’t reward me in this way. I’ll become an insufferable brute.”
“You’re right,” I said with a sigh that blew up my bangs. “I suppose I should leave.”
I started to roll away from him, but he caught me and pulled me back into his arms, into his warmth, his smile. We were still playing a game, I thought, until our gazes locked and our smiles fell. The silence made our breathing loud, but louder still was the way he looked at me then. A white noise of a look. Everything else fell away and still I became fully aware of every place his body touched mine, of how my hands splayed across his chest.
But my body held too many memories to be silent for long. My stomach started to ache again and I looked away, remembering what a swollen monster face I had. I could suddenly feel Lock’s gaze on my hot, damaged skin, studying my cheeks, maybe deducing what kind of hit would cause each mark. I wanted to squirm away, or at least turn in his arms, but he leaned forward and rested his forehead against my temple so that I could feel his whispered words against my cheek.
“He can’t make you less than you are. No one could.”
Before he spoke, I might have said there was nothing anyone could say to make anything better. But Sherlock wasn’t anyone. He was mine. I felt that in the way his fingers slid down my cheek, in the racing of his heart, and the way his eyes called mine back to his. His lips found mine slowly, warm and soft as he kissed me, then again, and again, until I was breathless and kissing him back.