Speaking of which…
Ernie, professional chaser of dust motes, purveyor of half-chewed socks, skids down the hallway, claws clacking on the polished floorboards as he slides past the open bedroom door, and barrels down the stairs onto the first floor, obviously having heard his master’s arrival as well. He yips and pants loudly down there, his claws still clacking as he assaults the man in the kitchen with kisses.
“All right, all right. Damn it, dog. Give me a minute.” Zeth sounds grumpy, but I know him all too well. He’ll be bending down to the tufty haired schnauzer, ruffling his fur and scrubbing him all over his body, letting him jump up to lick at his jaw and his neck. “You’re crazy, you know that?” I hear him say.
I’m about to get up and go down there myself when the stairs begin to creak, accompanied by the sound of heavy boots on antique Maplewood. I don’t know why, but I immediately pretend I’m still asleep. Pathetic.
Zeth enters the bedroom. I hear him put something down on his side of the bed, and then something on my side, too. The rich smell of coffee fills my senses. “Hey.” He touches me, placing his hand lightly on my bare shoulder. “You’re so bad at that, you know.” I crack one eye open at him. There’s a tiny smile on his face. “You screw your eyelids shut really tight. I can tell you’re awake the moment I look at you.”
“Is that so? Well, maybe I’ve just been rudely awakened by a really loud intruder, and I’m trying to go back to sleep.”
“Are you?” He cocks his head to one side.
“No.”
“Then drink your coffee.” He’s definitely in a better mood than he was last night. Strangely, he appears to be in a good mood, which doesn’t make all that much sense. Still. I’m not one to argue. I pull myself up so I’m sitting, collecting the mug of tar-black coffee he’s brought upstairs for me, and I can smell how sweet it is as I lift it to my lips. Perfection. It’s amazing how quickly caffeine can kick start your brain. Zeth watches me drink, his eyes fixed solely on the point where my lips meet the ‘Baddest Motherfucker Alive’ mug—the one I know he finds hilarious, even though he’s never said anything about it.
He doesn’t mention last night, or the fact that Mason’s now loose, perfectly capable of telling Lowell that we know she’s using him as an informant, and there’s little we can do about it. Or that it’s my fault. He sits on the edge of the bed, looking at me as I drink my coffee, like an artist studies the object of his painting, not expecting me to say anything or comment on the fact that he’s observing me. He wants to be an outsider in this moment. He wants to pretend like he’s not here, that he’s somehow managing to oversee this quiet, simple moment where I relax in bed, taking my time to wake up fully, hair everywhere, weird lines from the pillows marking my neck and my shoulder.
After a while, he says, “I was going to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
He’s got a flat, impassive look on his face, which usually goes hand in hand with a statement or a parting of information that he knows I’m not going to like. “Wait for you to come home last night. I was gonna wait for you to leave, and then I was going to go find him again. I thought about it for a long time.”
Ice water fills my stomach. “Oh? And…did you? Did you go and find him?” He’d better not say yes. I’m going to lose my fucking mind if he does. I especially asked him not to. I couldn’t have made it any clearer—I didn’t want the kid dead and dumped into the docks, regardless of what he may or may not have done.
Zeth lies down on the mattress, on his side, supporting himself on one elbow. He’s leonine, all predator, thick muscles shifting and twisting as he uses his body in the most perplexing ways. No one else moves like he does. “I didn’t go, no. I knew you’d fucking castrate me.”
“Good. Because I would have. I’d have kicked your ass so hard, you wouldn’t have been able to sit down for a year.”
He looks impressed. “Only a year?”
“A decade. I never would have spoken to you again.”
A slow, nefarious smirk spreads like honey across that perfect face of his. “I love that you think you could take me, angry girl. It turns me on to think of you trying to kick my ass.”
“It shouldn’t. It should instill fear and panic into you, the likes of which you’ve never felt before.”
Zeth is the owner of a multitude of barely visible tics that I’ve learned to decipher since I’ve been with him. Few others would be able to predict when he’s going to strike, or when he’s going to smile, but I can. I know he’s trying not to laugh as we joust back and forth.
“I’m glad you didn’t go back on your word,” I tell him.
“I am, too.”
“Promise me you’re not going to? Promise me you won’t do anything reckless?”