by Nicole Snow
“If you intend to keep it that way,” I answer flatly, “then leave. Get out of town. Heart’s Edge doesn’t need another tragedy. I don’t know why you’re here, but I know it won’t end well.”
“Do you really think my intentions are so nefarious?” Her innocent blink is as false as her eyelashes, though the eyelashes are far more artfully applied. “Honestly. If I intended to do anything bad, if I were working on Galentron’s behalf, would I have simply announced my presence so spectacularly?”
“Don’t.” It comes out in a hiss through vise-like teeth I suddenly can’t seem to unclench. “Don’t ever say that name again. Not here. Not in my presence.” My hands twitch, digging into the steering wheel. “I don’t know or care what kind of game you’re playing. All I know is I want you gone.”
“Do you?” She folds her arms gracefully against the door of my truck, leaning in. I can smell her perfume, a bitter mixture of cardamom and vanilla, itching at my nostrils. It takes everything in me not to flinch away in disgust and hold my ground. “But there’s another name we could be discussing.” Her smile is far too controlled, too knowing. “Nine. We find him, and we end this for good.”
“There’s nothing to end.” I look at her coldly. Her airs don’t affect me, the femme fatale act falling flat when I see no appeal in her manipulation and cruelty. “This already ended long ago. I’m not helping you revive it. Leave this town.”
“Why, Sheriff, you gone’ go run a li’l helpless lady off like that?” she pantomimes in a mocking falsetto drawl, fluttering her fingers before her mouth – before the act drops like a falling curtain and it’s nothing but a razor smile and cold, dark grey eyes. “Enough with the valiant small-town protector act. Don’t forget I know who you really are, Doctor. You’re someone who wants revenge.”
I go stock-still. My spine is stiff, my skin tight as I eyeball her warily.
“There’s no one to take revenge against. An unspeakable tragedy happened, and now there’s nothing left to do but move on.”
“Just like that? Even though the real culprits were never held accountable?” she lilts. “The people who brought the pathogen here to this town you’ve grown so fond of. Doesn’t it eat your little heart to bits, knowing they’re still working for Galentron and making millions?”
“And if I tried to do something about it, it’d bring the entire company down on this town like an anvil to crush all evidence,” I point out sharply. “No. My vindication isn’t worth the danger it would put these people in. I have no appetite for revenge, Fuchsia. Or for any of the things you seem to think I want.”
“But we could stop them if we work together,” she urges. She’s oddly persuasive in a way that doesn’t suit her. Fuchsia is an intimidator, a dominator, and she doesn’t make passionate cases for empathetic causes. “You, Nine, and li’l old me are the only witnesses. The only ones who know what truly happened, when there’s no official record of the truth. If we put out a joint statement, leaked it live online, they wouldn’t be able to bury it fast enough. It would go viral, millions of copies duplicating that they could never take down. With that kind of publicity, Heart’s Edge would never be a target again.”
“You obviously think the good denizens of the internet care about a nowhere town like this far more than they do.” I thin my lips. “Have you ever actually used social media at your age?”
Her eyes narrow to vicious slits, yet another act falling away to leave the cold snake underneath. “You’ll see things my way soon enough. Especially since I’m not the only one back in town.”
A low growl builds in the back of my throat, but I’m not rising to the bait. I won’t ask her who she means. I won’t let her dangle me on a hook and drag me around wherever she pleases. Whatever’s going on with her, I’m not getting involved.
No matter how much she tries to manipulate me.
I say nothing as she gives me a long, meaningful look and then straightens, pulling back from my truck and turning away.
Giving me her back that way is a message.
She couldn’t have missed the pistol on my hip, yet walking away with her back exposed says she either knows I won’t cross that line and shoot her – or she’s not afraid of me, no matter what I do.
She should be.
Anyone who walks the wrong edge and endangers my town should be.
She’s almost back to her SUV when she stops, looking back at me, thoughtful. “Do you really hate me so very much, Gray?” she asks softly.
I don’t answer.
Just roll up the window of my truck, flick on my headlights, and pull the hell away from the curb.
In the rear-view mirror, she stands in the middle of the street: confident, proud, disdainful, watching me with a silent message in her very stare.
But all I can see, all I can hear, are flames.
Flames, and the savage screams of my burning friend, melting alive.
Phantom pain twinges in my fingers, then numbness.
I only wish I could numb everything else like these scars.
That wish comes back tenfold after an afternoon appointment back at The Menagerie, three days later.
When my hand is bleeding from sharp little hedgehog teeth, and it’s taking everything in me not to burst out swearing in front of the little boy apologizing profusely for Porky’s bad behavior. I can’t really blame the spiteful little spineball.
I’d bite anyone shoving needles in my ass, too, vaccinations or not.
That doesn’t mean I particularly enjoyed those two vicious front teeth sinking into the ball of my thumb.
I manage to politely excuse myself with a reassuring murmur for the boy. Then I duck out of the room and stalk into the back, cupping my hand to keep from dripping blood on the floor.
I hear her before I see her. Ember’s voice, a soft lilt, a melody, whispering something about make believe and self-belief.
I stop outside the door, frowning, trying to place the song.
Ah. It’s an old Nat King Cole classic. A bit before her time. I catch my curiosity sparking and crush it down with a scowl, pushing into the room.
She glances up from wiping down several more delicate bits of equipment with sterile cloths, her singing voice faltering, but I brush past her to the sink. Plunging my hand under the stream of ice water is a relief, almost instantly numbing the pain.
Ember sets her work down, rising with her brows knit together. “Doc? What happened?”
“Hedgehog bite,” I answer, turning my hand and watching the blood turn thin and pink, then washing away from the gnarled skin of my hand with morbid fascination. “Not rabid, thankfully. Just annoyed over his vaccinations.”
“It could still get infected. Here.”
Suddenly her hands are on mine – sure and confident rather than shy and nervous.
Like I’m one of the injured or sick animals who brings out this side in her. Ember wraps my hand in a towel, her thumb pressing down gently through the terrycloth at a point just below the bite to slow the bleeding.
All I feel is the warmth and softness of her touch, the strange tight sensation in my chest, the way my pulse speeds up just enough to make breathing so wrong.
Damn.
I let out a breath explosively as she picks up a bottle with a mix of iodine and a few other things guaranteed to kill any germs, peels the towel back, and pours the burning cleaning solution over my hand.
I grind my teeth on a hiss as it soaks into the wound, trying not to focus on the pain. That’ll just make me snap, and I’ve been difficult enough to work with over the last few days for reasons that have nothing to do with her.
After my last little encounter with Fuchsia, I haven’t been myself. Or maybe I’ve just been a version of myself I wanted to forget.
Everything in me is on high alert, trying to reawaken old military training that tells me to remember situational awareness, threat assessment, tactical crisis response. Then it hits me how insane that is.
Goddammit, I’m just trying to make
sure people’s puppies have their fucking shots over here. Not play soldier.
I can’t help watching her, distracting myself as she looks over the wound critically, dabbing away the dark-brown stain of iodine. She’s singing again softly, almost under her breath. Her eyes are heavy, lids half-lowered, their pensive gaze focused on her hands as she works me over like some little Cinderella.
Her voice is undeniable. She’s had some kind of voice training.
For just a second, I wonder what it’d be like to let the Fuchsia shit go. Just sit here, her fingers gliding over mine, enjoying the sensation as she sings my ears to some special slice of heaven I’m not sure I deserve.
Then I shut that line of thought down again mighty fast.
No. I can’t wonder about Ember Delwen.
I also can’t seem to stop myself from thinking, watching those capable hands delicately searching the wound, her skin so pale against mine, her touch so gentle despite the searing pain.
“You’ve got talent,” I murmur while she uses a bit of gauze to wipe the last of the blood from my hand. I’m not even sure if I’m praising her as a vet, or as a singer. “You could be anywhere else but here.”
She smiles faintly. “But why would I want to be?”
“Because there’s more to life than chasing after wild animals and letting them mangle you like this.”
She falters, looking down at our hands. A pained crease appears between her brows, and I wonder what I’ve said to upset her.
After a few silent moments, she murmurs, “You sound like my father. He’d always tell me there was more to life than chasing problems that would find you anyway. Why go looking, when you could just be happy instead?”
“Wise man,” I tell her with a nod.
“He was.” Her voice is tight, thick. “He passed a few years ago.”
It’s strange to me how she says it so openly.
We barely know each other, yet here she is, showing me these fragile emotions, this painful loss behind a warmth etched so clearly on her face, in her voice, in her eyes.
This is a delicate creature. She wears her feelings like a butterfly flaunts its colors, things delicate and sweet and just as easily crushed.
And I can’t return in kind, no matter this quiet between us that seems to say it’s safe.
All I can say is, “I’m sorry.”
And for once, I mean it.
I never meant to dig up old, hurtful memories. I know damn well what it’s like to walk face-first into a pain you thought you’d buried ten feet deep – only for it to sink those needling, painful teeth in all over again.
“It’s okay, Doc. No worries.”
She’s been working over my hand with a pair of micro forceps, and slowly extracts a tiny, slim hedgehog spike I hadn’t realized was in the bite. Looks like the little bastard managed to stab me, too.
Once it’s out, bright blood wells again, making me think far too much of Fuchsia.
How fucking easily she could leave this girl’s blood spilling across the floor, if I’m not careful.
How many other men and girls and children she could murder just as easily, if I let her have free rein.
While Ember swabs the blood, her fingers stroking like silk over the heel of my palm, she continues, “My dad was a music teacher. He loved it. Any instrument, he could play without having hardly ever touched it, and he could never quite teach that to anyone...but he tried. He tried to share his love, and if he couldn’t give them his natural talent, he’d teach them how to use that love to better themselves. I think...maybe that’s one of the best ways to learn anything. Through love. I know it’s a little sappy, I guess, but it was love for him that taught me to sing. It always made me so happy, but...” She swallows, the delicate feathers of her lashes trembling. “After he died, I just haven’t been able to find that feeling again.”
“And you want to,” I ask softly. “Is that it?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
I feel like I should offer something here.
Some small word of gentle comfort. Some wisdom about grief, and how it never leaves us, but how over time we begin to start living again.
As long as it doesn’t hollow you out, a dark voice growls in the back of my mind. As long as it doesn’t leave you empty – and worthless.
I pinch my jaw as those last two words become my own father’s voice. Fuck.
No, I can’t offer this firefly-girl platitudes.
My comfort would be a lie, when I’m a storm, barely in control of my grief, my rage, my pain.
I’ve only learned to shut them away. Lock them up so tight it’s like I’m holding acid.
That’s my expertise, and Dr. Caldwell’s lessons aren’t transferable.
They’re not any lesson I want to teach this bright young thing.
Shut herself away? She was made to shine.
But I can’t stand to lie to her, either.
So I stand silently, asking myself how I could possibly give someone like her any peace, how someone as broken as me could offer a single damn word that might help hold her together. She lifts her head, smiling bravely, staring at me – or is it through me?
Her eyes are wet, yet she’s pulling herself together with a sweetness and warmth like none I’ve ever seen. I almost don’t know what the fuck to do when she suddenly changes the subject.
“I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but wow, he got you good, didn’t he?”
Oh.
My hand. Right.
Suddenly I’m far too aware of my scars against her pale, flawless skin, wondering if I’ll have a few more no thanks to Sonic the Ass-hog.
It’s not just damaged skin. It’s the legacy of my own hard, hurtful memories. And perhaps the way her thumb traces over one swirl of scar tissue as she pulls the bloodied gauze away for a final look, staring just a little too long at those marks on my hand.
It’s not hard to tell she wants to ask.
But she doesn’t.
Good. I can’t give up that story for anyone.
“I’ve had worse,” I grumble, watching her drop the gauze and pick up a tube of Neosporin. It stings less than the iodine, at least, as she slathers it on, and it’s easier for me to untense and hold still. “So is that why you’re in Heart’s Edge? Looking for that feeling again, somewhere far from home? I can’t imagine what else could draw anyone out here.”
“Nah, it’s a nice place. The inn seems to get a lot of vacationers.”
“That’s just it. Heart’s Edge is somewhere you vacation. Not where you put down roots and stay. Many people your age are just aching to get out.”
“Well, good thing I’m not most people my age.” Her voice sounds wistful. She peels the tape off the back of a small gauze bandage pack and presses it over the wound. Melancholy, yet dreaming. “I want somewhere quiet. Somewhere simple, where I can just settle and build a life that doesn’t worry about the small things. Maybe even fall in love.”
I snort.
I can’t stop it. It just comes right out in an angry huff.
I know quite well she won’t fall in love here, unless she’s willing to wait for quite a few young men to grow old enough that she can play cougar once she’s old enough.
Unless we’ve got more new guests I don’t know about, Blake and I are practically the only bachelor options old enough to drink.
Blake, ballbuster that he is, is far too busy trying not to make his daughter hate him as a single dad, while I’m far too busy trying not to hate myself.
And she’s too young for me, I remind myself.
Anyone who thinks it’s appropriate to wear those minuscule tennis skirts she’s been sporting at the office, flashing slender, willowy legs, is too damn young for me.
Too young, and too vulnerable to the danger I could bring into her life.
She’s staring at me now, her head cocked. Waiting for an explanation.
“The world doesn’t work that way,” I say, pulling my hand free from he
rs and telling myself it’s not reluctantly. Or that my skin doesn’t feel cold without her touch. “Changing where you are won’t change that simple fact. Nothing’s so neat or simplistic, Ember. Not life, not love. Running from your problems just means being in a new place with the same problems.”
She gives me a long look, letting her hands drop, before her lips twist with a touch of cynicism. “You know, you’re an amazing actor.”
I raise both brows. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean?”
“These women come in here every single day thinking if they melt the ice over your polite, distant mask, they’ll find a man with a warm, beating heart underneath.” That cynical twist of her lips actually turns into a grin, then – sweet, playful, lighting up her eyes. “Little do they know what’s really underneath that ice is a big, snarly grouch.”
I blink. Fucking hell.
Is this girl teasing me?
That’s enough to make me scowl. “People are never who you expect them to be,” I say. “And that’s where we all make our mistakes. Projecting our hopes onto someone when it’s only surface deep. Those women, all they want is a surface reflection to smile back. That’s all they look for in a man. They aren’t here for the real me. They’re here for the damn silly fantasy they’ve concocted to fill in the gaps on a surface that gives them nothing else.”
“Yeah?” she asks softly. “But that means there used to be something in those gaps. So what happened to cut them out of you?”
I don’t answer because I can’t. Because she doesn’t belong in that part of my life. No one does.
Without a word, I make my knees work and walk away, heading out front to lock up.
No surprise, I feel her eyes on me the whole time as I’m exiting the room.
Her eyes. The weight of all her questions.
They’re full and bright, glowing with an insight someone her age shouldn’t have. I really can’t let someone like her get under my skin. I can’t let her get tangled up with me, or see who, what, I really am.
She deserves better, and she’ll have it, Doc-free.
I’m not risking anyone getting killed again.
Not because of me.