by Nicole Snow
We don’t say anything else, just finish up the French toast – egg-battering each slice, then shaking mixed cinnamon and granulated sugar over it for texture, adding the perfect extra touch of powdered sugar and dribbles of honey. It’s not quite a hostile silence.
But it’s tense.
I can’t help but think...if this had been just a couple of weeks ago, he’d have left at the slightest question. Is this progress? Hard to call it that, but maybe.
There’s no stopping curiosity. There’s something about him that draws me in, this magnetism, and it’s like I want to know him, but I know it’ll only happen on his terms. I just don’t know what those terms are, and I’m starting to feel desperate trying to find out.
While we’re settling in at the breakfast table over coffee and toast, I have a thought that makes me shudder. Am I like them? Just like the jackals at the clinic?
Infatuated with him for no good reason other than that he’s there and insanely attractive? Infatuated with the way his mystique makes me see what I want to see when really, he’s just a man who wants to be left alone?
No, I decide, watching him from under my lashes as we eat. Doc nods a few times, enjoying his food, which makes me smile back.
Nope. It’s not his mystique, that’s more of a frustrating obstacle. It’s the bits of the real Doc – of Gray – that he lets me see.
The kindness, steadiness, and strength in his hands, whether he’s working with an injured dog or saving me from face-planting on the front step of The Menagerie.
How he went out of his way, from day one, to make sure I was taken care of – even though he didn’t have to. I was just his newly hired employee. A stranger.
Then this mysterious duty he feels to protect Heart’s Edge from whatever secrets he’s keeping.
He’s kind.
Underneath that cold exterior, that formal stiffness, is a kind man with a soft heart that’s hurting so, so much.
I don’t know what hurt him. I may never know what hurt him.
I just want to see him smile.
To me, that’s more real than anything to do with lusting after a pretty face and next to the only eligible bachelor in town.
He glances up at me, catching my eye. Those brilliant green eyes pin me in place, a reminder I’ve been staring. I clear my throat, ducking my head.
“Good grub,” he says quietly. It’s not just a nicety, there’s serious appreciation in his voice that says he means it. “I don’t think I’ve ever had French toast quite like this. Where’d you learn to make it this way?”
“My dad,” I answer and my throat knots at just the memory. “He grew up poor, and the way they made French toast was to just butter up regular toast and toss sugar on it. When he was in a better position when he was older...” I smile faintly, breaking off a corner of my last piece. “He learned the proper way to make it, the fancy way, but he always said the texture was never right with just powdered sugar. So he’d add both regular sugar and powdered, plus cinnamon. And that, he said, was heaven.”
When he looks at me again, it’s with that quiet that says he understands pain. Viscerally. He gets all the small personal hurts that make up life and memories and loss.
“You must miss him a great deal,” Doc says.
“It’s hard not to, you know?” I push the corner of my toast around in lingering pools of honey, staring at it. “He was the glue of our family. Without him, we just don’t hold together as well.”
“Fair. Mind if I ask how he passed?” The gentleness in Doc’s words nearly breaks me when he asks, my eyes stinging.
“Heart attack.” I hate saying the words out loud.
It makes them real, makes them final, and I don’t think I’ve ever had to before.
People already knew, anyone who ever mattered, anyone in our family. For me to have to tell Gray makes it this scary, definite thing I can hold in my hand. Equally as small as this piece of French toast and so big I feel like it’ll swell up and crush me.
I blink away my burning eyes, the wetness gathering in their corners. “H-he died right in front of my mom, you know? It hit her so hard she’s never been the same, though she tries to pretend, but I know she’s not okay. Not really.”
I lift my head, finally letting myself look at him. I’m expecting that closed, neutral expression, his oh-so-polite, not-quite-disinterest that lets people talk at him without him having to engage. Maybe I almost want that here.
Anything else feels like it’ll force me to pull myself together and stop falling apart like this.
But instead, he’s watching me with shadowed green eyes that are so warm with understanding it impales me. Stabs me in the soul with sympathy.
The hard lines of his face soften, open in a way I’ve never seen them before, and then he’s moving.
He’s holding out his hand to me again. Resting it on the table between us, outstretched and upturned, those curled fingers inviting.
Offering. Offering solace.
I’m not sure if his touch will break me or hold me together, but I can’t deny it. I feel so sick inside, so hollowed out with the grief I never quite let myself face. After a few shaky moments, I slip my hand into his warm, inviting fingers and let them envelop mine in his strength.
What the hell, Ember? This is your boss. You know that, right?
I do. I also know Doc Caldwell wraps me up in his heat and steadiness and power. His touch brings order to my chaos.
“I was such a jerk,” I whisper, staring down at his tanned knuckles curled against my pale skin. “Right before he died, we got in a fight over something so stupid I don’t even remember what it was about. Part of me thinks...”
“That you killed him,” he finishes for me. Coming from anyone else, it’d feel like an accusation.
From him, it feels like understanding.
More, it feels like forgiveness. The kind that says there was never anything to forgive in the first place.
Jesus. He knows what it’s like to beat yourself to a pulp over something that happened to someone you care for, something that was out of your control, but the pain and loss won’t let you see reason or stop eating you alive.
“Yes,” I say, choking on the word, swallowing it back. “You’re right. I just...I want to hear him singing again, playing again. Just one more time.”
“Is that his?” he asks gently.
I look up, following his line of sight to the sofa – and the violin case propped against it, resting closed with the soft, well-cared-for leather shining in the morning light. I’m grateful for the distraction, nodding and biting my lip.
“It was his,” I murmur back. “He gave it to me years ago, after he taught me to play. I’ve never wanted another one. It’s his touch in every line of it. Like he shaped the very thinness of the wood, and he’s in the very sounds it makes. I haven’t played it in forever, honestly, but I can’t let it go, either.”
He squeezes my fingers, his thumb stroking along the edge of my palm, then asks, “May I?”
What the what? I’ve imagined Gray as many things, but a musician?
I’m so startled all I can do is nod.
He squeezes my hand one last time, and then slips to his feet, rising to that towering height that can be so intimidating sometimes and so inviting at others. He becomes this big protective tree of a man inviting living creatures to shelter in his shade. And today, that creature is me.
He crosses the room on three languid, powerful strides, and picks up the violin case with gentle hands. The very same care he puts in everything. It’s there, no mistaking it, even in how he handles the violin case, delicately unlatching the buckles and lifting out the gleaming, curving violin like he’s just found some priceless treasure.
Oh, wow. It warms something deep inside me, seeing the way he carries the violin, the way he runs his fingers along the bowstring gently and traces the shining line of the bow itself.
Doc may not be a man of many words, but he always shows his care
through touch.
And with a reverent grip, he lifts the violin out, props it against his shoulder, and settles to sit on the arm of the couch. Then it begins. He starts to play.
If you could make sound into the world's sweetest honey, I think it’d be like this.
It’s lilting. Delicate. Hypnotic.
It makes me think of the way his voice softened when he talked about spring in Heart’s Edge, and how it transforms the entire town as the flowers bloom like bursting rainbows.
Those flowers freaking bloom from his fingertips now, soft petals of music drifting through the air and falling down in gentle flurries, and I listen. Rapt, completely mesmerized.
It should feel wrong to let another man play my violin, my father’s violin. But whatever else this strange, spontaneous thing is, it feels totally right.
Something Dad always said comes back to me. Music was never meant to die with its maker.
It’s never been right to let the instrument sit around untouched, dishonoring his memory by silencing its sound.
Everything in me is keyed up tight, so tight, and I don’t even realize I’ve drifted toward him, standing and leaving my plate behind, until I’m so close I could touch him. So dang close I feel the vibrato of every mournful, quivering note on my skin, shivering over me and giving me such delicious goosebumps.
It’s like every point on my body pricks aware of him, feeling him, soaking in these emotions as physical things caressing me through sound.
When the music finally trails off, when he slowly sets the violin down into his lap, I melt back into the silence and open my eyes just in time. His eyes drift open, too, green-hazed and smoky and dark, locked on mine.
I’m so close to him somehow, the distance vanishing between us, until I could rest my hands on his chest if I wanted to.
If I dared to.
And as he leans toward me, as the space between us trembles and sings like a struck bowstring, my heart goes wild. My lips part, my eyes tilt to his mouth as it draws closer, closer, his breaths so ragged I can hear them.
I’ve never let myself truly linger on his mouth for long. Because then I’ll want it too much, his upper lip all firm and defined with a sharp, near perfect V dip in the center.
It’s slightly fuller than his lower lip, making the little peak right at the center overhang so temptingly, this soft bit of flesh demanding to be nibbled and bitten and...
Oh. Oh, God.
He’s so close I can feel his breath against my lips, my cheeks, and my heart is about to pound right out of my chest. He parts his lips like he might just whisper Ember, and then –
And then he suddenly draws back sharply, sucking in a heavy breath, his pupils dilating.
He just stares at me, his face as blankly bewildered as I feel, probably wondering what in the heck just happened. I wish I knew.
Pressing a hand over my racing heart, I try to keep it from beating out of my chest while he looks away firmly, focusing his attention on replacing the violin and bow in the case just as carefully as he’d removed them.
After a strained moment he asks, “Want to go for a walk?”
“Sure,” I say faintly. A walk. Ha, ha.
Crud, I need the air.
Space.
Something to clear my head.
But nothing does it like the sudden alert sense of wariness, worry, and dread when he says tensely, “Good. I’d like to show you something.”
12
Ruff Riding (Doc)
I just almost fucking kissed Ember Delwen.
A girl almost half my age.
A shy, sweet slip of a thing who knows nothing about the real me, and looks at me with these soft doe eyes that seem to see a better man than what I truly am.
Not to mention my employee. It’s incredible how that’s so low on the list.
Yeah, I’m going straight to hell.
The special abyss from legend, Tartarus, reserved mostly for people who talk at the theater and interrupt movies.
Even worse, she’s still with me at my own damn invitation. Long after I should’ve just excused myself and had the good sense to leave.
We’re silent as we cross the grass to the fence, then slip out and take the path down into the valley that gives Heart’s Edge its soul. The rising daylight, the sun arcing toward its noon peak one bit at a time, turns everything a brassy shade of gold. Everything from the nodding flowers to the dun rock of the cliff faces to the tree trunks rising up the hills on one side seem to bend toward the light.
The trail takes us down to the base of the half-heart cliff looking out over the mountains and ridges and slopes. It’s slow going with neither of us wearing proper boots. At least it’s a nice distraction from that tingling feeling that still lingers between us like static in the air, this silent awareness that we almost did the unthinkable.
“Hey, Doc?”
I damn near jump out of my skin once she finally speaks, pausing and lingering with her hand on a slim birch tree trunk. She looks at me curiously before she picks her way over a fallen log.
Of fucking course it catches her foot and she pitches forward, barely catching herself in time with a squeak before I can even lunge over to save her.
Clearing her throat, she straightens, brushing it off like a cat pretending it didn’t just slip off a shelf.
“So where’d you learn to play like that? The violin, I mean.”
I’d tensed up at the sound of her voice, unsure what she wanted, but now I relax, damn glad it’s a safer question than I’d expected.
“The Army,” I answer. “My old man wanted to drive me into the Air Force like him, but I chose being a grunt. Honestly, I don’t remember how I learned. Never had any formal lessons. It must’ve happened during those long nights when there was nothing to do but wait and hope too many people wouldn’t die. We’d talk. Pass around instruments. Smoke. Play cards. I picked up an old violin my buddy had and took to it. Got real good over time. The wounded boys started asking me for requests. Something to distract them from the pain, the fear, the boredom of recovery.”
It’s an old memory, one the color and flavor of Iraqi dust, and still not as bitter as some of my newer ones. Even if the military was all about death and war – not to mention sticking it to my asshole father – those were simpler times than the past wicked decade of my life.
Days when you knew who people were, what they wanted. Who you could trust.
Days when you knew yourself, without being hollowed out by regret and horror and secrets.
Ember doesn’t ask me anything else until we reach the foot of the cliff. From here, the rock turns into a tall wall of red and yellow sedimentary rock with tufts of weeds and trees clinging to it all the way down a steep slope. It ends in a field of lively green grass, dotted with spring flowers that make a speckled carpet bending into the valley proper.
Ember presses close to the cliff face, following its curve, one small hand trailing over the stone as she looks high up to the edge.
“Felicity told me about this,” she says, her eyes bright, delighted. “About the lovers who promised to be together forever here, throwing flowers over the edge. And how kids do it now all the time when they like someone.”
“There’s zero basis in fact for that legend.” I snort, annoyed sometimes at how this town clings to the sappiest things. But I guess that’s better than clinging more than it already does to monsters who aren’t all make-believe.
She glances at me, amusement dancing on her lips. “Which tells me you were curious enough to look it up?”
I scowl at her, looking away, but wish I hadn’t. Because across the valley, buried against the far slope, I see it.
The ruins.
Remnants of the Paradise Hotel, scattered cinders and jutting black spears of burnt wood. If I’m ever sent to hell for almost kissing this girl, I know where to find its gate.
For the briefest second, I’m back there.
The screams, the worst part is the screams,
rising above the crackling flames, so many people I can’t tell who, but I know that smell of charring flesh is my fault, my fault, my fucking fault, the thickness of smoke crawling up inside me and I’m ready to let it fill me, choke me off, leave me here to slip away among the blaring alarms and total chaos—
Fuck!
The guilt hits my gut like a lead slug, even though I know it’s irrational.
Still, lives were lost because of me. There’s no hiding that.
People were fucking sacrificed in more ways than one to save the good people of Heart’s Edge.
Logically, I know it’s the needs of the many over the needs of the few; the lives of the innocent over demons planning to harm them. But the loss of any life is a hideous fucking thing, and when it becomes a necessity to stop more killing, morals take on too many shades to follow.
You’d better be damned sure there was no better way, first.
I’m still not sure there was no better way.
I still don’t know if I saved them or damned myself.
I shouldn’t have come out here. Shouldn’t have brought her out here.
My past and present collide in slow motion, and I can’t deal with the emotions it’s rousing. I can’t trust myself around her, and I need to get away before I forget exactly why, when part of me is painfully aware of her in every moment.
Ember reminds me too much of a flower child again, walking among the high grass that skims up to her knees, her soft ruffled short dress trailing behind her in subtle whispers of hot summer breeze, her expression completely absorbed. She picks out one flower after another.
She’s alternating them, one blue, one pink, arranging them carefully into a little bunch between her fingers. A small, pleased smile curves her petal-pink lips.
She’s so good.
So pure, she can be so happily rapt playing among the flowers. It’s incredible, considering less than half an hour ago I’d almost kissed her like a damn fool. Almost tainted her.
Now if I touch that purity, I’ll turn it black.
I study her for a long minute, then rip my gaze away and look up at the sky, squinting at the sun. “We should head back. Another hour and it’ll be too warm to be outside without shade. You’re too pale to be here without sunscreen now.”