by Chant, Zoe
Dali interrupted him. She had to, or she wouldn’t have been able to get a word in edgewise. “Merlin, I want to help. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. What got into you all of a sudden?”
He gave her a final searching stare, then dropped his gaze, his face flushing. “You went silent for a while, and it occurred to me... well... stop me if I’m being a jerk...”
“Spit it out,” Dali said.
“Well, there’s blood and I’m hurt and we’re on the floor and I thought...” He tilted his face up again, his gaze compassionate and honest. “You obviously went through something that involved blood and injuries, and you were forced to leave the Navy even you didn’t want to, and a yeoman can do the job just fine with a prosthetic hand. I figured you had to have PTSD. And it had to be pretty bad to keep you from going back. I thought maybe the blood and all was getting to you.”
Dali was struck dumb. The truth so terrible that she couldn’t even bear to think of it herself, the secret shame that had defined her life far more than the loss of her hand, the thing she’d thought she’d never be able to tell him or anyone, had turned out to not be a secret at all. Merlin had figured it out by himself. More importantly, he spoke of it as if it was a simple fact, not something to be ashamed of.
She felt like a shell around her heart had been cracked open with a single, precise hammer-blow. All the feelings she’d locked inside were going to come flooding out. She had a moment of terror when she realized that she couldn’t stop it, and then the part of her that cared about that was washed away as well.
Her emotions were so intense and overwhelming that they clogged her throat. She sat staring at him, unable to speak, until she realized from the increasing worry on his face that he probably thought she was having a flashback. He started to reach out, then looked down at his blood-spattered hand and froze, obviously uncertain if touching her would make things better or worse.
“You can touch me,” she said. “I’m not afraid of a little blood.”
He put his arms around her and held her tight. Merlin was hurt himself, but he was taking care of her. It should have made her feel guilty, but instead she felt comforted. She relaxed into his strong grip, snuggling up against his warmth and breathing in the scent of him, the salt of clean sweat and a sweetness like he still had some powdered sugar on his fingers.
For the first time since she’d woken up in the hospital, she felt safe: safe to feel again. Dali buried her face in his shoulder and let her tears flow: tears of loss, tears of grief, tears of relief at finally being able to cry.
Merlin didn’t tell her to stop or quiz her about what had happened or try to distract her with some story of his own. He simply held her and didn’t let her go. His silence didn’t feel ominous this time, but like a gift he was giving her: his quiet strength and caring, and all the time and space that she needed.
When she finally lifted her head, she felt cleansed. He’d spoken so matter-of-factly that she couldn’t imagine him shaming or criticizing her, no matter what she told him. Merlin accepted people, quirks and flaws and all.
“I was on the USS Greyhound,” she said. When he nodded, she saw in his lack of surprise that he’d already guessed that she’d been on it when it had been bombed. “So I don’t need to tell you what happened to it.”
“No,” he said gently. “I know about that.”
“You don’t know what happened to me, though.” Dali blew out a breath, exasperated with herself. “Never mind that. You’re sitting here bleeding—my story can wait.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s stopped,” Merlin said.
He was right, but she still didn’t feel right postponing his care any more than she already had. Besides, she could probably use some distraction herself. She tore open a medical wipe. “Lean forward.”
As she began cleaning the cut on his head, she said, “It was a day like any other day. One of my duties was maintaining shipboard legal records, and I was working on those files. I woke up in a hospital.”
Even with his head bowed, she could see the startled flicker of his eyelids.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just like that. If my hand wasn’t busy, I’d snap my fingers.”
“That must have been so confusing.”
She nodded. “I was on a lot of drugs, and I had to have a bunch of surgeries. By the time I could understand what had happened, it was a month later. Everyone who’d died had already had their funerals, and the ship was back in service.”
“You never remembered anything about the bombing?”
“I never experienced the bombing.” She tossed away the wipe and picked up a roll of gauze. “The doctors said I was instantly knocked unconscious. The blood and fear and injured people—I missed all that. From my perspective, it was like I blinked, and I woke up in a different body in a different world.”
He looked up at her, his eyes full of startled understanding. “So—”
“Hold still.” Dali pushed his head back down and began winding gauze around it. She had to watch her prosthetic hand to use it, but she spared a glance for the other as well, expecting to see it trembling. But it was steady as a rock.
When she finished, Merlin appeared to be wearing a white headband. He already looked a bit like a surfer, and that made him really look like a surfer.
That amused her enough to give her the strength to get to the hard part. Especially since she’d need to be looking straight at his face when she did it. “You can lift your head now.”
Very gently, glad her hands were steady, she took some more disinfectant wipes and started cleaning the cuts on Merlin’s face. “I thought I’d grieve for my friends who died, get fitted for a prosthetic and learn how to use it, and then I’d go back to work. I didn’t even think about PTSD. After all, I couldn’t remember what had happened, so it wasn’t like I could have nightmares or flashbacks or horrible memories... right?”
It was a rhetorical question. Merlin didn’t reply, but just gave her a sad, ironic half-smile. He might not know the details yet, but he obviously knew the answer to that.
“I went back.” Lifting her prosthetic, she said, “I can even type with this. Nowhere near as fast as I used to, but I learned a two-finger method that was good enough. But...”
She looked him over to give herself some breathing space. She’d disinfected everything but the cut on his lips. How had she managed to time things so she’d gotten to the hardest part of her story at the same time that she’d gotten to the hardest part of tending to Merlin’s injuries? The mouth was such a sensitive part of the body, it was bound to sting like hell.
“Sorry,” she muttered, not knowing if she was apologizing for hurting him or for what she was about to reveal. As she dabbed antiseptic on his lips, she said, “I kept thinking that any second, I’d wake up in a hospital. Or not wake up at all. I knew that everything could vanish at any moment and I kept waiting for it to happen. I couldn’t focus on my work. I went on medical leave and did therapy, and I thought it was helping. But when I went back on duty, it was exactly the same as before. I was okay when I was off-duty, but it turned out that my trigger was being on-duty in the Navy, and nothing I did could change that.”
Dali’s words ran down like a car running out of gas. She realized that she was clutching the antiseptic wipe, and she dropped it in the trash without breaking eye contact with Merlin. He’d never looked away, the entire time she’d been speaking.
She’d thought having to tell that story while she was looking into his eyes would make it harder. But instead, it made it easier. She could watch him the entire time for any vestige of disapproval, contempt, or worst of all, pity at her weakness. But he never showed any of that. Instead, she saw sympathy and understanding.
“How long did you stay on, after you went back?” Merlin asked.
She hadn’t expected that question, and it took her a moment to figure that out. “About four months. Not counting the medical leave.”
“Four months of expecting to die at any
second.”
Dali nodded, her lips pressed tight together. If she thought about it too much, she could feel a ghost of that terrifying certainty.
“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of anyone doing,” Merlin said. “You’re the bravest person I know.”
She stared at him. “What? I was just trying to do my job, and I couldn’t even do that!”
“I was a Marine, you know. So I know what it feels like to think you’re about to die. But I only ever experienced that for a few seconds at a time. Added up, it was maybe five minutes over my whole career. But you faced death every second of every day, for four months. You knew it would be like that every morning when you woke up, and you got out of bed and did it anyway. I don’t think I could’ve done that.”
Merlin was unmistakably sincere, which made her give serious consideration to his words. She’d always thought of that time as a failure caused by her own weakness. But he’d reframed it as an act of courage, and that made her recall how difficult it had been to get up, day after day, and walk into what felt like certain death.
Maybe she hadn’t been weak. Maybe she’d been stronger than she’d ever known she could be.
Dali felt like her whole world had once again been picked up, given a good shake, and set back down again with all the pieces in different places. But this time, for the better.
It was an incredible gift. And Merlin was the one who’d given it to her.
CHAPTER 11
Merlin’s thoughts were going as fast as they always did, and his raptor was babbling on in his head like he always did, but Merlin managed to keep his mouth shut. Dali was obviously lost in thought, and whatever was going on in her mind didn’t seem to be making her unhappy, so he didn’t want to interrupt it. Instead, he simply sat and watched, barely daring to breathe, as the light of hope slowly brightened her face like the rising sun.
“Thank you,” she said at last. “For everything. But especially what you said about going back taking courage. I never thought of it that way before. It means a lot to me.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Dali said. “Just a little basic first aid.”
“I didn’t mean that. Though thank you for that too. I meant, thank you for believing me. And taking me seriously. And not telling me to get rid of the goddamn traps, like everyone does at work. Though I guess I can’t really blame them. People do trip over them a lot. Pete’s gotten his foot stuck in them twice, and Carter threatened to bill me for dry cleaning after he set off a trip-wire and it spilled carrot juice down the front of his shirt.”
“Why do you want a magical pet so much?” Dali asked.
No one had ever asked him that before. They just assumed he was weird Merlin being weird, or thought they already knew because they’d heard him say things like “I want something adorable to sit on my shoulder” or “Who wouldn’t want a flying kitten?” or “I always dreamed of having a miniature dragon.” And that was all perfectly true. It just wasn’t all of the truth.
But Dali had asked. Maybe that was why he blurted out, “Because I’m lonely.”
“Oh, Merlin,” she said softly.
He knew he didn’t have to explain, but since it was already out there, he wanted her to understand him. “I love my mom, but we get in the same fight every time I see her. I had friends at the circus, but it’s been pretty awkward since I left. Natalie was my best friend there, but she didn’t even tell me she left. I had friends in the Marines, but they’re all deployed and I’m here. The west coast Protection, Inc. team is on the west coast. And as for my team—”
Merlin had felt cold and shaky ever since he’d had two hundred pounds of metal dropped on his back, but the last of his chill burned off in a hot rush of blood as he went on, “Carter won’t even tell us what sort of animal he turns into and he high-tails it in his private jet if anyone suggests he’s part of the team. Ransom spends half his time locked in his office getting psychic messages from Mars or something. Pete is constantly on the verge of tossing me out the window. Roland is running the team as a distraction from grieving for a woman he met once for five minutes, whose name he never knew. Tirzah... Tirzah’s cool, actually. But she’s engaged to Pete so it’s not like I’m ever getting invited over to dinner at their place.”
He sighed. “Ugh, this all sounds so self-pitying. Forget you heard any of it. Chalk it up to loss of blood.”
But Dali didn’t look at him like she pitied him. “I’m lonely, too.”
She put her arm around his shoulder. In that simple gesture, he could sense that she was reaching out to find and touch someone like herself. Like two soldiers under fire. Or two lonely people coming together in shared desire.
Now that he’d been sitting down for a while and she had bandaged everything that needed bandaging, he felt a lot better. But her touch still knocked him off-balance.
She knocked him off-balance. Even sitting on his floor with her braids coming unpinned and her clothes sprinkled with sawdust and his blood on her hands, she was still the most beautiful, sexy woman he’d ever seen. Actually, the messy hair made her more sexy, like she’d just finished having sex so urgent and frantic that her hair had gotten yanked down and she’d never even noticed. The sawdust made him remember how he’d been willing to give his life to protect her, and the blood touched him with the memory of her kindness.
You should have sex with her right now, his raptor suggested.
He kissed her instead. She responded with the same passion he felt, opening her mouth to him, seeking to claim him as much as he sought to claim her. He forgot his injuries, forgot everything but this marvelous, infinitely desirable woman who was, impossibly, right here in his arms. His breath came faster. His heartbeat pounded in his ears like a drum. He felt dizzy with desire.
And also, just plain dizzy. Black spots were dancing before his eyes.
“Merlin!” Dali’s voice was sharp with alarm. He felt her hand on the back of his head, pushing it down between his knees. “Take a deep, slow breath. Another.”
He breathed slowly until he felt less like he was going to pass out at any second. When he was sure it was safe to lift his head, he said, “I thought it would be extremely romantic if I was so overcome by your beauty that I actually fainted.”
Dali inspected him worriedly, then gave him a rueful smile. “You got hurt saving my life. I think that’s romantic enough. How about you lie down now, and we take a rain check on the making out?”
“Sounds good.”
She helped him to his feet, and they made their way to his bedroom. He pointed out the traps as they went, and they got in without setting any off. He kicked off his shoes and lay down, grateful that between the circus and the Marines, he’d gotten into the habit of making the bed every morning. He’d have hated her to be grossed out by his single guy habits.
Once he was lying down, he felt a lot better. “Sorry for being such a terrible host. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen or, well, anything. I’ve got lots of books if you’re bored.”
“Do you want anything?”
Marshmallows with hot chocolate, said his raptor.
Between the blood loss and the leftover high from kissing Dali, Merlin’s defenses were down. He started to automatically echo what his raptor had said, only managing to cut himself off a couple words in.
“Marshmallows with hot?” Dali repeated. She touched his forehead as if she thought he might be feverish.
“I’m not delirious. Remember how I said my raptor talks to me?”
Her eyebrows formed a pair of exquisite arches as she said, “Your velociraptor wants hot marshmallows?”
“Marshmallows with hot chocolate,” Merlin said. “He’s kind of a sugar freak.”
She sat down on the bed beside him. “At the circus, you said he’s your subconscious. So your subconscious wants sugar?”
“I guess so.”
“Do you want sugar?”
He shrugged. “I like sweet
things, sure. Not as much as he does. I put sugar in my coffee. He tells me to throw away the coffee and pour the sugar into my mouth.”
Dali chuckled, then her amusement faded and was replaced by curiosity. “Why the difference?”
“You know, I never really thought about that. At the circus they say the inner animal is the most primal part of yourself. The heart, not the mind.”
And the part that recognizes your mate, he thought, but he stuffed that thought down so fast and deep that even his raptor wasn’t quick enough to catch it. Either his raptor was too damaged to recognize his mate or his mate wasn’t Dali, and either way, he didn’t want to think about it.
“Did you ever eat plain sugar?” Dali asked.
“When I was a kid, sure,” he began. And then his mind raced ahead of his words. In a small voice, he said, “Oh.”
“What?”
Tell her, demanded his raptor. She needs to understand.
If his raptor really was the deepest part of his heart, then maybe Merlin should listen to his relationship advice. And he did want her to understand him.
He patted the bed. “Lie down next to me?”
She immediately lay down. Their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces, molding to each other as if they’d spent a lifetime getting it just right.
CHAPTER 12
MERLIN’S STORY
I did eat plain sugar when I was a kid. It was the only sweet thing in the house. It wasn’t because my parents were health nuts. They didn’t like sweet stuff themselves, so they didn’t buy it. They’d never wanted me and they didn’t love me, so if the only reason to do something was to make me happy, it didn’t get done.
That’s not how that story’s supposed to go. Maybe the baby was a surprise, but Mom and Dad fall in love with it the moment they hold it in their arms, right? Or if they don’t, it’s because Dad’s a wife-beater and Mom’s an alcoholic and eventually the kid gets taken away.