Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair (7 page)

“Mm….” He heard a sound and looked up to see that she had gotten out of bed and was waddling (well, she was twenty-nine weeks along) to the chair by his bed.

“Doesn’t feel right, you doing that,” he said, feeling again the weight of the plaster and slings and such on his wrenched shoulder and broken arm. He understood these things would be off in two weeks, and then, if he took to physical therapy well, he could go home in early February. Except, he knew from listening to Aiden, home wasn’t going to be where he left it.

“It’s what you do,” she said simply. “You can’t move and I can.” She dropped the side rail on his bed so she could lean her head against his on the pillow, and he didn’t mind. In fact, he wished he could move his hand and stroke her hair. They seemed to have moved beyond friends this past month, and more to brother and sister.

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” he said. He would too. Ariadne had been one of his best teachers regarding what was real and what was honest. He tried hard to remember
everything
she’d taught him.

“So don’t worry so much about the scars,” she said, like she was picking up a dropped stitch. “My baby isn’t going to come out pretty. Baby’s going to have a gap right here.” She drew a triangle with her upper lip as the bottom and the septum of her nose as the top point. “They say it’s going to be pretty bad—not bad enough to risk the pregnancy by operating when the kid’s still in my stomach, but, you know. Like a rabbit.”

Jeremy nodded. “That’s why they called it a harelip,” he said. God knew where he got that bit of information, but, well, trust him to have it.

“Right,” she said, nodding and smiling sadly. “And it’s hard. All the things you want for your baby, and you don’t want them to come out with a strike against them, right?”

“No,” he said gruffly. Oh God. She sounded so sad. So sad, and all he had for her was the worst part of himself. He couldn’t do that. Probably not. Maybe. “Now see,” he said, thinking of his words, which he finally had now that he had teeth, “see, it’s not such a hardship, not being pretty if you’re loved.”

She laughed, and the sound came out bitter. “You say that because you never had boys make fun of you in high school.”

He made a little whimper. “I need my hand free,” he mumbled, almost to himself. “This would sound better if I could touch your hair.”

Her thin, hard hand crept into his, and he squeezed.

“Thank you,” he acknowledged. “You’re gonna wanna go to the other side of the room in a sec, so that’s really sweet of you. See, when daddy and me were on the grift, we’d look for the plain babies. The plainer the better. My daddy loved an ugly baby, because the ugly babies, they had parents who loved them something fierce. My daddy made our rent for a year selling people a fake agent’s contact number, telling them that their baby had star potential.”

Ariadne stayed right where she was. “Jeremy, that’s awful!”

He squeezed her hand so tight it probably hurt. “It is,” he admitted. “It’s fucking horrible. It’s why I deserved everything Mikey Carelli dished out—but that’s not the point. The point is, my daddy used to think that made those parents stupid, that they deserved to get duped, but these last years, me tryin’ to be honest, I figured out he was wrong. You know why?”

“You didn’t deserve it,” she whispered, and he heard tears in her voice again.

“I did, and like I said, it’s not the point. The point is, Oscar was wrong. Plain wrong. Those people who bought the bullshit about the Hollywood agents, they weren’t stupid.”

“No?” Ariadne had her face tucked against his plastered arm and side, so he wasn’t sure what she looked like, but he suspected she was crying. Well, women did that. Sometimes men did too. It was why a con man always carried Kleenex, so he could give a mark a shoulder to cry on. Just because she wasn’t a mark didn’t mean he was going to dodge out on being that shoulder.

“No,” he said, his voice ringing with conviction. That was how you played a mark, he thought, and that confused him for a moment. He had to remember he
believed
this. This wasn’t pie in the sky; he wasn’t selling Ariadne a bullshit dream. This was something it had taken him five hard years to learn, and he was
proud
of it.

“Then what were they?” Ariadne’s voice snapped him out of his moment of dallying.

“They were in love,” he said, feeling it. “They loved that baby
so
much, all they wanted was for the rest of the world to see what they saw. Now, that’s probably where they made their mistake, right? Because they’re not smart like you and Rory and Craw and Ben. They wanted the
whole world
to see, but that’s not what you want, is it.”

“No,” she answered, and damn, he wished hard for that Kleenex, because she sounded clogged and sad.

“No,” he gentled. “You’ll just look at that baby and see that it’s perfect. I mean, there’ll be surgeries and whatnot, because I know some stuff needs to be fixed so the baby’s healthy and all, but that’s not what matters, right?”

“No,” she answered, but this time, her voice sounded easier, peaceful, and that was worth all the effort of getting riled up.

Now he had to make her say it. “So what’s the thing that matters?”

“That we think the baby’s beautiful,” Ariadne said, still sad but better.

“That’s what I think too.”

“Will you think my baby’s beautiful?” Ariadne asked.

Jeremy guessed he had that coming. “See, there was a reason Oscar was the one who had to run that scam,” he said apologetically.

“What’s that?”

“I never did see an ugly baby.”

“Bullshit!” Ariadne laughed, and he loved her so hard in that moment, he would have gladly taken another beating, just so she’d always call bullshit when she saw it. But this time, he was pretty sure he was telling the truth.

“No, ma’am. I swear on… on….” Oh sweet baby Jebus, what could he swear on? “I swear on my boy’s sweet green eyes,” he breathed at last. Those eyes were going to comfort him tonight in his dreams, he could only hope. “I swear to you, Miss Ariadne, I never did see an ugly baby. All I ever saw—and maybe it’s ’cause of who my daddy went for, which is too bad—but all I ever saw was beautiful babies. And happy families. I was damned jealous of every family we ever fleeced.” He swallowed. “Made it easier, somehow, which is horrible, I know it. But it made it easier to think that they had each other. All I got was rent.”

She sniffled and kept her head against his shoulder. “My baby’s going to be beautiful,” she said, and it sounded like a part of her had doubted it.

“That you know that for certain? That’s maybe one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

“You knit good sweaters too,” she said softly, and something about the lilt, the tenor, put him into the pattern they’d developed over the past couple of weeks.

“Wool’s good for sweaters,” he said. “I like our wool.”

“Alpaca’s softer.”

“Like the blends.”

“Those are fun to spin,” she told him, and he grunted.

“I’ll have to learn how to do that.”

“You’ll be behind the counter.”

“Who’ll teach me?”

“I will.”

“Figures. You taught me how to knit.”

“You’ll be a natural.”

And so on. They were both tired, and both far from home, and the things they knew together were the
only
things they needed to communicate about. It was a rhythmic thing, almost a chant, and it ended when one or the other simply ceased answering and fell asleep.

Ariadne fell silent when it was her turn, and sighed a little as she snuggled; he figured it was her turn to end the conversation. Probably—she seemed to need the sleep these days, but then, so did he. Not right now, though. Carefully, using his good hand, he set his earbuds back in place and turned on the MP3 player. He didn’t always get Dickens, but right now he was thinking that
Oliver Twist
had been a good choice for his boy to download.

“I
S
THAT
about it?” Craw asked.

Aiden looked around the little apartment. “Yeah—we even took down Ari’s valances to put up in the kitchen.” He looked at the big steel pain in his ass they had stowed against the wall to keep it out of the way. “Only one more thing to move.”

Craw looked at the thing and scowled just as Ben trotted in, shivering.

“It’s colder than a monkey’s nuts out there!” he complained, but then, he was still city soft, and moving at the end of January in Granby was not for the weak. Aiden fully expected Craw to swat him on the back of the head and call him a dumbass for forgetting his scarf and his work gloves.

“Of course it’s cold,” Craw said, his voice indulgent. He reached into his pocket for the work gloves and slid them on Ben’s long, pale hands while Ben smiled adoringly into his eyes. “You gotta take care of yourself, City. You remembered your hat”—he touched the turquoise-and-rust hat Aiden had designed an entire colorway toward—“now where’s your scarf?”

Ben’s flush probably warmed him up a little. “Well, it’s special, you know. I didn’t want to get it dirty, since we were going to be moving and all.”

Craw shrugged one vast shoulder with negligible effort. “I can make another one!” He pulled the sturdy fisherman’s scarf from around his own neck and wrapped it around Ben, smiling through his beard as Ben’s shivers stopped.

“But it’s really nice—” Ben said, smiling coyly, and Aiden glanced at the safe on the floor and couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Wear the fucking scarf, Ben,” he growled. “Wear it.” He strode to the safe and squatted to heft it off the ground.

Craw stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Aiden!”

If he’d been mad, it would have been one thing, but he sounded hurt and disappointed. God. Jeremy had been in the hospital for two months. He was coming home next week, but he’d been
in the hospital
for as long as he and Aiden had slept together in the bed they’d just disassembled.

Aiden hadn’t slept right since Jeremy had gone away. Not once. He woke up in the middle of the night hearing Jeremy’s voice calling his name.

And here was Ben, saving Craw’s love for Sunday best, and he couldn’t stand it.

“Don’t let him do that, Craw,” Aiden snapped. “Don’t let him save it for best. Don’t let him put off any good thing between you until tomorrow.”

He got to his knees and started turning the dial on the damned lock, making the same surefire stab in the dark he’d made when they’d come home after Christmas.

“They’re real nice, boy. But I’ve got the fingerless ones you gave me here. You know what to do with ’em.”

“But Jer
—
I thought we weren’t doing that anymore.”

“Just ’til I’m on my feet, okay?”

So Aiden had come back to this empty apartment and put the one Christmas gift he thought Jeremy would keep into this last, most hated remnant of Jeremy’s past.

“You know his combination?” Ben asked, a sort of wonder in his voice.

“It’s my birthday,” Aiden snarled. “What other number would he use?”

“True,” Craw said softly, and the safe popped open.

Aiden hadn’t opened the door since Christmas, but he knew how many were in there. For one thing, Aiden had made Jeremy about twenty pairs before he figured out what he was doing—saving the mittens for later. Saving them for the day his ship came in. Saving them for the day he ran and the mittens were all he had left of the one person who had ever really loved him.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Craw swore, and Aiden didn’t even want to
see
the expression on Ben’s face.

“Mittens? He kept
mittens
in the floor safe?”

“And cash,” Craw added. The cash at least didn’t seem crazy.

But the mittens were really all Aiden cared about. He took the pair he’d made for Jeremy at Christmas—done in Fair Isle style, with little white rabbits hopping across a red border—and stroked them.

“It was the mittens mostly,” Aiden said, crushing the wool in his fingers, relieved that it would bounce back when he let go. “He wanted to keep the mittens. In case he left, you see? In case we didn’t have any tomorrows together. Save them for a rainy day without me.”

“Oh,” Ben said, and Aiden looked over his shoulder, aware that his eyes were red and burning but fiercely determined not to accept comfort.

“Don’t save it for later. Wear the scarf now. Craw’ll knit for you. He’ll knit until his fingers shrivel, and when he can’t knit, I’ll knit, and Ariadne’s baby’ll knit. But don’t
save
love because it’s ‘too special’ to wear. You wear love every day, and it’ll never wear out.” Oh, he believed that. With every touch of his father’s hand to his mother’s face, he believed that about love. With everything in him yearning for Jeremy to come home, to just
be there
to argue with, Aiden believed that about love.

But even the toughest faith could get shaky after two months with no man beside him.

“He’s coming home next week,” Craw said again, and Aiden nodded, then dashed his hand over his eyes. Standing, he slammed the safe shut and spun the dial.

“Let’s make sure he’s got a good home to come to,” he said. “C’mon, Craw—this fucker’ll break my back if I take it alone.”

A
WEEK
later he endured an interminable amount of time checking Jeremy out of the hospital.

“So you understand about the PT?” the therapist asked for the thousandth time.

She seemed like a nice woman, but Aiden was through. “He can’t do shit,” Aiden said seriously. “It’s all stretching and gentle lifting. No mill work. He can feed the stock—”

“Not if it’s strenuous!” the physical therapist protested, and Jeremy broke in to head them off.

“No, no. Feeding the critters ain’t strenuous. I mean alpacas are big, but they’re gentle.”

“Yes, but Jeremy—” PT Davenport protested.

“You tell her, boy,” he begged, looking at Aiden and nodding. “You tell her that I’ve got to feed the stock. It’s my
job
.
I can’t go home and be useless, just a boil on your ass. That’s not an honest way to live, and I’ve been doing that for
months
!” His voice was getting shaky, and Aiden grasped his hand. In a way it was a relief to know that Jeremy needed to go home, to have some normal, probably as much as Aiden needed him there.