Everlong (9 page)

I didn’t have to worry about Emma. The cold sweat breaking along my spine was all for Clayton. Something menacing stirred behind those pale blue eyes of hers.

Clayton was another matter. No matter his innate strength, or the years spent training that had honed his body to rock-hard perfection, biology still insured they were unevenly matched.

She was a halfling, and he was not. If he made her mad enough, she could level him without batting an eyelash.

I threw a couch pillow at him, bringing his attention back to me and away from a fight he couldn’t win. “Clayton, let her go. She had to snap the bone before it mended completely.”

He blinked his eyes as if to clear them and released Emma from his hold. He backed away slowly, slipping back behind his mask of indifference. “I apologize. That was uncalled for. I should have known you would never willingly harm her.”

Emma rubbed a hand across her reddened throat. “Maddie heals quickly. I’m surprised Harper never told you. When her bones are broken, they have to be reset within a couple of hours or she has to endure a solid break.”

Clayton looked past her to me. “How many times have you done this?”

She snarled. “My father wanted Maddie from the first time he saw her during the summer court of her tenth year. He knew he couldn’t possess her until after her ascension, so he forced me to punish her for his pleasure.” Her voice cracked. “She lived apart from the rest of the court, and she was the one thing he couldn’t have. When he found out she was unbreakable…” Emma shuddered and left the rest unspoken.

Clayton’s gaze held mine, but I broke the stare. Ashamed of what she and I had been. What at our basest level, we still were.

He reached out to me. “Maddie, I—”

Emma shoved him back. “Don’t call her that.” I heard tears in her voice. “You’re not Harper no matter how much you wish you were. You don’t know her.”

All the churning emotion, regret, concern, confusion and something infinitely softer, sweeter, drained from his face. “Madelyn,” he corrected. “I wish you a quick recovery.” He turned towards the door. “I’m going to check on Jacob before heading home.” His eyes gleamed sterling. “He will be punished for what he did to you.”

Emma nodded and Clayton dipped his head in turn. Clearly there was much more to this story than either had told me. But answers would have to wait until the edge of pain had dulled and I could think again.

I didn’t want Clayton to go, but I couldn’t ask him to stay because according to Emma, his hormones would ensure he remained, whether he wanted to or not. It would be better to let him go and clear the air between us. “Thank you, Clayton, for everything.”

He didn’t get a chance to respond. Our screen door flew open, slapping against the kitchen wall. Dana rushed in and made a beeline to where I lay sprawled on the couch. “Oh, Maddie,” she cried. “You poor little thing. When we heard the news, I was shocked.”

“Were you?” I asked, but she ignored me. This morning she had tried to tell me something. I no longer had to wonder what, but whereas I could almost forgive my sister for her actions, I did wonder what Dana’s reasons for withholding information were.

“Who would have thought Jacob,
our
Jacob, would react in such a way?” She took a few more hurried steps before catching sight of Clayton. Her turnabout almost gave me whiplash. She straightened her spine, thrusting her shoulders back as she ran a hand along her hair, checking her tight bun for flyaways before turning to face him instead.

“Oh, Clayton,” she cooed. “You were so brave tonight. Mason and Dillon told me all about how Jacob was drinking coffee again. He knows that stuff makes him out of his mind. That boy has got to learn to read labels.”

She patted his well-defined arm. “I didn’t see your truck. Why don’t you let me drive you out to see Jacob? That is where you’re going, right? Then I’ll take you right on home.”

My fingernails dug into my palms. It irked me to realize if I’d been able to walk, I would have delighted in peeling her fingers away from his arm. I’d never been a fan of Dana’s, but the sudden irrational urge to wedge myself between her body and Clayton’s benchmarked a new level of dislike.

He nodded. “I appreciate your offer.”

She hooked her arm through his, leading him like a prize stallion through the kitchen. “Come on, hon. Don’t drag your feet.” Her expression shifted to something like pride. “I have three little boys waiting on their momma to get home.”

The way Dana stroked him, practically crawling beneath his skin, and the way he allowed it, left little doubt as to whom the sire of her Evanti triplets must be. I remembered Emma telling me the children’s father had died in the same ambush that had cost us Harper. That might not have been the case.

I recalled Jacob’s words.
Did you look for his face among the children?
Did you find it?

Perhaps it wasn’t Harper’s likeness, but Clayton’s evidenced in Dana’s offspring.

Emma’s voice rose over the screen door flapping shut on their exit. “Let’s get you up to bed. If we get you bandaged up right, you’ll be walking again by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is Wednesday.” It seemed like weeks instead of hours since I’d left the house this morning.

“No. Absolutely not.” She scooped me into her arms. “You are not going hiking in the morning. One small misstep and you risk a repeat fracture. You’d be stranded on the mountain, and that is not going to happen. I won’t risk another Jacob finding you isolated out there.”

“Yes, Mom,” I quipped.

She wrinkled her nose and glanced down at my bloodied and muddied state. “Do you want to take a shower before you lie down?”

I stared longingly at my bed. With the covers pulled down and my pillow fluffed within an inch of its life, I couldn’t resist its siren song. “Not tonight. I’ll catch one in the morning. It’s not like I have to worry about infection, and I’ll wash the sheets myself so you don’t have to. Besides, we’ve slept through worse.”

And we had.

Chapter Nine

The next day my steps were slower, the burn of impact as my legs absorbed my weight more pronounced, but I was up and walking. The discomfort didn’t stop me from working, but Emma tried to.

Every fifteen minutes she brought out a quart-sized freezer bag full of ice cubes and pushed me down into a booth before slapping it onto the sore knee. Lucky for us, Wednesdays were, without fail, the slowest day of the workweek.

Glass comprised two-thirds of the diner’s outer wall, giving our patrons a window to the outside world. And who didn’t like to people watch? I stared through the Windex-polished panes and craned my neck, trying to catch a glimpse of Emasen, but left a smear from my forehead instead.

“Stop sulking.” Emma tossed a balled-up napkin at me, bouncing it off the side of my head.

I picked it up and wiped away the smudge. “I’m not sulking.” Okay, so if I didn’t tuck in my bottom lip, I would probably trip over it before the shift’s end. “I haven’t missed a cliff day since coming here.”

The mountain had been my place of solace in a time when I’d needed a way to cope. On the rare occasions when Mother allowed me to travel in Rihos, Harper had sneaked me to a barren summit neighboring the summer castle.

I would sit, dangling my feet over the ledge and watch as he dived into open air and raced towards the ground in freefall. I gasped each time as his wings snapped open with a sharp
pop
to halt his descent.

Sometimes, he had even cradled me against him, allowing me to play the game too.

I needed a way to forget I’d cost such a vibrant male his life. Emasen gave that to me. There, I could almost hear his laughter carried on the winds roaring through the basin.

I exhaled slowly, taking stock of how I’d squandered the life he’d given me. I’d done nothing, went nowhere to justify his sacrifice. My chest ached. My heart hurt until I wished to pull it out and slide back down into the mire of my self-imposed isolation.

My fingernails bit into my palms. No, I would use the pain to anchor me. To keep me awakened and remind me of the high cost of freedom and the male who’d paid the price so I didn’t have to.

“More icing and less pouting.” Emma pointed to where the bag only half covered my knee.

I straightened the compress and cast a quick glance around the diner. An elderly couple hunching over their bowls of soup du jour were the lunch rush today. The rest of the place sat empty, and had been since the sparse morning rush.

“Can I ask you something?” I tore the napkin into little strips and tried to shore up my courage. I wanted to ask about Clayton. What he was like, where he went, what he did. Anything to get insight on the male who’d consumed my dreams last night.

Even as I told myself I wanted his friendship to cement a fragile tie to Harper, I knew it was a lie. I wanted him for purely selfish reasons having nothing to do with his brother and everything to do with how I’d felt in his arms last night.

Emma wiped her hands with a rag threaded through her apron loop. “Shoot.”

“Do you think that I’ll see Clayton again? Is he…?”

The way her nostrils flared made me rethink my question. Emma definitely had some kind of history with him, and it didn’t appear to be the happy kind. I wanted to ask if he and Dana were attached, but chickened out and jerked a thumb towards table five.

“It’s been fifteen minutes. I bet Mr. Jenkins is tapping his foot and checking his watch. You better top off his coffee soon if you want to earn that ten-cent tip.”

Emma glanced over, chuckling. “You’re so bad.” But she picked up the last pot of coffee off the line and carried it over to the waiting gentleman, using the final drops to refill his cup.

I exhaled once she walked out of hearing range.

The muffled ring of the telephone cut through the silence. “You want me to get that?”

She topped off the almost level mug of coffee and walked back to the bar to set the pot on the counter. “Nice try, but you have ten minutes left. Don’t move a muscle or I’ll make you sit out another ten just for spite.”

I shrugged and let my head rest against the vinyl seatback. A minute or two passed while I considered whether or not rephrasing my question might help deflect some of her anger. When she rounded the corner, worry knitted her forehead. Her hands fumbled with her apron strings, caught between untying them and making the knots worse.

“Are you okay? Who was on the phone?”

“That was Dana.” She dropped her hands. “Apparently Parker took a dare from one or both of his brothers to fly up to the roof of the inn.”

I sat upright. “Is he okay? Did they get him down?”

“He’s down all right. He got scared and fell off the edge. Dana sounded certain his leg is broken. She wanted to know if I could baby-sit the inn and the guilty parties while she drives Parker to the emergency room.”

I shooed her with my hands, poised to pull off the icepack. “Go on.” I gestured towards the vacant restaurant. “It’s not like there’s anything happening here. Besides, you’ll be right across the street.”

“I can’t leave you alone. Anything could happen. Maybe Lynn could come in for the last half of the shift. It’s only a few hours. Her male can live without her that long.”

The tinkle of the tiny silvery bell hung over the entrance intruded into our conversation. We both glanced over, expecting to see one of the regulars, but finding Clayton instead.

He nodded to Emma before shooting me a dimpled grin. My heart skipped faster and my hands turned clammy. The taste of his impulsive kiss from the night before seemed to flavor my tongue. I didn’t know what to say to him.

Emma didn’t have that problem. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

He held up a bouquet of daisies. The multicolored kind you bought at the grocery store and wondered if nature or food coloring lent them their vibrancy. A tiny rectangle of cardstock peeked just over the top with the words “Get Well Soon” emblazoned on them.

“I came to see how Madelyn was feeling today.”

He crossed the restaurant, bypassed a none-too-pleased Emma, and sat on the bench opposite me. He offered me the flowers with a quick jut of his arm. Maybe he was embarrassed, which I’m sure had nothing to do with my sister standing just over his shoulder, staring daggers at his back.

When I took the bouquet, our fingers met around the bundled stems and the spark of something arced between us.

“Thank you.” The scent of permanent marker used to sign his name to the card made my nose wrinkle.

“You’re welcome. How are you feeling?”

“Sore, but I’ve felt worse.” I tried to soften that truth with a smile, but I don’t think either of them bought it. I ushered Emma with my hands. “Parker’s waiting. You’d better go.”

Clayton asked, “What happened to Parker?”

I worded my answer carefully. “He fell from the inn’s roof and probably broke his leg when he landed. Emma”—I gave her my most severe look—“is going to cover for Dana while she takes him in to the hospital.”

I watched for his reaction. He frowned over the news, but didn’t dash from the diner or ask to make a phone call. I couldn’t see a male like Clayton not caring for his offspring, so his casual acceptance of Parker’s injury made me question my hasty judgment. Maybe he wasn’t their father after all.

Emma’s hard stare dragged me from my thoughts. “I haven’t decided if I’m going or not. I don’t want to leave you alone.” She dug in her pockets. “I’ll see if Lynn or Marci are home.”

Clayton’s gaze touched on points around the open eat-in area. “I haven’t been here in years.” His lips tipped up in a smile reminiscent of a child caught doing something bad. “I do have Dana sneak me hamburgers from time to time. The food here is the best in town.” He cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind having a trainee underfoot, I’d be glad to stay and help out. That way Emma could leave and you wouldn’t be alone.”

“That would be—”

“No, absolutely not,” she snapped, holding the phone to her ear. “Damn it, is no one ever at home when you need them?”

I groaned. “You need to go. There’s a five-year-old boy in pain, waiting on you to get your butt in gear. Clayton is already here and the inn is
just across the street
.”

As she looked through the window, I saw her resolve weaken and the phone flip closed. “Fine, but you keep your phone on and in your pocket. Call me if he so much as looks at you funny.”

“Will do.” I offered her a mock salute.

She spared another second to glare at Clayton before pushing through the front door, jogging across the pavement and disappearing inside the modest house turned local inn.

He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “So, what does a waiter-in-training do around here?”

I pointed towards the bar. “He puts on a pot of fresh coffee. Emma just poured the last drop.” I paused. “Are you okay to be around it?”

“I had my round with caffeine a long time ago.” He laughed softly. “My father beat that addiction right out of my hide.”

His joking tone led me to believe his beatings were of a different sort than the ones I’d grown up experiencing. But the subject of his father did make me wonder. “Was he a hard man?”

Clayton shrugged. “He was a lot of things, but yes, hard was one of them.” He pushed away from the table and any other questions I might have asked. His skilled avoidance of subjects he didn’t want to talk about with me only succeeded in making me more curious about him. “Is there anything else that needs doing?”

I swallowed noticeably. “Just listen out for the bell over the door. Nurse Emma says I’m booth bound for at least another five minutes.”

“Good for her. You need to rest that knee.”

Despite the dull throb in my knee, I felt fine. I could have gone hiking today. I would go hiking tomorrow, whether my sister approved of it or not. My skin itched from being confined to small spaces. I wanted fresh air and sunshine, not recycled blasts from the circulating heat vents and fluorescent lighting.

“I’m perfectly fine.” I balled up the mess I’d made in my palm. “There’s no reason I couldn’t be at Emasen instead of here.”

“Emasen?”

“Yes, I hike Emasen, thank you very much. Every Wednesday, except today because of yesterday’s…mishap.”

“That’s a very dangerous pass. You’re better off waiting until you can handle it.”

“You know what?” I snatched the bag of ice from my knee and slid from the booth. “Never mind about the coffee, I’ll get it myself.”

My uneven stride was worsened by my frozen-stiff kneecap. Instead of storming off into the kitchen, it was more of an undignified hobbling. I snatched the empty pot off the counter and went into the kitchen to give it a quick rinse in the stainless-steel sink. The dull roar of high water pressure meeting sink basin meant I didn’t hear Clayton follow me.

I did feel him tug the end of my long braid to get my attention. I twisted around to face him and found he still held the rope of hair in his hand.

“Is there something I can help you with?” I planted my feet, determined not to find the way his broad shoulders hemmed me in unnerving.

He shrugged, still fingering the ends. “I have a confession to make.” His voice wavered with the same indecision causing me to slip on my first attempt to turn off the faucet. I picked at my fingernails to avoid looking into his face.

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

I could have kicked myself for prompting him, but he made me curious. I couldn’t imagine anything making this male nervous, but I saw the fine tremors move through his hand. He disguised it by fumbling my braid.

“I used to watch you.”

I tore my nail down to the quick and cursed as a perfect blood drop formed on my finger. “Damn it.” It stung, but was hardly life threatening. Determined, I still played up the wound to make the most of his momentary shift in focus. I needed a minute. Sixty minutes wouldn’t be enough to pull order from the chaos of my thoughts.

Clayton lifted my hand to his opened mouth. His lips closed around my finger. My eyes fluttered shut before I could stop them. When his tongue swirled around my finger, my other hand grasped the sink for support. I didn’t want him to stop.

I bit back a moan. “You watched me?”

He released my finger with a kiss to the tip. His shoulders rolled. “I tried not to. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself.”

His downcast eyes and guilty expression softened me. I tipped his chin up with my finger. “Why are you doing this? We hardly know one another.”

He turned his cheek into my hand so that I flattened my palm against his rugged jaw. The same heat from the night before rekindled, roaring to life. “I know you don’t know me,” he said. “But the way Harper talked about you…I feel as if I know you, like I’ve always known you.”

His strong thumbs rolled over the joints in my fingers. “I know that you grew lilacs in a planter box outside of your bedroom window in Rihos.” I barely noticed his subtle shift closer. “And that Harper knocked it loose learning to fly so that it always tilted to one side.”

The center of my chest filled with something achingly sweet. He knew me in the same way I knew him, through snippets of conversation and shared spaces. How many times had we walked down a common path without our lives crossing? How many times had he made certain they didn’t?

I noticed we now stood chest to chest. “I don’t know—”

“Just give me a chance.” He coaxed my hand from his face to drape it across his shoulder. “I promise you won’t regret it.”

I had time. If I hadn’t wanted what he offered, I could have stopped him then and there, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Under his fingers, my senses awakened with a deep stirring I wanted to experience. I needed to feel that way again.

His dark head lowered, lips parting just before they reached mine. The first light tease of his mouth across mine had my fingers digging into his shirt. His touch was gentle, asking. I answered the only way I could. Grasping his shoulder, I urged him down to me.

When his tongue thrust through my parted lips, I moaned and leaned into him. He backed me until his hips pinned mine to the sink basin. Pleasure preceded panic as his large body corralled mine. Maybe I wasn’t ready. This could be a huge mistake. He might not even realize what he was asking.