Page 100 of Stoker's Serenity
“Probably, but hey, your ol’ lady didn’t let that happen. A fact that the rest of us are real grateful for. She’s somethin’ else, man. You better hang onto a woman like that.”
“That’s the plan,” I told him. “Forever and fuckin’ always.”
“Good deal. Now go snuggle her, since you can.”
“Too close for comfort,” I agreed. “Scared the fucking shit right out of me.”
“I bet, dude. G’night.”
“Night, bro.”
Yeah,I thought as I pocketed my phone,a cigarette would be real good about now.
30
Serenity…
I couldn’t go to work for a while, I was moving so slowly. Instead I turned my focus on packing. Stoker stayed with me and helped with all the heavy lifting. I was mostly relegated to wrapping fragile items, and telling him what went where, and pouting that I couldn’t have him without hurting myself further. He was incredibly beautiful, graceful, and I missed his hands on my skin.
When he did touch me, the touch was light and careful, as if I had somehow become like the thinnest glass, incredibly fragile. It made me simultaneously crazy and love him more, to the depths of my soul, the bottom of my heart. The fear was a real and palpable thing, especially with how uncharacteristically quiet he was about the accident, about the man who had been after him specifically.
I worried, my Spidey senses tingling, that something wasn’t right – his silence was speaking louder than words. In retrospect, Kyle had been much the same in the weeks and days leading up to his revenge plot at Rachel Alice Morgan. It all finally came to a head during the rainstorm that kept us indoors in my too-cramped little apartment, what with all the boxes taking up every available surface.
“What are you planning to do to him?” I demanded suddenly, looking up from the books in my hands to meet Stoker’s cool and appraising look from across the room where he was building more boxes.
He didn’t try to bullshit me, which I was grateful for, but I still didn’t like what he said, “That’s not for you to know, Orchid.”
I scoffed, “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack,” he said, setting down the tape gun on my bed and coming around to sit on its edge closer to me.
“Why? It happened to me,” I hazarded, even though that wasn’t quite fair. It’d happened to the both of us.
He sighed and swore softly before he looked back up at me. I waited, and he said, “I was hoping it’d be longer than this before you ran into the cone of silence around ‘club business.’”
“How is it club business?” I asked, a trickle of fear working its way in a cold shiver down my back.
“You’re mine, baby. He almost took that away.”
I swallowed hard and stared unflinchingly, wide-eyed at him and asked, a waver in my voice, “You aren’t going to hurt his family, are you?”
“No. We don’t hurt innocent people. At least, we try not to. Things can…” He cleared his throat. “Things can sometimes happen, but they haven’t. Not for a long, long time.”
“How long?”
“Mostly long before my time,” he said. “Can’t really talk about the rest.”
“Club business,” I said.
“Club business,” he agreed.
I fell silent and he watched me as I quietly packed, turning things over and over in my mind.
He sighed finally, and came over to me, getting down on the floor behind me and easing up to me, his chest to my back, his arms going around me and holding me against his chest, his denim-clad legs to either side of mine.
“I don’t want you to fret,” he murmured.
“Kind of hard,” I whispered. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me.”
