I’ll be careful.
I promise.
You be safe.
I will.
I’ll stick with Hart.
Be safer than that.
He gets stabbed a lot.
The elf in question came out of the shower, already half-dressed in a pair of light grey dress slacks, the waistband of pale blue underwear showing above his belt loops. I quickly looked away, feeling a flush creeping up my neck as I attempted to suppress a snort at how he’d wrapped his head in a towel.
“How’s this hotel’s coffee?” Hart asked me, and I looked up, then back down.
“Shit,” I answered him. “Cranberry’s is down the street and makes good coffee—black or espresso.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” came the reply, and he bent over to towel at his hair.
“I’ll—go get breakfast,” I said, pushing myself off the bed, wincing as my leg—wrapped in a tight ace bandage and topped with a brace Hart had picked up at a CVS—tried to protest taking my weight. “What do you want?”
“If you think I’m letting youwalkfucking anywhere, you’ve lost your fucking mind,” came Hart’s answer from under the towel. “Sit your ass back down on that bed.”
I sat. Going to get breakfast had seemed like a good idea while I was sitting down in my sweatpants and t-shirt. I’d decided to forgo showering, partly because I’d showered at the Hills’ and partly because I wanted to hold on to the slight scent of Elliot on my skin.
We’d spent several hours at the Hills’, and they’d graciously let Elliot and I have their couch so that I could lean up against him with my leg up. Ray had settled in an armchair, and Helen had a rocking chair next to a basket of reeds and rushes that suggested she’d woven many of the baskets in use in her house. Elliot had talked to her about basketry for a good long while, while Hart discussed something with Ray that I mostly didn’t catch, my exhaustion catching up with me and causing me to doze against Elliot’s warmth.
I wanted to keep that scent with me, even though I’d gone back to the hotel with Hart and Elliot had stayed at the Hills’, sleeping in the loft of the barn with a sleeping bag and some extra bedding that Helen had set up for him.
I didn’t like that he wasn’t here. I didn’t like that he was in thebarn, although I did appreciate his perspective that staying in the barn would potentially keep the Sheriff’s Department from noticing that he was at the Hills’ if anyone came to talk to them or check the house. I didn’t like the idea of staying in a hotel where the Sheriff’s Department knew where I was sleeping. Yes, I had Hart with me, so I at least wasn’t by myself with a cat, but it still made me uncomfortable. Nervous.
Hart finished toweling off the long, currently wet and slightly tangled, curtain of white hair that reached down to his waist. He set the towel on the desk unit and pulled out a brush—afancybrush, the kind with a dark wood handle and boars’ bristles. Elliot had a similar one.
I guess you have to have long hair to get why a thirty- or forty-dollar hairbrush is something you need.
I barely even combed mine.
“How bad is it?” he asked, then.
“What?”
“Your knee, dumbass.”
I didn’t answer.
Hart sighed. “So bad enough that I’m putting your ass in the car and going to urgent care, then.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“AndI’m sure you’re full of shit.” He brushed his hair aggressively, pulling the brush through it with hard, fast strokes. No wonder there were a lot of white strands caught in the brush.
“What happened to your side?” I asked him, noticing the pink line that ran across his torso under his ribs.
“Magic-Free Movement dumbfuck,” came the clipped response.
“You got stabbed?” I thought back to the riots that had happened in Richmond. “Again?”
