Right now, my life didn’t feel like it had much of an upcoming happily ever after either.
My romance wouldn’t end well. Fuck, there had never been any romance at all. It had started with sleeping together to relieve stress and infuse me with the confidence I needed to beat this damn test. Then, my feelings had grown into so much more without me realizing that I was slowly and steadily screwing myself over. Falling in love with four men who wouldn’t remember anything we’d done together, and one who’d seen so many of my screw ups and hysterical reactions that him loving me was far-fetched.
“You did this to yourself, Hadley,” I murmured to myself, curled up in a ball on the couch.
The words on the page blurred. They’d just confessed their love for each other in the sappiest, most embarrassing way possible, and I was a mess.
“If you’d listened to Uncle Felix…” I trailed off and snorted.
If I’d listened to Uncle Felix, I would be a fanatic, doing everything in my power to leave these men locked up in this house. This was still better than that alternative.
“Do humans often talk to themselves?”
Abraxas’ voice came from near the ceiling, where his little nook in the wall was. I jumped and dropped the book, frantically blinking away the tears and rubbing both eyes. It wouldn’t help. My eyes were puffy and red, nose running and cheeks flushed. As he dropped himself down onto the main floor of the library, he regarded me curiously.
Maybe he didn’t cry.
“I do. I don’t know if all humans do.”
We may have had this exact conversation before, but I couldn’t remember. Abby often came up to me and asked if ‘humans’ often did things I did. He had trouble understanding we were all very different, and not some single entity. “Do humans often shed water from their eyes? I’ve seen Waylon do it, but only when he was choking or beaten quite badly.”
When he said beaten, I assumed he meant consensually, by Bennett. “It’s a common expression of grief. The book has a sad ending.”
The ending of the book was actually ridiculously happy, but I wouldn’t tell him my life had the sad ending.
“Waylon was not feeling grief.”
“Not only grief. Sometimes pain, or possibly happiness or fear. People cry for many reasons.”
I’d cried for every reason on the list. Before coming here, tears had been my default mechanism whenever something went to shit. After everything started going poorly here, I’d developed better ways to work through my emotions. “That’s silly that these tears can be for so many reasons. How are you supposed to know why someone is shedding water?”
“You can tell by context clues, most of the time. The rest of the time, you’re not supposed to know why. Crying can be private.”
He didn’t look convinced, coming up close to me and scanning his gaze down my body. If he was waiting for a reaction, he wouldn’t get one. He’d come in my ass and practically purred under soft blankets. I wasn’t scared of him anymore. His eyebrows pulled together when he reached me, his body wedged between the couch and the table of supplies.
“Careful,” I said, gesturing. “If I have to redo these ingredients, we might as well have Zan take us back to the beginning of the day again.”
I couldn’t handle another version of this dreadful day. Hearing Bennett talk to me like I was nothing hurt too much.
“I am very careful.”
Tentatively, he reached out and touched my arm. His fingertips were cold, and I shivered, goosebumps rising on my skin. He quickly pulled away. “You fear me, after all,” he said, matter of fact.
I laughed. “No, your hand is cold.”
“That was certainly fear.”
“Abby, you just asked me why people cried. Are you certain you’re the best judge of whether or not someone fears you?”
He blushed. I hadn’t seen colour in his cheeks often, but it stood out against the cool tones of his dark hair and green scales. “I suppose not.”
“I’ll warm a blanket for you, and then you’ll see I don’t fear you.”
Swinging my feet off the couch, I stood up directly in front of him. We were chest to chest and his breath hitched, gaze darting down to my lips like he wanted to kiss me. If it were any other cycle, I would have let him. As it was, I stepped back and moved around the length of his tail until I found the closed chest in the corner. I pulled out blankets, wasting precious magical reserves to warm three before I decided I’d better not risk more.
“Typically I warm enough to drape over your whole tail,” I said. “But I don’t have much magic, and I’ll need it all for tonight.”
“Waylon says you feel like a human to him unless he’s trying to sense your magic.”
