“Damn it. Okay. Lemme try that again.”
“Please do.”
He took a deep breath.
“I know putting sentences together is hard for you,” she deadpanned, and he shoved her shoulder, which made her smile in spite of the lump forming in her throat.
“What I wastryingto say,” he said, “is that I don’t know what kind of badass stuff you’d do around here is all. If you weren’t making arrests, and interrogating shitheads, and just in general being the coolest fucking chick ever, what would you do? Garden?”
“What’s wrong with gardening?”
“Nothing. But I can’t seeyoudoing it.”
He’d hurt her, and the most frustrating part was she didn’t know why, exactly. “Okay.” She turned away from him, facing the gently tumbling hollows that stretched on toward the tree line.
Talk to him, her mom had urged.
You just have to sort through it, her grandmother had said.
But it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever was.
“Shit,” he said, “I stepped in it, didn’t I?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
He shifted closer, until she could feel his body heat pushing against the coolness of the evening. His voice dropped, just a low murmur. “I know things are messed up,” he confessed. “But I don’t know how to fix them.”
“I know. Me neither.”
She felt something at the back of her hand, and looked down with a little start to find that it was his thumb: smooth hard calluses from lifting weights for years. His skin warm.Human. He didn’t feel any different than he had before. So why was she…
Her breath hitched, a painful little hiccup in her throat, and he pulled her whole hand into his, cool palm to warm one, their fingers interlaced.
“It’s still just me,” Lanny murmured, his breath fanning across her cheek. He smelled of Scotch. Like himself. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No.” She squeezed his hand. “Maybe.”
He pulled her in close, into the sheltering solidity of his shoulder, and pressed his lips to her temple. “I would never hurt you.Never, Trina.”
“Not on purpose,” she whispered, a shiver stealing through her.
“Notever,” he insisted, and the fierceness in his voice made her smile. He was a fighter in all senses; he didn’t know how to be anything else.
He worked his hand loose from hers so he could put his arm around her shoulders, and Trina realized how much tension she’d been holding when she let it go, slumping into his chest.
“I’m not trying to push you away,” she said, playing with the zipper on his jacket. “Everything’s just been…”
“Weird as fuck?” he suggested, and she snorted.
“Yeah, pretty much. I know it was my idea for you to ask Nik for help. And Lanny” – she tipped her head back so she could look up at his face, edged silver by moonlight – “I’m so glad you’re healthy. You have to know that. The thought of you…” Her eyes started to burn and she ducked her face into his throat, blinking hard. “So I’m glad. I am. It’s just…”
“Not as hot as teenage girls seem to think it is?”
She breathed a wet laugh.
“I’m super disappointed about that, by the way. All the vampire movies make it out like you get all sparkly, and irresistible and shit. Women just throw themselves at you, you know? And here I am, same old chump with a broken nose.”
“Please. Like you ever had trouble attracting women.”
