Page 39 of Animal Tamer
Twelve days.
Twelve days and the trucks roll, and I don't know what happens then, but that's not the thought keeping me awake. Instead, I wonder how do I give her more?
Not the watching. The watching we've solved—solved it better than I ever dreamed, her keening my name while I painted her skin without us touching once. My body still hums from it. But there's a whole country between watching and having, and I keep walking its border in my head, looking for crossings.
Her hair. Could I stand her hair? Not skin—hair. If she leaned back against my chest with a shirt between us and her hair spilled over my collarbone, is hair skin? A blanket between us on the bench, her weight against my side through wool. Gloves. There are gloves. I wear gloves with Brutus's ointment; would her hand in mine feel like a hand if there was leather in between, or would it just feel like leather?
Her hand over my jeans. My palm over her shirt.
The glory hole she offered, blushing so hard she glowed—and even that, even that thought, isn't what's making my chest ache right now. What's making my chest ache is stupider and softer. I want to fall asleep with her breathing in the same room. I want her toothbrush next to mine. I want to learn what she looks like at six in the morning, cranky and unglamorous, reaching past me for coffee without touching me because she knows, because she never once has to be told twice.
She never oncehadto be told twice.
I roll onto my side and look at the bench where she sat. There's a ring on the floor where her beer bottle stood, still damp from condensation.
Marek said killing Harlan doesn't open the lock. It just frees up the hand.
I flex my free hand in the dark, open, closed, open.
Soon, we take him. After that, we leave.
But tomorrow she comes back for Peanut.
I fall asleep without touching my scars, and I don't dream of the Sanctum at all.
13
WREN
The coffee maker is still gurgling when Paige corners me at the supply closet.
“You have hay in your hair.”
“I do not.” My hand flies up anyway. There's hay in my hair.
“Wren.” She plucks the strand free and holds it between us like evidence at trial. “You went to the show.”
“I went to the show,” I admit.
“You went to the showwithout me.” Her voice rises in pitch with every word.
“You were on call.”
“I was on call for exactly one bloat colic that resolved itself by nine, and you know my ringer works.” She tucks the hay behind her own ear like a flower and follows me into exam two, where I start restocking gauze I don't need to restock. “So let me get this straight. Seven allegedly gorgeous circus men, a Big Top, alion, and you sat in those bleachers alone eating popcorn like a monk.”
“I didn't eat popcorn.”
“That's the part you're correcting?” she asks dryly.
Heat crawls up my neck. I turn to the cabinet and count suture packs.
Behind me, Paige goes silent, which means that means her brain is connecting dots at a speed that should require a license.
“Oh my god.”
I sigh. “Paige.”
“Oh mygod. You're hoarding him. You're hoarding the hot animal tamer. You met the whole cast of a romance cover, and you're keeping them to yourself like a dragon on a pile of gold?—”
