Page 22

I look up at him.

He’s already got another egg.

“Dylan, what the fuck are you doing?“

The third egg hits me in the head again, right in my hair this time, and I feel the shell crack and the contents pour down the side of my scalp and into my braid, which is already half-destroyed from sleep but is now definitely ruined, and I am standing in the middle of my studio apartment at dawn, barefoot and hungover and covered in raw eggs, holding a dominatrix whip, staring at my abusive ex-boyfriend who just threw eggs at me instead of stabbing me with the knife he definitely could have used to stab me.

I freeze.

My brain is trying to process this. It’s working very hard. It’s doing its absolute best. But the circuits that handle mortal terror and the circuits that handle messy breakfast violence are apparently in different parts of my skull, and they are not communicating well with each other right now.

“June,” Wraith says, and his voice is calm, even, the same voice he used to use when he was explaining something to me as if I were a child who needed simple instructions. Except it’s not that voice. It’s missing the edge. The contempt. It’s just… tired. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I stare at him. The whip is still raised. Egg is dripping off my chin.

“You don’t?”

“I just want to cook you breakfast,” he says, and he shifts his weight slightly and I see that there are four more eggs sitting on the counter beside him, next to some halved oranges. “You look worn out as fuck. You look like you could use some protein and some carbs and maybe a glass of orange juice, and I was in the middle of making that for you when you woke up and decided to come at me with that fucking whip.”

“You had a knife,” I say. My voice sounds strange. Too high. Too thin.

“I was cutting oranges.”

“You were holding a knife and smiling.”

“Yeah, I was. I’d just tasted some of the orange juice and it’s fucking delicious. They’re good oranges, June. And then I thought about the bacon in the fridge and who the fuck doesn’t smile when they think about bacon?”

I don’t move. I can’t move. The egg is cold and slimy and I can feel it drying in stiff patches on my forehead and I’m trying very hard to figure out if this is a trap, if this is some new version of the old game, if he’s going to wait until I lower the whip and then…

Bacon.

“I like bacon.”

“I do, too. Now, if you keep coming forward and threatening me,” Wraith says, “I’m going to run out of eggs to cook your breakfast with. And even though there’s bacon in the fridge, there’s not enough for the two of us to have a satisfying breakfast of bacon on its own. I mean, bacon is great. I love bacon. I would eat bacon for every meal if I could. But it’s not enough by itself. It needs eggs. It needs toast. It needs…” He gestures vaguely with the egg still in his hand. “Look, there’s just not enough bacon on its own, ok? Fuck, there’s never enough bacon.”

I’m still frozen.

“So I’m asking you,” he says, and there’s something in his voice now that I’ve never heard before, something that sounds almost like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal. A wild, angry animal with a cock-smacking whip. “Can you just stop fighting and let me cook you breakfast?”

I look at him.

He looks back.

I don’t know what to do with this.

I lower the whip.

Just a little. Just enough that my arm isn’t actively cocked back for a strike. I think about my options.

I can keep going. I can press forward.

I look down at the whip in my hand.

I look up at Wraith.

He’s watching me with an expression that’s careful and still and completely unlike anything I remember from before. There’s no impatience in it. No irritation. No subtle calculation about how to use this moment to his advantage. He’s just… waiting.

Giving me time.