His for a Price

He thought she might be the death of him one of these days, he really did.

Nicodemus let himself out into the cold night, the October wind and the watching moon piercing him as he walked across the flagstone patio that made a ring around the outdoor pool that he’d need to close for the season soon. He felt the coming winter in the stones beneath his bare feet, and he felt like a caveman when he wrenched open the door to the pool house and saw her there, where she shouldn’t have been.

She was in a ball on the summer chaise in the corner, and for a moment, he thought she was awake and speaking to him—

But then he saw the tears. And the look of abject terror on her face.

She wasn’t speaking, he realized. She was crying the same word over and over and over.

Nicodemus didn’t hesitate. He wasn’t civil. He simply closed the distance between the door and the chaise in two strides. He picked her up, blanket and tears and all, and cradled her in his lap.

She was ice cold and distraught and she wasn’t, it finally dawned on him, awake.

So he simply held her. He rocked her gently, murmuring old words he half remembered from a childhood he would have said had held no softness of any kind. He smoothed her hair back from her face and let her sob into his neck.

And he pretended he would do the same for any woman he encountered, any person at all. That he would feel this same sense of immensity and something very nearly like awe that she was letting him hold her, this same ache that she was in pain. This same pounding understanding—like his own heart in his chest—that he would fight off anything that threatened her, even if it was inside her own head.

Slowly, the sobbing subsided. Her breaths came smoother, slower. And Nicodemus knew the moment she came fully awake and aware of her surroundings, because her whole body went tense.

“You’re all right,” he told her quietly, glad it was so dark in the pool house. Glad there was no chance she could see the expression he was afraid he wore much too plainly on his face. “I’ll keep you safe.”

He chose not to investigate how deeply and wholly he meant that.

“What—what happened?”

Nicodemus had never heard her stutter, he thought then, nor sound so terrified. Not his Mattie, who careened through the world like Don Quixote but with a far sharper tongue. He rubbed a hand over that aching thing in his chest, then smoothed it over her hair again—but she was awake now, and she pulled away.

And he had no choice but to let her.

“Do you have these nightmares often?” he asked as she scrambled up and out of his lap like she was on fire, then wrapped herself in that blanket as if it could protect her. From him or from whatever dire thing stalked her dreams? He couldn’t tell. “Is that why you creep out of our bed every night? You’ve been upset before, but not like this. You usually quiet down when I hold you.”

“What?” Her voice was sharper then, but no less panicked. More so, he’d have said. “What do you mean?”

“You were having a terrible nightmare,” he said slowly, aware from the taut way she stood and the sudden spike of tension in the room that he’d stumbled into something here. Something important. “You were sobbing. Screaming, I think. The same word again and again.”

“How strange,” she said, and though her voice was cooler then, he could hear all the panic and the leftover nightmare beneath it. “I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.”

Another lie, Nicodemus thought, but he couldn’t summon up the usual fury at that sad little truth. She was so brittle; she was acting so tough—but she hadn’t faked those desperate sobs. She hadn’t faked those tears that he could still feel against his collarbone, the night air turning his dampened skin cold. Like proof.

He stood and saw the way she jerked her chin back, as if she had to fight herself to stay still. He wished, then, they were different people. Or that they could start this whole thing over the way she’d pretended she wanted to do that day in the kitchen. He wished that he could trust her—or that she could trust him, even a little, with who she really was.

He wished this hadn’t all been set in stone so many years ago now.

He didn’t touch her, though he wanted nothing more. But he didn’t think he’d stop at a mere touch, and that was the last thing she’d allow. He could almost see the defensiveness prickle around her, like she’d grown spikes where she stood.

“I don’t think it was food poisoning,” he said after a moment. His voice was matter-of-fact in the dark room. “You were crying out for your mother.”

She made a sound like she’d been socked in the gut. “My mother?” she asked, much too softly. “That doesn’t make any sense. You must be mistaken.”