Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

I’d been so angry with him just minutes before, but seeing those beautiful green-and-yellow eyes so tired, so discouraged, I just wanted to make it better. I let go of Nicky’s hand and went to Micah.

He looked almost surprised, and then as I wrapped my arms around him, held him close, he held me back and buried his face in my hair. His breath shuddered, and then I felt something hot and liquid trailing down my neck. Everything that comes from the body is hot for a second or two, and then it leaves the body, touches the air, and loses its heat. Nothing showed that he was crying; his shoulders did not shake, he was almost utterly still, and with his face buried in my curls no one else could see what I could feel, his tears falling hot along my skin, then growing cooler as they flowed down my neck.

I held him, let his tears paint their salty trail across my skin, and I couldn’t be mad at him; the only thing I could do in that moment was hold him. It didn’t seem like much, but sometimes when everything else goes to hell, arms to hold you tight is everything.

Gonzales drove Beatrice home with promises from the police left in the hallway that they’d call at the first sign of any change. She kissed Micah and me good-bye and left without apologizing for having fallen apart. I’d have felt compelled to apologize, but that was me. Socrates took Domino back to the hotel, where he could release his inner tiger in peace and without getting shot by the police. Socrates also wanted to be farther away from me and my newfound inner hyena. He actually said, ‘You have a tendency to find your animal to call pretty quickly, and that’s not what we are to each other.’

‘That’s not what I am to any of the hyenas,’ I said.

‘Then I’d stay clear of us for a while,’ he said.

It was good advice.

I persuaded Micah to come to the cafeteria with us. Nicky came with us, of course, but so did Micah’s remaining bodyguard, Bram. He was still six feet of tall, dark, handsome, overly stern muscle, though he was built lean and not bulked the way Nicky was. Bram and Ares had been like light and dark copies of each other in so many ways. It was the first time I’d seen Bram since I’d had to shoot his favorite coworker and good friend. I wasn’t sure what to say to him or if I was supposed to say anything. When in doubt on personal stuff I did my usual: nothing. If Bram brought it up I’d deal, but if he didn’t I’d let it go until I could decide if and how to handle it.

Nicky went in front of us, Bram trailed behind, and Micah and I walked in the middle holding hands. He knew to hold my left hand so my gun hand was free. It was routine for me most of the time, but especially so when on the job and armed to the teeth for vampire hunting. It was nice that Micah remembered even under such emotional duress without my having to remind him. I loved him a lot for many reasons, but one of the biggest was his calm acceptance of this part of my life. Of course, knowing his dad had been a police officer the entire time Micah was growing up helped explain why he was okay with it.

We chose a table that put us in a corner so we had two walls at our backs and a line of sight through damn near every part of the cafeteria. Bram and Nicky moved to a table beside ours, automatically, like bodyguards do when they’re trying to give you some privacy and still keep you safe.

It was a little weird for Nicky to go back into bodyguard mode and act as if he and Bram were the same to Micah and me. Nicky lived with us, traveling back and forth from the Circus of the Damned to the house in Jefferson County. He was the person most likely to be by my side when I wasn’t with Micah, Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude. It seemed like it should make a difference, but I did want alone time with Micah. We needed to have a serious talk, maybe several serious talks, but first he needed food and water, or maybe coffee.

We turned our chairs so that we could both have our backs to the wall and sit with our legs lightly touching. He kept hold of my hand and laid his forehead on my shoulder. Again, it would have been a bit more romantic without the body armor, but I was on the job and had an active warrant, plus last time I’d been in the hospital I’d needed the vest.

I stroked the braid of his hair. It was in a tight French braid, which I knew Nathaniel had done before he left for the hotel. Neither Micah nor I could French-braid worth a damn, let alone our own hair. It wasn’t as fun to pet his hair in the braid, but I knew that it would stay out of his face and just be overall easier to deal with than almost any other hairdo.

He raised his face and I was suddenly looking into those amazing eyes of his from inches away. They were green and gold, but that didn’t do them justice. There was a ring of green around the pupils and yellow outside that. The amount of each color varied as the pupil expanded or contracted, and in dim light the green could look almost gray, but right at that moment the green was the paleness of new spring leaves, and the yellow the gold of elm leaves in the fall, as if he held both the newness of the year and the end of it in his eyes. The color was more startling because his skin had those darker undertones; when he had his dark summer tan the eyes were even more amazing. He’d tanned as dark as Richard Zeeman, our Ulfric, Wolf King, but his family did have Native American in their background. I’d asked Micah if his family had Native American, or Hispanic blood, like me, in their background and he’d simply said no. It was interesting that it had never occurred to him to explain his own mixed heritage. Either he never thought about it like that, or he’d assumed it wouldn’t matter to any of us.

‘I don’t know how to do this, Anita,’ he said, at last.

‘Do what?’ I asked.

‘Regain my dad after all these years and lose him at the same time.’

That was Micah, straight at it, no hesitation, no prevarication, just hit right between the eyes, and then I realized it wasn’t him at all. He’d been keeping something really big from me for most of the three years we’d been together.

‘What’s wrong? I just watched some thought go across your face,’ he said.

‘Everything that’s happened since we landed here, and you’re asking what’s wrong,’ I said, and did my best to smile.

He smiled back. ‘Okay, you have a point, so you’re telling me I’m imagining you thought of something just now.’

I sighed. I realized that I’d decided not to confront him about the dominance fights out of town until we got through this visit and back home. I didn’t want to hit him while he was down, and the pain in his eyes when he came out of his father’s room, that was down. But I’d waited too long; I could lie, but seldom to Micah. The fact that he’d managed to keep such a big secret from me for so long made me wonder if there were other secrets. I hadn’t liked thinking it, and I really hated the thought of this conversation now when he was so low.

‘I love you,’ I said.

‘I love you, too, but that sounded like a preamble to something bad,’ he said.

‘You know me too well,’ I said.

‘We’re engaged; shouldn’t we know each other well?’

I smiled. ‘Fair enough, and I admit I was all ready to have a serious talk about something totally unrelated to your family, or the case here, but then I saw you, and …’

‘And I completely fell apart,’ he finished for me.

‘I didn’t say that; I think you’re doing pretty damn well under the circumstances.’

He smiled. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

‘It has the potential for being a really big fight, Micah. Let’s not do this now.’

‘Something that big and you can honestly wait to discuss it?’ he asked.