Never (Never, #1) (84)

“What?”

“It’s fer you.” He shrugs and gives me a quick smile. “Happy birthday.”

I shake my head at him. “I can’t take this.”

“Well, a’m giving it t’ ye, so—”

“Jem.”

“Daph.” He lifts his eyebrow as he wraps my hands around it. “Keep it hidden. Use it only when ye need to.”

I nod obediently. “Okay.”

“I hope ye never need to.”

“I hope I do!”

He gives me a look as though he’s tired of me, but I don’t think he is.

He picks up a big selenite, inspecting it, and I take the time to inspect him. How broad he is, how strong he looks, how sweaty he is in this room, and then, regrettably, Jamison catches me staring at his chest for the fortieth time in the last thirty minutes.

My eyes shoot to the roof. “It’s so very hot”—I clear my throat—“in here.”?

He sniffs a laugh and doesn’t say what he could in that moment because he’s a gentleman. Or maybe just because it’s my birthday.

In my defence, it does feel like a steam room—a beautiful steam room, filled with sapphires and emeralds and diamonds and rubies.

“We’re right by a magma vent,” he tells me, and I give him a sharp look that he laughs at. He walks over towards me. “I’m no’ going to let anything happen to ye, Bow.”

He gives me a steadying look, and I match it with folded arms over my chest.

“You can control volcanic eruptions now, can you?”

“Maybe.” He smirks, and I stare at his mouth. That top lip of his looks like trouble, but I’d really like to know that empirically.

It’s foggy all around us now, thick and hazy and dreamy. The crystals catch on lights that aren’t even present, and my head feels spinny. It could be the air or probably it’s just him.

His hand’s on my waist, and I remember the feeling, remember why I must have put it away. There’s a weight to his touch that grounds me, sinks me right where I am, and I’m thrilled to be here, and then…I remember.

“Peter can,” I say quite quietly.*

He looks over at me, brows furrowing deep on his face. He’s considering it, I can tell. Actually, not just considering it but worrying about it.

His eyes hold mine for a second before there’s a deep rumbling from a part of the cave we’re not in. Then a steam vent pops, and he grabs my hand, pulling me out of there before I even suggest that maybe it’s time we leave.

Back the way we came, the air getting easier and easier to breathe in the farther we get from the centre. He grabs his coat with his other hand. Doesn’t have time to put it on.

I can see the mouth out of the cave, but it’s dark out now. The only light we have is the one the moon’s reflections on the ocean are giving us.

I don’t hear him breathe easy till we’re out, and I want to tell him that Peter would never, but I have a feeling that maybe he might?

He breathes out and gives me a long look. “We’re going t’ have t’ wait till the scraigh o’ dawn.”

I nod as though it’s a solemn thing to me, not my very birthday wish. “Okay.”

It’s cold now. Freezing, almost. We’re both soaked through from the steam we were in before. I start shivering so he builds a fire and puts me near it. Finds food, feeds me. I’m waiting for him to do more, but more doesn’t come.

He just sits by me, staring at the fire, holding his hands out to keep himself warm how I’d hold my hands to him for the same reason.

“He did try the other day,” I say, looking at the flames, not him.

Jem looks over at me. “To what?”

I give him a look.

“Oh,” he says, eyes straight ahead. A singular nod. “And ye—”

“I said no.”

Now I have his attention.

“Oh.” He frowns a bit, thinking. “Why?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“And what did he say t’ that?”

I consider this. “Not much to it, so much as he lay upon my decline some reasons as to why we in fact…should.”

His eyes pinch. “What were they?”

I sniff. “Primarily that he wanted to.”

Jamison breathes out. “He’s such a fucking prick.”

“Sometimes, yes,” I concede.

“But ye d?dnae?” he asks, looking over at me all earnest.

I shake my head.

He stares over at me. “Why d?dnae ye?”

I can’t quite remember, more than that I just didn’t want to. I think I put that thought away too? I think it had to do with Jem. I think he might have run through my mind when he shouldn’t have, when I was lying there with Peter—with Peter’s hands on me, with Peter trying to do more. I think my mind might have kept falling through some trapdoor back to Jamison. That frightened me, wanting him so viscerally even after I’d banished him the best way I knew how at the time.

How can I say that though? I put away what I did for a reason. I must have had a reason. But it is hard to remember what that might have been with him here in front of me, lit up by the flickering amber light, backed by a million stars.