Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(118)

“Okay, then let me help you until you have your feet back under you.”

“Thank you, but—”

He wanted to curse. “I have an idea. Meet me tonight at my place and we’ll argue about it?”

“Rehv—”

“Excellent. I have to tend to my mother early in the evening, and I have a meeting to go to at midnight. How’s three a.m. sound? Wonderful—I’ll see you then.”

There was a heartbeat of silence and then she chuckled. “You always get what you want, don’t you.”

“Pretty much.”

“Fine. Three o’clock tonight.”

“I’m so happy I changed my tone, aren’t you?”

They both laughed, the tension draining from the connection as if it had been flushed out.

When there was a rustle again, he took it to mean she was lying back down and getting comfortable once more.

“So can I tell you what my father did?” she said abruptly.

“You can tell me that and then explain to me why you didn’t eat more for dinner. And after that we’re going to talk about the last movie you saw and the books you read and what you think about global warming.”

“Really, all that?”

God, he loved her laugh. “Yup. We’re in network, so it’s free. Oh, and I want to know what your favorite color is.”

“Rehvenge…you really don’t want to be alone, do you.” The words were spoken gently and almost absently, as if the thought had snuck out of her mouth.

“Right now…I just want to be with you. That’s all I know.”

“I wouldn’t be ready, either. If my father passed tonight, I wouldn’t be ready to let him go.”

He closed his eyes. “That is…” He had to clear his throat. “That is exactly what I’m feeling. I’m not ready for this.”

“Your father has also…passed. So I know it’s extra hard.”

“Well, yes, he’s dead, although I don’t miss him at all. She was always the one for me. And with her gone…I feel like I just drove up to my home to find someone’s burned it down. I mean, I didn’t see her every night or even every week, but I always had the potential of going over and sitting down and smelling her Chanel No. 5. Of hearing her voice and seeing her across a table. That potential…grounded me, and I didn’t know it until I lost it. Shit…I’m not making sense.”

“No, you totally are. For me it’s the same. My mother’s gone and my father…he’s here but he’s not. So I feel homeless, too. Adrift.”

This was why people got mated, Rehv suddenly thought. Fuck the sex and the social position. If they were smart, they did it to make a house that had no walls and an invisible roof and a floor that no one could walk on—and yet the structure was a shelter no storm could blow down, no match could torch up, no passage of years could degrade.

That was when it hit him. A mated bond like that helped you through shit nights like this.

Bella had found that shelter with her Zsadist. And maybe her older brother needed to follow his sister’s example.

“Well,” Ehlena said awkwardly, “I can answer the question about my favorite color if you like. Might keep things from getting too heavy.”

Rehv shook himself back into gear. “And what would it be?”

Ehlena cleared her throat a little. “My favorite color is…amethyst.”

Rehv smiled until his cheeks hurt. “I think that’s a great color for you to like. A perfect color.”





THIRTY-EIGHT




There were fifteen people at Chrissy’s funeral who knew her, and one who hadn’t—and as Xhex scanned the windswept cemetery, she looked for a seventeenth person hiding among the trees and tombs and larger headstones.

No wonder the f*cking graveyard was called Pine Grove. There were fluffy boughs all over the place, providing ample cover for someone who didn’t want to be seen. Damn it to hell.

She’d found the cemetery in the Yellow Pages. The first two she’d called hadn’t had any space left. The third had had space only in their Wall of Eternity, as the guy called it, for cremated bodies. Finally, she’d found this Pine Grove thing and purchased the rectangle of dirt they were all standing around.

The pink coffin had been about five grand. The plot another three. The priest, father, whatever humans called him, had indicated that a suggested donation of a hundred dollars would be appropriate.

No problem. Chrissy deserved it.

Xhex searched the frickin’ pines again, hoping to find the * who’d murdered her. Bobby Grady had to be coming. Most abusers who killed the objects of their obsessions remained connected emotionally. And even though the police were looking for him, and he had to know that, the drive to see her put to rest was going to override logic.

Xhex refocused on the officiant. The human male was dressed in a black coat, his white collar showing at his throat. In his palms, over Chrissy’s pretty coffin, he held a Bible that he read from in a low, reverent voice. Satin ribbons were laid among the gold-leafed pages to demarcate whatever sections he used most, the ends trailing out the bottom of the book, waving red and yellow and white in the cold. Xhex wondered what his “favorites” list was like. Marriages. Baptisms—if she got that word right. Funerals.