NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(27)

“Why are you upset?” I ask instead, as I open his freezer. I pull out some ice, and dump it into two baggies, one for each hand.

Dare doesn’t open his eyes.

“I’m not.”

“You lie.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

He sighs.

“Maybe.”

I push him into a kitchen chair, and hold the ice onto his hands.

“Definitely.”

He opens his eyes finally. “Do you know what it’s like to not be able to change something?”

I ogle him. Seriously?

“My brother is crazy and my mom died in a car crash,” I tell him. “Of course I know what it’s like.”

He sighs and looks away like I’m trivial and just don’t understand.

“Your brother doesn’t seem crazy,” he answers. “I mean, from the way you’ve talked about him.”

“That’s true,” I answer carefully. “But just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Dare looks at me, his eyes dark as night. “True.”

He gets up and pulls his shirt off, wincing slightly as he moves his hands. He tosses the blood-splattered tee in the sink, and I can hardly breathe on account of his abs. Rippled like a washboard, they hover in my face, and I want to trace those ripples with my fingers, to follow the thin, dark, ‘happy trail’ into the edge of his shorts to see where it leads.

But I know where it leads.

And that bursts my cheeks into flame.

“How do you live here?” he asks quietly, and I lift my gaze to follow his. He’s staring out the window now, at the black smoke that billows from the crematorium stacks. I’m the one who almost cringes now, at the mere fact that he recognized the smoke for what it is. Burning bodies.

I shrug. “I’m used to it. There are creepier places.”

He looks at me, unconvinced. “Oh, yeah?”

I nod. “Yeah. I know of one off-hand.”

“I’d like to see that place sometime,” he tells me. “Or I won’t believe it.”

I smile. “Deal. If you tell me what’s wrong with you. Why are you punishing your hands? What did they ever do to you?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it right now,” Dare tells me, leaning once again against the counter, so casual that it’s painful. “Unless you’re using one of your questions and I’m obligated to answer.”

I don’t miss a beat. “I am.”

He sighs because he saw that one coming, and I almost fall into the blackness of his eyes because they’re bottomless wells. “I’m mad at myself,” he finally says, as though that’s an answer.

“Obviously,” I say wryly. “But the question is…why?”

He stares at me now, with a painful gaze, something so wretched and awful that it makes my stomach flip. “Because I can’t change something. And because I’m letting it get to me,” he finally replies. “Something that I can’t control. It’s stupid. So it pisses me off.”

“Emotions piss you off?” I ask, my eyebrow raised.

He smirks now, and the heaviness lifts.

“They are when they’re stupid.”

He turns to walk out of the kitchen, and I suck in my breath hard.

A tattoo is inscribed across the top of his back, spanning his shoulder blades.

LIVE FREE.

I’ve never seen such a fitting tattoo, for a guy with such a fitting name. If anyone lives free, it’s Dare.

“I love your tattoo,” I call out to him, as he walks from the kitchen to the bedroom, out of my sight.

“Freedom is an illusion,” he calls back.

I want to ask him why, but I don’t want to use a question, so I let it go. For now.

He emerges a minute later in a clean shirt.

“We’ve got some gauze and tape up at the house,” I tell him. “Will you come with me so that I can bandage you up? Finn and I caught some crabs today. Stay for dinner.”

I’m not asking. It’s an instruction. And surprisingly, Dare nods.

“Ok.”

I lift an eyebrow. “Ok?”

He smiles and the Dare I know is back, the charming and friendly one. “Yeah. I want to see if they really scream when you drop them into the pot.”

I must recoil a bit, because he chuckles. “I’m kidding. That’s a myth, right?”

I nod. “They don’t have vocal cords. But it sounds like a scream sometimes, when the air bubbles out of their stomachs.”

“That’s a pleasant thought,” Dare says wryly.

“I just don’t think about it,” I shrug. “Because they’re delicious.”

“Sadistic yet practical,” Dare observes as he holds the door open for me.

I grin. “That’s my hamartia.”

Dare shakes his head. “I don’t believe in fatal flaws.”

I pause, staring up at him. “Really? Then what, pray tell, will be your downfall?”

Dare pauses too, purveying me with his arms dangling limply at his sides.

“There’s a very good chance it’ll be you.”





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