Surviving Ice (Burying Water, #4)(75)

“I’m fine!” she snaps, but her voice doesn’t carry its normal sharpness. It’s shaky and higher pitched. When I step closer, she hides her face behind a curtain of hair, turning away from me.

That’s when I know.

She doesn’t resist me when I scoop her up and settle onto the foam mattress—still basically intact—with her in my arms. She rests her head against my chest and my shirt grows damp with her tears, her entire little body shaking as she cries. But she barely makes a sound.

Ivy’s hard shell has finally cracked.





TWENTY-SEVEN


IVY


I didn’t cry the night of the robbery.

I didn’t shed a single tear at the funeral.

And now I can’t seem to stop.

I wasn’t even doing anything particularly nostalgic. Tossing Ned’s underwear and socks into a trash bag. Dumping his buttondown shirts and jeans into a box for Goodwill. Deciding what to do with his white wedding day suit that he’s kept all these years, insisting that he’d be buried in it when his time came, because the day he married Jun was the happiest day of his life, and he wanted to relive it for all eternity. His day came too early and forty pounds too heavy, unfortunately.

Then I started to think about how maybe none of this would have happened if he just hadn’t been gambling, and how I can’t believe I didn’t know about this mess with him and that guy Sullivan trying to take Black Rabbit from him. It was happening right under my nose and I didn’t have a clue, too busy poking fun at him for being old, while I lived in his house and ate his food and worked out of his shop.

And then the tears started to roll and wouldn’t stop, no matter how furiously I wiped at them.

I hate letting anyone see me cry, but I don’t have it in me—physically or emotionally—to push Sebastian away right now, and if I stop lying to myself for a minute, I’ll admit that it feels good to have him just hold me.

It actually helps.

“Thanks,” I mutter, wiping my cheeks. I pull away from my little nest against his chest and cringe, streaks of black mascara and eyeliner smeared all over the front of his white T-shirt. I can only imagine what my face looks like.

He doesn’t even flinch, though, his jaw working against itself, taut. The short beard that’s normally so well kept shows signs of disarray, like he didn’t have time to trim and edge it today.

“You look like you didn’t sleep last night,” I say.

“I didn’t. But I’ll be fine.”

What kind of errands would keep him up all night?

“Don’t look so worried.” He sighs and stretches his long legs out in front of him. We’re practically sitting on the floor, him on my mattress; me, on him. The muscles in his arms are cording, probably after holding me in this position for so long.

I try to move, to relieve him of that, but he squeezes, trapping me.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I warn him.

“Neither do I,” he fires back with a smirk. “But do you feel a bit better now?”

I nod slowly, because I do.

He opens his mouth but hesitates. “I told you about those three good friends I lost in the war?”

“Yeah.” The ones he watched die.

His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “It doesn’t really sink in for a while. Weeks, sometimes months.”

Is that what this is? Is it finally sinking in? I thought it already had, back in the shop the day I finished Bobby’s tattoo. It would make sense, this utterly wretched sadness taking over. But then there’s that news from Bobby today.

I fill Sebastian in on everything I learned before he got there. He simply listens, his thumb rubbing back and forth over my thigh casually. Affectionately.

“What do you think it means?” Can Sebastian hear the shake in my voice? The twinge of fear?

He sighs, pushing my hair off my face, his gaze drifting along my features. “I think it means your uncle got involved with people you want nothing to do with.”

“I just wish I could remember something useful about that night. I keep hoping I’m just going to be hit with a detail that I somehow overlooked. Something that will help catch them.”

“You can’t put that pressure on yourself. You aren’t responsible for what happened. It had nothing to do with you.”

“But what if they come back? What if—”

He cuts my question off with a deep kiss, surprising me. With a slow roll, I suddenly find myself lying on the mattress, with Sebastian’s arm crooked beneath my neck and his mouth on my neck, his scruff scratching my skin but in the most seductive way—half ticklish, half torturous.

“I won’t let anything happen to you. Just listen to me next time.” His voice is low and gravelly, much like last night. I can feel him growing hard against my thigh.

And I’m overcome with relief that he’s not mad at me anymore. That I haven’t completely screwed everything up with him today, being so mule-headed.

“Because you’re a ninja?” My fingers tug at his soft T-shirt until it bunches in my hands.

I catch the smirk on his face as he lifts himself up enough to pull it over his head, uncovering that body I’ve come to love so much. “No, because I know how to keep people alive.”