Shadow Mated(9)

This was… wonderful. This feeling of peace. It was lulling her into a false sense of security, but for now, she’d take it.

Gash moved to sit beside her, bracing his back against the very same cabinet. They were quiet for an eternity, or maybe only a moment. There was no way to know. But then he reached between them and took her hand in his, so careful it was like he held a baby bird.

Bailey turned her head to watch him. He stared at their joined hands silently, and she wondered, not for the first time, what was brewing in his mind.

Gash was an enigma. He had a past she couldn’t comprehend, full of trouble and darkness she could never fathom. Yet, she knew his heart was gold. She knew because of the small things. The way he patrolled their land. The way he worked long hours to review security tapes. The time he’d spent getting to know the local law enforcement from the neighboring town of Weston. The guarded gleam in his eye whenever he watched members of the clan from afar. He thought no one noticed, but she did.

“What hurts you?” he asked in his gruff way.

It used to rub her wrong, the way his tone sounded like annoyance. But over time, she’d grown used to it. Even came to like it. Annoyance was still an emotion, and a strong one at that. It meant things mattered to him.

“Hurt?” Her voice shook, but she could speak. That was a step forward. “I don’t think I’m hurt exactly.”

His breath rushed out and his shoulders dipped with apparent relief. “Then what makes you… leak?” he said, gesturing to her drying tears.

Bailey couldn’t help the tiny lift of her smile. Leak. He had the funniest way with words.

“Lots of things I guess. But tonight…” She sighed, resting her head back against the cool metal of the cabinet behind her. “Tonight it was your look. The one you gave me right before you got in the wolf’s truck.”

Gash went motionless, and she shot him a glance. He remained staring at their hands, loosely tangled where his bond was still a hair-thread connection working its magic.

Bailey studied his profile. His shiny dark hair was mussed like he’d run his hands through it recently. His forehead pinched in the center, causing a thick black brow to slash upward in a way that reminded her of a ruthless pirate. Long lashes fringed his eye, and the skin around it crinkled at the corner in some emotion she couldn’t read. The bristle of dark scruff he liked to keep, started halfway down his cheek, underneath the wide slash of scar that marked him from the corner of his mouth to the crease of his eye.

She chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking. An injury like that must have hurt. And what caused it to leave a scar? His animal should have been able to heal it with a much better result.

The ridge of his jaw tightened and the vein in his neck pushed out as he tensed. Bailey pulled her gaze away, not wanting to make him any more uncomfortable.

“So it is because of me.” His voice was a hoarse monotone. “Again.”

“What is?”

“The reason you’re distressed.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, never wanting to lie to him. “I guess it is sorta. But this is helping.” She squeezed her fingers around his thicker scarred ones, pressing their palms together.

His gaze snapped to hers and she almost jerked her hand away. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that. The squeezing or the admitting.

“It is?” he asked, searching her face.

Bailey swallowed hard, dislodging her nervousness, and giving him a quick nod. “Quite a bit actually.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

Good. She wanted him to stay.

But… Gash didn’t want a needy female. He was very clear about that. She should appear strong even if he had found her in a puddle of tears.

Bailey cleared her throat to make her voice solid. “If you need to go—”

“I don’t.”

Staring into his eyes, she thought she saw the flicker of his cat just beneath the copper brown. She’d never seen his animal before. He was a cougar jaguar mix. Very rare among shifters and completely non-existent in the wild. She wondered if he had spots like a jag, or if he was solid like a mountain lion. Orange fur or amber. Speed and agility, or bulk strength.

“What’s going to happen now?” she asked, her voice sounding breathless when she wanted it to sound normal. “W-With the clan, I mean. What’s next?”

With a tick of his jaw, he pulled her hand closer, tucking her arm under the crook of his elbow until her forearm was pressed to his. From fingertip to elbow, they were touching now, and she almost forgot why she’d started bawling in the first place.

Gash sighed, tipping his head back against the cabinet and bringing his knee up to casually drape his free arm across it. “Things got fucked up tonight,” he muttered. “Never wanted this for Ouachita.”