Page 46 of Secret Heart
Chapter Twenty-Five
TRISTON
“Penny bug, it’s time to wash your hair,” Beau says.
Penny scrunches her nose and shakes her head. Beau only reaches for the shampoo in the small caddy between us. She grabs one of the small boats floating near her and lifts it up, dumping out the water it had accumulated in its hull.
Beau smiles. “I can use the boat if you want. Or the pink flower cup?”
She hands him the boat and tilts her chin back. Without a word, he turns on the bath’s faucet, double checking the temperature of the water, and then fills the small boat. It takes him several rounds for her hair to be wet enough to wash.
“How was the interview?” he asks as he washes and rinses her hair then applies a leave-in conditioner labeled specifically for curly hair.
“Average as far as they go.” The interviewer had been polite and professional, not veering into overly personal questions even once. Despite my nerves, it had gone just fine.
He nods. “When is it being released?”
“Friday, though they might post small clips leading up to that. I’m not really sure how they run any of their promo stuff on social media.”
Penny stands the moment Beau drops the small boat back into the tub. She reaches for me, not caring at all that she’s soaking. I let her climb into my arms anyway, and Beau’s quick to wrap a towel around her. He smiles as he looks at us both.
My skin tightens between one breath and the next, stealing my breath. Clove surrounds me, nearly as sour as Saturday. I shift on my knees, biting back a whimper. Beau frowns.
“Touch?” he asks.
I swallow heavily before nodding. He gently takes Penny from my lap and eases to his feet.
“Time for bed, Penny bug,” he tells her, kissing her cheek. “Papa has some things to get done.”
My throat closes at the name.
“Papa?” My voice is as breathless as it is quiet.
Beau pauses. For the first time I’ve ever seen, he blushes. “Unless you want something else?”
“No, no.” I quickly shake my head, then lean forward and drain the tub. Then I put the small caddy under the sink where Beau’d grabbed it from. “That’s… I like it.”
He smiles. Penny holds her hands out, grabbing for me. I cup her cheek and then kiss her temple. She giggles and then drops her head onto Beau’s shoulder. I clean up the rest of the bathroom once he’s gone, setting the towels back in their place and picking the toys up from the bottom of the tub.
Then I open the door to the spare bedroom they said I could use as a nest. The bags of blankets and pillows Lance had grabbed while I was doing the interview are still at the foot of the bed, the tags still on everything and no random scents clinging to them. With shaking hands, I pull all of the various pieces out and arrange them on the bed, removing tags and stickers asneeded. Then I strip out of the wet jeans and shirt. In just my boxer briefs, I crawl onto the bed, burying my nose in the new pillows.
I’m not sure how long I lay there. Eventually, soft footsteps echo on the hardwood floor and then disappear. A warm weight joins me on the bed, slight enough I know it’s Emily without turning to face her. My scent explodes around me, just as sour as in the bathroom, and I groan. Her vanilla weaves with it a heartbeat before her soft touch traces down my back.
“Is this okay?” she asks after a minute. “The bed and the room?”
“Yes.” The blankets muffle my voice. Then, when she doesn’t say anything else, I admit, “I’ve never had a nest.”
“Not even in your place now?”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t there often enough to even want to try and nest. There’s so much traveling during the season. And with the suppressors I was on…”
I let the sentence trail off. I haven’t told them about the Drop or the suppressants or the synthetic pheromone I’d purchased shortly after my first sponsor paycheck hit my bank account.
“Do you not like it? Your place?”
Her touch skates down the back of my thigh and then over my hip. I groan as another pulse of my scent drowns out the room. The need for her touch, her lock, her scent, burrows into me, nearly as painful as the weeks of touch-starvation symptoms since waking up at that Haven.
“I don’t hate it,” I mumble. “But Big Sky isn’t… it isn’t home. Not the way Creek Falls has always felt.”
