Page 35 of Faun Over Me

“I will be back tomorrow,” Ramble assured their wife. They left after breakfast, knuckling Cricket’s head and kissing Mac goodbye. She’d looked away at that. They made it look so easy to have everything Cricket wanted: a job, a partner, a home. So it was little surprise that she’d grabbed a bottle of acorn whiskey from the sideboard and carried it up to her room.

The front door opened sometime after sunset. The guest bedroom had no clock, so Cricket had no idea of what time it actually was. She assumed it was after dinner and before lights out. Campers dawdled along the main path, and campfires burned from scattered pits across the grounds. Light music filtered through her open window: strings, brass, and a lone oboe.

It was lovely, she supposed, but nowhere near as lovely as the assistant director standing in her open door.

Wait.

She blinked, rubbed an eye with her fist, and blinked again.

“Yep, still there.”

Avery set a container down on the dresser and crossed her arms. A lovely little furrow formed between her brows, and Cricket immediately wanted to smooth it away. “Are you drunk?”

“Maybe.” She kicked her legs up and rolled off the side of the bed, landing on her injured leg. Her knee buckled, and she hit the mattress with a whumpf. Leaning to the side, she propped an elbow on the bedside table and grinned at Avery. “Why d’you ask?”

“Because you look and sound drunk.”

“Welp.” She shrugged. A long, tense moment stretched between them, pulling the air in the room as taut as a rubber band before it snapped. “One more thing for you to hate about me.”

The snap of her words had Avery visibly recoiling. Cricket dropped her elbow and rolled onto her back, staring at the window to keep from seeing the look of disgust that was surely crawling across Avery’s face.

A floorboard creaked, and the door quietly snicked closed. “I didn’t know faun drank.”

Cricket rolled her head to the side, hitting Avery with a flat look. “A week ago, you didn’t know what faun were.” She raised an arm, waggled her fingers, and let it fall across her middle. “See how far you’ve come.”

“You don’t have to be so mean,” Avery snapped. “I’ve been nothing but nice to you since I found you in the woods.”

“You’ve done nothing but pity me.”

“Is that what you think this is?” She smacked the container on the dresser. “You think this is pity? Last night, when we—”

“You were scared.”

“Of course I was scared!” Her voice slammed against the ceiling and shot right back down, pommeling Cricket’s chest. “A monster was chasing me, I thought I was about to die, and then you grabbed me, and all I could think was ‘this is my last chance’. How can you possibly think any of this is pity?”

“Fine, not pity, then.” She closed her eyes, straightening her head on the pillow. “Fear.”

“It’s not fear!” Her voice rose even higher, an edge of desperation entering the words. Cricket curled her hands into fists, fighting the urge to bolt across the room, take Avery into her arms, and console her. Anything to stop the tears she could practically smell. Anything to stop this shouting and make her smile and look at her like she had in that breezeway. “It’s twenty-two years of Evangelical upbringing, and I’m having a hard time!”

The floorboards creaked, and the edge of the mattress dipped under Avery’s weight. The warmth of her body, so close to Cricket, bled into her calf.

“My whole life,” she sniffled, “I’ve been brought up to think and act a certain way. I hate these stupid skirts, I hate having my hair this long, and I hate how everyone stares at me when I pray before a meal. I hate that I’m always on the outside looking in, and I’m stuck there no matter how hard I try to break through. It’s never the right word or the right action, and if I don’t get into Carnegie my dad is going to pressure me to get married and start popping out babies, and I don’t want that.” She took a stuttering breath, stifling a sob. “I don’t want any of that; I want—”

Cricket opened her eyes, biting her lip at the sight of tears shining on Avery’s cheeks. Her face was blotchy and pink in a way that made Cricket’s heart feel like it was being squeezed in a fist. She adored that blush, relished the pink crawl over Avery’s creamy skin … but not like this.

What was it with this human? How had she gotten so deep beneath Cricket’s coat that she was impossible to brush out? She’d come here to get help from Ramble, not get hung up on a human girl who didn’t know what she wanted. A human girl who barely knew how to function around inhumans. Who wouldn’t let her eat a meal in peace, followed her into the woods, and brought her dinner when she didn’t show up in the dining hall. A human girl who—

“And right when I think I’m making progress,” she blubbered, “right when I think I’ve finally figured out how to be a part of this new world instead of watching from the sidelines, I say, or I do something, and I don’t know what you want.”

Cricket’s ears shot straight at that admission. She propped herself up on an elbow, frozen in place by the force of Avery’s burning blue eyes.

“I don’t know what I ever said or did to make you hate me, but I don’t hate you, and it’s maddening.” She turned her hands palm up, fingers curled into claws. “I’m sorry I’m not good with inhumans, alright? I’m sorry this is all new to me, and I’m–I’m fu…” She screwed her face into a scowl, pressed fists against her eyes, her entire body tight and trembling as if she were gathering the strength to force out the word. “I’m fucking it all up because I don’t know what I’m doing or what you want. All I know is that I want you, but nothing I do is ever going to convince you that I—”

Cricket bolted upright before she could think better of it. Swinging her knees beneath her as she reached for Avery, cupping her cheek and drawing her forward. Their mouths met in a tight-lipped kiss. Hard and demanding for all its lack of sweetness.

Avery’s eyes flew open, red-rimmed and glassy blue, meeting Cricket’s steady, determined gaze. Her mouth softened, her brow relaxed, and then her hand clasped Cricket’s hip, squeezing and tugging the faun closer, harder against her. And in that squeeze were a thousand little details. A flinch borne from realization and not rejection. A kiss driven by longing rather than fear. A smile in the wood and a whimpered sigh of relief.

All of it compressed into one tiny gesture where Avery tugged Cricket closer. Where Avery flicked her tongue against Cricket’s lips, and Avery slid her hand up Cricket’s ribcage to cup her breast. Avery, who said she had no idea what she was doing when she was doing everything right.

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