Page 43 of Secret Twins for the Orc

But her brows are already scrunching again, and when she takes a step back and grabs the door handle, I realize I’m standing right on the threshold of her doorway.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” she grits through clenched teeth. “I’ve already told you I didn’t know how to find you. But you’re not listening to a word I’m saying, are you?”

The door starts to swing shut, and I take an instinctive step backwards. “Wait—”

But it shuts in my face, and all I can do is stare at it.

Chapter 16

Ella

I scrape my fork morosely over my chicken Caesar salad, letting out a sigh as I slouch in my seat. I’m with Gracie and the kids in Silver Spoon, the diner I’ve been meaning to visit for weeks now, with the worn red leather booths and mismatching crockery, that somehow adds to its rustic charm. The atmosphere is warm and pleasant, buzzing with lunchtime activity—clinking dishes, soft chatter, the sizzle of the grill and accompanying holler of the troll in the kitchen shouting orders out through the pass, as if he doesn’t care that his voice reaches all the way to the people eating up the back, and the street outside, too.

There’s a general feeling of cozy pleasantness here. The exact opposite of the hollow, depressing sludge currently swishing through my brain.

“Come on, Ella. You have to at least eat the salad,” Grace says as she takes a hefty mouthful of her over-sized burger. “Umfrrmbrf.” Wincing, she swallows her face-full, wipes her mouth, and tries again. “You’ll feel better after you eat.”

I sigh, drop my fork, and squish one hand up against my cheek. “Not hungry.”

The toddlers are both tucked into highchairs beside us making an absolute mess of their spaghetti, smearing sauce happily across each other’s faces in their ritual of very poorly attempting to feed each other.

“I know it seems bad.” Grace grabs a handful of napkins and wipes spaghetti off Rylah’s chubby fingers. I leave it to her to clean them up, as I slouch in my seat and squish both my palms more heavily against my cheeks, so I can more effectively wallow in my pity party. “But it can’t be all that bad.”

“Yes, it can be.” I shove my plate away and cross both my arms over the table. “He’s a jerk, Gracie. You heard what he said, how he accused me.”

“I heard what you told me he said.” She frowns at me. “I was only around for the ‘you’re hiding my children from me’ bit before I hightailed it out of there. I swear to Jesus, I’ve never gotten kids strapped into booster seats so damn quick in my life…”

“Hey,” I huff, “you think I’d lie about what happened?”

“I think you can be, uh…biased when you’re angry,” she hedges, before shoving a handful of fries in her mouth, and absently picking up Rowan’s baby spoon to feed him his chopped up spaghetti. “But maybe the whole thing isn’t quite so irredeemable, if you look at it from a calmer lens?”

I grab Rylah’s little spoon, scoop it into her half-empty bowl, and mush it past her lips while she’s distracted fisting sauce into Rowan’s still-full mouth.

“Look, I’m just saying you might be viewing it a bit temperamentally?”

“No,” I snap as we both let the twins chew, and wipe spaghetti sauce off our hands. “He’s the temperamental one. Temperamental, and quick to judge, and angry, and irrational, and self-centered and—”

“Okay, okay!”

“Grace, I get it,” I sigh, allowing her to cut off my annoyed tirade as I lean back in the booth. “I get that he has problems. But he can’t seem to look outside his own issues, his own pain, to see that he’s not the only person who might be suffering! I…I need support and understanding, too.”

Her brows scrunch and she leans abruptly across the table, giving me a sticky-fingered squeeze.

“Oh, baby, I know. And of course you deserve that, you do.” Her other hand comes to clasp mine between both her palms. “But who’s to say he can’t give that to you?”

I sigh gustily. “Grace…”

“I’m serious,” she says quietly. “Sure, he had an emotional response, reacted impulsively and, uh, explosively…”

“He blamed me for the entire situation. Andimplied I was a sleeping with a million orcs!”

“Okay, but—”

“There is no ‘but’!”

“Ella.” She gives me one last squeeze before leaning back. “Can you swear to me that you’ve never said something bitchy and out of line when you were hurt? Something that you didn’t even mean, but said anyway because you were in pain and lashing out?”

I grumble wordlessly and don’t respond.

---