Page 9 of Puck My Heart

The girl drank the stuff by the tank load, and it didn’t seem to touch the sides.

She perched on the stool opposite me, her legs crossed beneath her, the foot with the small cut that stopped bleeding almost immediately patched up with a Band-Aid she grudgingly let me apply that I scavenged from the small first aid kit under the kitchen sink. My jersey hung off one shoulder, baring the curve I wanted to trace with my fingers. But she’d obviously been through enough, and she didn’t need me pawing all over her more than I already had.

That didn’t mean that her tears and shaking hadn’t scared the shit out of me. This was the girl I grew up with away from school and social norms. Out here, a few times a year when we could all just…be. Sure, I knew she had a crush on me. But that was then and now… suddenly not feeling like I could touch her was the hardest thing in my whole damn world.

“Eat,” I instructed when she put the toast down and shook her head. Golden curls hung forward, shielding her face. I reached across the table but curled my fingers up, stopping shy of actually touching her. “Please?”

Anya looked down at the piece of toast with a few nibble marks to it and sighed. “Whatever.” She picked it up and took abig bite, then glared at me. “Haffy?” she asked, toast obscuring the sounds.

I grinned. “Extremely.” I pushed her refilled thermos forward as a reward.

She clutched that thing like a lifeline, and emptied half its contents. Silence fell over the kitchen for a moment as she finished the toast, and looked at me. “You don’t have to babysit me, Hux. Go do whatever you were going to do this weekend.”

My lips thinned before I could stop them, and my own truths fell out. “What, mope about, ignore the memories I nearly ran clean the fuck into on my way up here, and try not to screw up everyone else’s weekend? Yeah, I have so much planned to fill my time.” I stretched back in my chair, linking my hands behind my head. The ceiling offered fuck all distraction, but it was still better than witnessing the sympathy in her face.

Anya’s chair scraped back a half second later, and the face I tried to avoid after staring at her for the past half hour appeared hovering right above mine.

“When you’re done moping, I could use some help lugging in this weekend’s supply of firewood.” Her hand cracked down on my shoulder in a slap worthy of her brother.

I winced as I straightened, watching her saunter out of the kitchen, not a limp in sight. Apparently, all I needed to do was provide her with a greater problem than she currently faced to override her anxiety in the moment. Or at least, when she was coming out of it.

Sob stories, I can do.

Not how I planned this weekend to go, if I planned anything at all.

I hauled my ass out of my seat, reclaimed her coffee she’d left on the table and followed her out of the kitchen before it hit me.

“You used all the stored firewood last night to keep the house warm, didn’t you?”

Her giggle ricocheted off the walls as I tracked her out the back of the house, snagging an old jacket of mine that survived a few winters without me off the hook near the door.

Hell, if she kept laughing like that, maybe this weekend would be okay after all.

CHAPTER FIVE

ANYA

I’d never been into woodcutting before but watching Hux handle that axe—the one he liberated from me after watching my self-confessed atrocious efforts with that still expression and silence that permeatedeverything—I could definitely be on team lumbersnack if this was to be an annual thing.

My heart gave a tug at the thought of not seeing Hux again for another year. I pushed the thought aside and focused on the physical man instead of the emotional part that always knotted me up inside.

Two months away from Peter, and I still struggled to sleep at night. My hands shook when I broke anything—or maybe I broke things because my hands shook—and I wasn’tsupposedto be looking. Or at least, old me wasn’t supposed to look at another man.

New me could perv and flaunt myself all I liked. Huxshouldbe the safer option. A man I had known for a long damn time, someone who had always been there, back when. Just…not for the last few years while he and my brother were off being fancy puckers that the entire country seemed to adore while they forgot about little old me. While my parents celebrated beingempty nesters and went on a two year world cruise and I tried out this adulting thing.

And failed. Magnificently.

Score one for Team Anya.Said no one ever. A massive part of me wanted to go back to being the kid I was five years ago. Back when we were two huge families sharing the house together. Before tragedy hit us. Before I was alone, and tried to fill the space with a different sort of family.

Yeah, look how well that worked out.

Hence the return to perving on my brother’s best friend, the safe option.

Supposedlybeing the operable word because the moment Hux made any physical contact or watched me with those dark eyes that barely reflected any light at all, like twin black wells that led directly to his raw soul, I didn’t feel so safe after all. Or maybe I did, and that was even scarier.

Part of me didn’t feel like the girl who swore she grew up during those in between years that Hux wasn’t around to see.See? Adulting. Level Up.I understood why he hadn’t come back, why he kept himself so busy. Being drafted to the Jericho Chimeras was no small thing. Working his way up to a captaincy in three short years—he had already held the position for over twelve months—was unheard of from their stats. If I stalked him. Which of course, I had. Friendly, swoon worthy, crushlike and all.

Liar, liar, stalker vibes on fire.

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