Page 39 of The Devil's Ice

She gazed up at him blearily, looking small and hurt and bruised and exhausted. “You don’t mind?”

“‘Course not,” he said, moving quickly to the tiny kitchen, glad to have something to doandan excuse to stick around. “You hungry? It’s almost dinner time.”

“I’m really not.” She shifted her weight carefully, felt all the tugs and pulls in her muscles and bones, wondering just how the hell she was going to get up and off this goddamn sofa after Ice left her. “Zoe said something about making a bunch of easy-to-heat stuff that I can just throw in the microwave, but I’m too tired to eat right now.”

“I get that. Hospitals aren’t the most restful places on earth, huh?” He switched on the kettle, rooted around in the cupboards, looking for a mug and the tea bags. “Want me to take a peek in the fridge for you?”

“Please.” She managed a tiny grin. “Knowing Zee, it’s going to be bursting.”

He opened the door and took in the tottering, towering piles of tupperware. “Erm. Yeah. The woman made enough food to feed the whole fucking club. Three times over.”

Vixen laughed. “Do I look shocked?”

“No,” Ice said, before he could stop himself. “You look beautiful.”

Vixen blinked over at him standing in her kitchen, his massive, muscular frame making it look even smaller somehow. Her favorite Picasso mug looked like a child’s toy teacup in his large hand, the tea caddy looked the size of a matchbox. He was just utterly, achingly gorgeous and strong and healthy, and she was a wreck with a smashed up neck and permanent facial scars and greasy hair – and he was callingherbeautiful?

“Sure,” she said, rolling her unmade-up eyes. “I’m Miss America over here. My crown is in the mail, but I think it got lost.”

“I need to talk to you about something,” he said abruptly, pouring boiling water into a mug with an abstract woman in a big red chair, who looked like she was sleeping. “It’s important.”

“OK,” she said, a bit taken aback at the change of topic and tone. “What is it?”

Ice came back to her, placed the mug on the table in front of her, watched to see if she could reach it without having to strain. It suddenly came to him that he was essentially inviting himself to live with this woman, and who knew for how long. That she needed some help wasn’t an issue, at all… but he wasn’t sure that she’d accept eventhat, if it was coming from him, considering everything. Maybe it was too complicated between them, maybe it would be better if one of the other boys came and stayed with her. But Ice wanted it to be him, for as long as she let it be.

Well, all I can do is ask.

“I want to stay here with you,” he said, deciding to just jump in with both feet.

“You – uh –” Vixen almost choked on her tea. “You –stay?”

“Yeah. Stay.”

“Where?” Her eyes darted around the living room, trying to imagine Ice sleeping on her floor. The sofa didn’t pull out into a bed, so unless he was going to camp out on a mattress that he’d have to go buy, then that only left…

My bed?

“Anywhere,” Ice said calmly. “I’ve slept on factory concrete floors, and on sand in the desert, and in a bathtub when I was trapped in enemy territory and under fire. I slept sitting up in that hospital chair for four nights, Vix, and that was a fucking cakewalk. The important thing is that I’m here with you.”

“Why, though?” She watched his hard face carefully as she asked the next question, the one that had been nagging at her for days, ever since she’d gotten that flash ofsomethingfrom Scars. “And don’t tell me it’s just to make me tea and heat up lasagna. Iknowthat something else has happened, besides me and Keira almost being pancaked in the parking lot. So what is it?”

Ice was silent, and Vixen huffed, done with the macho reticent bullshit now. She’d been run down by a van, a little girl had almost been killed, her neck was broken, she was permanently scarred. She deserved some fucking answers, and even though she’d always respected the whole MC code of silence thing, shealsothought that she had earned her way into the inner circle. Just a little bit.

“Here’s the deal,” she said, throwing all caution to the wind. “Either you tell meeverything, or you leave now. I’ll figure out how to get around on my own, and I’ll manage. It’ll be fucking exhausting, and I’ll be scared out of my mind the whole time that I’ll do something permanent to my neck, but I’ll dothatbefore I have to look at you every day knowing that something is going on, and you not telling me. So, spill it Ice, or get out. Your move.”

He levelled her with a look, those eyes as cold and remote as they ever got, and her heart sank. She’d pushed it too far; she’d called out the ice in Ice, and she knew whatthatmeant. It meant that he was about the walk out the door, and she’d be left figuring out how to wash herself without removing the neck brace, and arranging the bed so she could sleep half-sitting up, and reaching for things in the kitchen without moving her head. But first she had to get herself off this fucking sofa with zero spring support that she was steadily sinking into.

“You really think you can do it all by yourself?” he asked quietly.

“I think I’ve proven that I can take care of shit when it gets real,” Vixen said crisply, already sorry about opening her big stupid mouth, but she was committed now. “So, yes. I can.”

“Do youwantto?”

“Want to – what?”

“Want to do it all be yourself?”

“Well.” She stared at him, her common sense and self-preservation overcoming her flash of anger and frustration. “I mean – no. No, I’d prefer the help, but –”

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