Page 20 of Bottoms
It took two weeks to clean the house to my standards, but I quickly found myself getting bored once it was finished. My body wasn’t back to normal, but I could practically run laps around the near-dead version of me that first entered this house. Fynn appeared in the evenings, coming through one of the locked doors inside the house.
There had to be a bathroom in that part of the house.
I pulled on the warmest clothes from my closet, opting for a hat instead of a wig to cover my slowly regrowing hair. Looking out the window, I saw snow covering the ground. I knew it would be a wet sludge to walk through.
Leaving through the front door to in some way signal that I was not attempting an escape, I slipped into the sharp, cold January air. The snow crunched beneath my boots as I walked into the clearing in front of the house. Thick puffs of white hung in the air with every breath I exhaled, and my body started shivering. There was a dense line of trees after twenty feet or so, but a thin, snaking white path of the old driveway cut through for about ten feet before it was swallowed by the forest.
I started to make my way around the house, noting the windows and which rooms they were on the inside. My arms hugged my waist to keep warm while I scouted. My bedroom window faced out the front of the house, but the locked upstairs bedroom should have a window facing the back.
My feet stomped as I made slow progress around the house, making it look like a leisurely stroll in the fresh air rather than a recon assignment. I was sure that Fynn left during the nights when I was sleeping, since all the magical supplies popped up by morning.
Either that or he was Santa and employed a bunch of elves to run for domestic items.
If I could figure out how to tell when he was gone, I could try to escape. Rounding the corner to the back of the house, my feet crunched their last as I looked up to see Fynn in a flannel shirt and dark jeans. His arms were crossed against his chest as he looked at me with one eyebrow raised.
After spending so much time with him, I learned how to interpret his various glares. He wasn’t upset, just putting on his best grumpy face.
“Getting some air,” I said loudly above the jets of wind that whipped down from the treetops.
“You hate the cold and the snow, Vanessa. Get inside before you freeze to death,” he said. Chastising me, before turning around to walk through the back door.
I pulled my clothes in tighter as I hurried to follow. Fynn held the door open, and I shook off the cold just inside the part of the house I had not been allowed to explore. It had been a master bedroom once. The walls were smooth white, and the flooring had been replaced with modern vinyl in the past few years. Instead of a bedroom set, the room was filled with monitors and computers displaying different videos on their screens. My eyes traveled across them until landing on the familiar sight of the lounge in Bottoms. Tanner, Colten, and Nik sat casually on their respective couches, talking and smiling.
“Is this live?” I asked, pointing to the screen, feeling hot pricks of anger beneath my skin.
“It is,” Fynn said, standing next to me. I heard his lighter before the familiar scent of burning tobacco washed over me.
“They aren’t looking for me, are they?” I asked, my voice small. Some part of me had become wrapped up with the idea of them bursting through my bedroom door, finally tracking me down. But my heart was deflated as I saw them sitting and chatting as if I had never come into their life in the first place.
“They don’t have anywhere else to look,” Fynn shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better, they ran themselves into the medical room when you first went missing. But, by now, they’ve figured out the only way they will see you again is if I allow it.”
I turned to face Fynn. He smiled around his cigarette before blowing the smoke in my direction. I turned my head to avoid most of it, but still ended up coughing. I heard him laugh before he took a step back to give me more space.
“You seem froggy, though. Ready to put that healed body to the test?” His tone was playful and edged into a flirting territory, but I couldn’t miss the darkness that coated each word.
My veins turned ice cold, as if I could feel the chemicals released in my body to prepare me for a fight. He was standing close, within arm’s reach. Looking at me like I was dinner. My heart started to beat harder in my chest, but I didn’t back away. Balling my hands into fists, I readied myself for an incoming attack. This time, I was determined to fight until I won or died.
The in-between healing part sucked.
He moved faster than I could react. Faster than I could have, even on my best day. His hand encircled the wrist of my bad arm, traveling with him as he moved behind me. Pinning my arm behind my back, sandwiched between Fynn and me.
That really fucking hurt.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and fixing my mental gaze on the sharp bite of pain in my shoulder as the muscles were pushed beyond their comfort zone. A whimper tumbled from my lips, and his grip on my wrist tightened.
“Do you want to fight me, Nessa?” he whispered into my ear. A low growl suggested he was enjoying the hell out of this. I could feel the steady, hard beating of his heart where his chest touched my skin. Electric energy passed between us, and I felt my body starting to heat. I focused back on the pain in my shoulder to clear my head, but it only seemed to make the fire inside me grow hotter.
“I’m bored,” I growled, picking up my boot to stomp it down on top of his. It didn’t do any good since he wore steel-toed boots.
“You’re feisty when you're bored,” Fynn growled back with a hint of amusement before releasing my arm and pushing me forward.
I stumbled for a few steps before turning to face him, despite the heat rising into my cheeks.
“You need to learn how to fight first,” Fynn said, laughing. This was all one big joke to him. He took a drag from his cigarette before leaning over to put it out. “There’s more space in the dining room.”
It wasn’t a proper invitation, but I knew to follow him as he left the still-smoldering remains in the small glass bowl and started for a door. I knew exactly which door this was from the other side. It sat on the wall behind my place at the dining room table. It wasn’t a larger space than the room we had just been in, but it didn’t have expensive equipment lining the walls.
Fynn met me in the middle of the room, but his gaze was fixed on his fingers, working to unbutton his flannel shirt. I didn’t know what to do, so I also stood and watched as well. They worked with quick, precise movements to unveil a sculpted chest covered in more tattoos. Once the last button was free, his hands grabbed the sides to pull his shirt off. My eyes trailed up his body, stunned stupid by muscles made and earned through hard work and not by weights at the gym. Raised scars cut through several tattoos, marking him a survivor of many rounds of in-between healing.
