Page 5 of Desert Loyalties
I don’t answer. Not right away. Maybe not out of spite, but because I just don’t have it in me tonight. Usually I’d throw something back; snarky, sharp, maybe with a smirk just to rile him up; but not now. Not when everything feels like it’s unravelling.
“You ignoring me now?” he asks, voice casual, but there’s a crack in it. Like it bothers him.
I still don’t look at him. Just keep swinging. Not high, not fast. Just slow enough to feel the creak of the chains and the cold bite of the night air on my skin.
“What do you want, Mandrake?” I ask, flat. Dead tone. No sugar, no heat.
He pauses. I hear the shift of his boots in the dirt behind me. He’s close, but not too close. Like he’s testing the air between us.
“Everything okay, Skye?”
I snap before I even mean to. The words tear right out.
“Why do you care? Whynow, Mandrake?”
I finally stand up and look at him. Damn if it doesn’t feel like the ground should’ve cracked open beneath us. He’s just standing there; cut from stone, eyes like a thunderstorm, jaw tight like he wasn’t expecting me to come at him like that.
But I’m tired. So, fuckin’ tired of being invisible until it suits him.
“You’ve had a year,” I say, voice shaking but still hard. “A year of walking past me like I don’t matter. A year of scaring off any guy who so much aslooksat me, like I’m some kind of possession, but you won’tdoanything about it.”
I finally stand up from the swing, hands curled into fists, breath coming fast now. His eyes are locked on mine, stormy and unreadable, but I keep going because I’ve already cracked wide open and there’s no stuffing this back down.
“You don’t talk to me unless you’re insulting me. You don’t touch me. You don’t evenlookat me if anyone else is around. So, what the hell do you want, Mandrake?”
His mouth opens like he’s going to speak, but I don’t give him the chance.
“You think I don’t know what I am to you? What I’llneverbe?” My voice drops, bitter. “I’m used goods, right? Not clean enough. Not untouched enough. Not good enough.”
That makes something flicker across his face, something sharp and violent. But I don’t care.
“So can you just... please... leave me the fuck alone?”
Silence.
Not even the creak of the swing between us. Just wind, dust, and the reality of everything I’ve never said until now.
And then I turn, ready to walk back inside like I didn’t just tear myself in half in front of him.
But he grabs my wrist.
Not hard. Not like a threat.
Just enough to stop me. Just enough to make mefeelhis skin on mine, rough and warm andreal.
I freeze. Not because I’m scared, but because it’s the first time he’s touched me like this. Not in passing. Not a brush of fingers over a glass I’m handing off. Not some accidental graze that leaves my skin burning for hours.
This is deliberate.
“Don’t,” he says. Voice low. Rough. Like he’s chewing glass just to get the word out. “Don’t say that shit about yourself.”
I still don’t look at him. I don’twantto look at him. Because if I do, I’ll fall into that storm in his eyes, and I’m barely holding it together as it is.
“You think I haven’t noticed?” he goes on, softer now, but still with that edge like he’s fighting something inside himself. “Every damn day. You behind that bar. You pretending you’re fine. You laughing like it don’t cost you something.”
My throat tightens.
“You’re not… used goods,” he says, like it physically hurts him to say the words. “You’reSkye. You’re the only thing in this place that still feels clean.”
