Page 48 of Deadwood
“Giving you my jacket.”
“Why?”
He took a step toward me, jacket in hand. “You’re wet, cold, and exposed. Unless you would rather not have it?”
“People will wonder why I’m wearing it,” I said, which was such a vacuous excuse.
“You can tell them whatever story you’d like, Princess, but covering up would best suit you tonight.” He crouched a few feet from me, holding the jacket out toward me, his blood-stained dagger in his other hand.
I stared at the jacket in his grip, my mind warring with itself over the fact that he was, in fact, a criminal, and yet, he’d saved me. Why was he in my father’s castle if he was a criminal? “They wanted to kill me.”
Bowen studied me as he inhaled. “They did.”
“Why?”
His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “There could be many reasons.”
Our eyes met. “Are you like them?”
He hesitated, thinking on his answer. “No.”
“Then why do people fear you? Why does my father not like you?”
He stood, stepping closer, then kneeled again to wrap his jacket around my shoulders. For some reason, I let him. I realized my question wasn’t the brightest, as he’d clearly just buried multiple daggers in three men and was covered in ink, proving he was a thief, but my mind wasn’t working coherently at the moment and his voice kept me in the present rather than the spiraling of my mind.
“People fear things for an abundance of reasons,” he replied.
I brushed a wet strand of hair off my cheek. The mask stuck to my face uncomfortably, and with the tangle of my hair, it’d be a pain to get the knot undone. “What are your reasons?”
His eyes met mine again, and somehow, I found a sliver of escape in them. What beauty was found in the sky, when he held it all right there?
“We all have our secrets, Princess. Some are just kept for better reasons.”
“Is there ever a good reason to have them?” With the removal of his jacket, he clearly wasn’t afraid of me seeing the tattoos littering his skin. But what else could he be hiding?
His shoulders slumped the barest amount as his eyes softened. “I like to believe so.”
“You’re not wearing a mask,” I acknowledged, changing the subject. I needed to keep talking or I feared the panic would set in.
“I’m not.”
“Do you not celebrate Exitium Lunae?”
His body instantly went rigid again before he straightened, turning to grab his dagger from the man’s body on the shore. “No.”
“Why not? I thought everyone did.” I kept peppering him with questions for fear he’d leave. If he did, I’d be alone again. Vulnerable.
He shoved the body onto its side with ease, extracting his dagger from the man’s chest. With a thump, the man was face-first in the sand once again as Bowen moved to run his dagger through the water. “Holidays aren’t my thing.”
“But killing is?”
He wiped the blade on his thigh, sheathed it in his belt, and stood. “If you believe the deaths of these men were all in good fun, I think you should replay the events of what happened before they took their last breaths.”
A shiver skated down my spine at the all too fresh memory.
“You should get back to the castle,” he said, not looking at me.
I pushed to a stand, his jacket still draped around my shoulders. I pulled it tighter around me, my wet hair and dress catching the cool night air like a web. I should heed his direction and turn in for the night, but curiosity kept me rooted in place. “Why are you out here if you’re not celebrating?”
