Page 40 of Dukes of Peril

“What?” I ask, straining with my other arm to secure the auxiliary arm with the nut.

“That looks like a good way to lose a limb.” The sound of Remy’s rough, quiet voice makes my stomach swoop in a complicated way.

“That’d only happen if the clock actually turned.” I grunt, reaching around a gear to tighten the threads.

I feel him behind me just as much as I hear him. He has all the presence of a throbbing wound. “These the diagrams?” At my answering hum, I hear papers shifting. “Jesus, these must be a hundred years old.” There’s a long stretch of silence where I begin feeling the prickling of annoyance. The problem with Remy is that he’s so unavoidable.

His energy.

His eyes.

His face.

Satisfied with the tension of the spring, I slowly extricate myself from the mechanics, fingers greasy and smudged, and finally turn to him.

Hisbody.

He’s shirtless, pants slung low on his waist, and I freeze as I watch him scan the paper. A hand moves to rake his damp hair back, away from his eyes. It’s an idle gesture that makes the corded muscles beneath his inked skin shift and flex.

And then he looks up, meeting my gaze. “Do you know what’s wrong with it?”

I turn off the attraction like a switch. “Yeah.” I drop the wrench into the toolbox. “It’s broken.”

He blinks. “Oh.”

I gesture to the large crank at my hip. “It won’t wind. It’s like it’s stuck or something.” I stop short of giving him a demonstration; my small figure struggling comically to push at whatever twisted metal is preventing it from working.

Reaching up to scratch absently at his scruff, he offers, “Obviously I’m useless, but you should ask Sy to try. He’s the strongest one here.” After a beat, he adds, “Don’t tell him I said that.”

“It won’t matter,” I reply, tossing a spanner with the rest of the tools.

His eyes follow the metallic crash. “I’ve been taking my meds,” he says. His brow instantly puckers, like maybe he wasn’t intending to.

I wipe my hands with the dirty towel slung over the toolbox. “I know.” I’ve seen the bottles all lined up in the bathroom, sometimes open, sometimes not.

His eyes flash in surprise, the line of his mouth softening. “They’re still orange, but I do it.” After a beat, he stresses, “I’ll keep doing it.”

Nodding, I say nothing. It’s a constant misery inside my chest to be met with warring absolutes. Part of me still buzzes to life at his attention, while the other half wilts beneath the weight of it. My heart wants so badly to see him like this–alert, clear, rebounding–and it also withers at the knowledge I wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t enough for him.

Just looking at him makes my throat go tight. “Did you want something?”

It’s been an unspoken agreement that we were giving each other space. Sometimes, that night on the cliffs doesn’t even feel real, and I find myself relating to all of Remy’s doubts about the first time he did it. Other times, I’ll look at the scabbing cuts on my legs and remember the words he whispered before we jumped, and it’ll be so real that I need to get away, take a breath.

Like now.

He ducks his head, grabbing something from the table beside him. “Give me a hand with this?” It takes me a long moment to realize he’s holding the sling and a shirt. “Sy’s busy with some lab report and Nick’s on the phone with his Pops.” His mouth turns down unhappily. “My shoulder’s still a little fucked up.”

“Of course.” I drop the towel and bring up the armor, marching forward to take the shirt from him. It’s nothing. This bare expanse of chest? It’s just skin. Flesh and bone, nothing more. “You going somewhere?” I ask, keeping my words light and direct.

“Yeah, this meeting thing.” He reaches to run his hand through his hair, but then winces at the pain and drops his arm. “Over at the student center.”

“Meeting?” I ask, gesturing to his bad arm. He extends it slowly, wincing, and I thread it through the sleeve without even having to touch him. It’s a buttondown, so I move behind him, easing the shirt up his shoulder, and then around his back for his good arm.

“Sy found it for me,” he explains, words quiet but oddly tense. “It’s like… a support group. You know, for… addicts and stuff.”

I only pause for a second. “Oh, right.” His scent surrounds me like a blanket, muted from what I’m used to. There’s no edge of paint or solvent about him, just the masculine spice of his body wash–maybe deodorant. It still makes my belly flip, even though I’m careful not to show it on my face. “That sounds… good.”

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