Chapter 119: HOW DID YOU DO IT?

Chapter 120

Ren

I wiped the tear off her cheek with my thumb, and she laughed at herself, a wet and embarrassed little sound, and then she leaned her whole weight into my side as if she had finally decided to stop holding herself up for a while.

I didn’t say anything else, because some things don’t need an answer, only a place to land.

We sat on that kerb until the ice cream had melted down our wrists and the sun had slid low enough to turn every shop window gold.

She kept stealing bites of my mint chocolate chip while pretending she wasn’t, and I kept pretending not to notice, and somewhere in the middle of it she rested her head on my shoulder and just breathed.

That was when my chest began to hurt.

It wasn’t a sharp pain, but a slow and heavy one, the kind that settles in when you can feel someone you love hurting even while she smiles.

I had felt it all day through the bond, a thin cold thread of Theo’s name running underneath her laughter, and every time it pulled tight I wanted to put my fist through the nearest wall.

I could bear a lot of things, silver and chains and a courtroom full of liars, but I had never learned how to bear Lumi in pain. It went through me like it was mine.

So I stood up and held out my hand.

"Walk with me," I said.

"Where to?"

"The sea’s at the end of the lane."

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Is this one of your plans?"

"It’s a very small plan."

"Your small plans are the dangerous ones," she said, but she took my hand anyway.

.......

The beach was almost empty, only a man with a metal detector far off and a dog chasing gulls in a hopeless, happy circle.

The tide was going out and the sand was damp and dark, and Lumi stopped at the edge of it and looked down at her boots as though they had personally let her down.

"Don’t," I said.

"I’m not doing anything."

"You’re going to take them off."

"I’m going to take them off," she agreed, and sat down on the sea wall and tugged at the laces with a look of such pure greed that I had to turn my head and smile at the water.

She ran out onto the wet sand with her jeans rolled up to her knees, and I watched her stand there with the foam sliding over her ankles.

She shrieked at the cold and then laughed at herself for shrieking. She bent down, picked up a shell, held it to the light, and put it in my jacket pocket as if I was her personal pair of hands.

"Wait there," I called. "I need to make a call."

"Is it pack business?"

"It’s boring business."

"Boring men say boring things like that," she shouted back, and went off to chase the foam.

I walked up the beach until she was far enough away that the wind carried my voice off the other way, and then I pulled my phone out and dialled a number I’d saved weeks ago, the day I’d first thought of doing this and hadn’t known when I would.

"Dina," I said, when she picked up. "It’s Ren. Is she coming?"

"She’s already here," said Dina, and I could hear a pan banging behind her and a man shouting about onions.

"My mother’s sitting on a stool in Bram’s kitchen telling everybody they’re doing it wrong. Honestly, Alpha, she hasn’t been this happy in years."

"And the sauce?"

"She wouldn’t let me touch the sauce."

I shut my eyes and let out a breath. For years, Marta’s little stall behind the old bus depot had sold the best smoky pepper chicken in the whole county, with butter rice and fried plantain and a sweet tomato sauce nobody had ever managed to copy.

Then Marta’s knees gave out, the stall closed, and the recipe went back into her head where nobody could reach it.

It was one of the last thing Lumi and I ever ate together before she left for London, the two of us on the depot wall at midnight with paper plates and sauce on our chins, and she’d said, with her mouth full, I could eat this forever.

That night, we’d tried so many things together to cover up the times that we’d be apart. I’d insisted actually and she had agreed to what her friends little brother wanted.

Now here we are. I had never forgotten it. I didn’t know why I’d been saving it until today.

"Eight o’clock," I told Dina. "Please make sure it’s hot."

"For you, Alpha? It’ll be on fire."

I hung up and turned around, Lumi was waving both arms at me from the waterline with her hair blown all over her face.

My heart did what it always did when I saw her like that, which was behave very stupidly.

.......

I knew there’d be food at home. Neve would have left a pot of something on the stove, and Julian would have eaten half of it already.

And the two of them would sit at the table pretending not to wait up for us. I knew all of that, and I still turned the bike toward the harbour instead, because a quiet house meant a quiet mind, and a quiet mind was where Theo’s name would find her again.

I didn’t want her to be quiet tonight. I wanted her to be loud and full and delighted.

"This isn’t the way home," she said into my back.

"I know."

"Ren."

"You’ll like it."

"You said that about the pancakes."

"And you liked the pancakes."

"I finished the pancake," she corrected, "which isn’t the same thing," and I laughed so hard I nearly missed the turn.

Bram’s place sat at the end of the harbour with its windows glowing amber over the water, and when I held the door open for her, a warm cloud of garlic and woodsmoke rolled out and wrapped around us.

Bram himself was waiting just inside, a big grey-bearded man with a dish towel over his shoulder, and he gave me one slow, solemn nod that told me everything was in place.

"Corner table, Alpha," he said. "Window seat. Like you asked."

Lumi blinked at the two of us. "Like you asked?"

"I might have rung ahead."

"You might have what?"

I steered her to the booth before she could cross-examine me, and she slid into the seat by the window with her eyes still narrowed.

I sat down right beside her, because I couldn’t be across a table from her tonight. When the waiter came, I didn’t open the menu.

"The pepper chicken," I said. "Butter rice, fried plantain, extra sauce, and a lemonade with far too much ice."

Lumi went completely still.

It was only for a second, and I doubt anyone else would have noticed, but I felt it, a small shock rippling down the bond.

She turned her head slowly and looked at me, and her mouth opened a little and closed again.

"That’s not on the menu," she said quietly. "Is it? I’ve been here before. It’s never been on the menu."

"Just wait."

"Ren, what did you do?"

"Drink your lemonade."

She did, because the waiter had already put it in front of her, but I could see her thinking so hard that a tiny line appeared between her eyebrows.

Her knee bounced under the table, and she tapped her nails against the glass, and twice she opened her mouth to ask again and then thought better of it.

I leaned back and watched her instead, because I didn’t want to miss a single second.

Ten minutes went by, and then the kitchen doors swung open, and the waiter came across the floor carrying a heavy white plate with steam curling off it in long lazy ribbons.

He set it down in front of her, and the smell hit us both at once, smoke and pepper and sweet browned butter, and I watched her face.

It changed slowly, and I will keep it for the rest of my life.

First came confusion, her brows drawing together and her lips parting like she’d been about to say something sensible.

Then her eyes dropped to the plate and the confusion cracked, because there was the dark, crackling skin of the chicken, the gold of the plantain, and the sauce, that deep red sauce, pooled at the side exactly as it used to be.

Her hand rose to her mouth. Her eyes went wide and then very bright, and her shoulders, which had been wound tight since morning, dropped half an inch and then another.

She looked at me with her whole face open.

And how I would do anything, burn down anything, for that look.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "How did you do it?"