scalp. Would touching you make it worse?”
“You touching me will never make it worse. If you’re willing to try, go ahead.”
Using my knees for leverage, she got to her feet and moved behind my chair. She blew on her hands, mumbled some words I didn’t understand, and then speared her fingers through my hair. Like she was a missile locked on target, she found the places that flared with pain without fail.
My eyes dropped closed on a sigh.
She hummed low in her throat as she pressed the pads of her fingers into the muscles of my skull and rubbed. Big circles. Little circles. Zigzags and triangles. I lost track of all the different ways she manipulated the muscles; the end result was heaven. The pain floated away like it had never existed.
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath. “That was amazing.” I grabbed her hand and kissed the palm. “How did you do that?” I pulled her around so I could look at her beautiful face.
Her cheeks were pink. “A little magic, a little massage. We call it kneading, but I like your word for moving muscles better.” She searched my face. “The pain is gone.”
I nodded. “I’ve never had one let go that quickly before. Thank you, Stretch.”
She smiled as she giggled a little. “I’m just glad it helped you. How many do you get?”
“About one a week. Maybe two if I’m really stressed.” I shrugged. Migraines were a normal part of my life.
Her face squished up in disgust. “No. That won’t do. I’ll give you a list. We’ll make you better.” She brushed a kiss to my cheek. As if she’d been doing it for years, she looped her arm around my neck and sat on my lap like she belonged there.
“Do you or Grumpy have chronic pain of any kind?” she asked Tove.
Our youngest brother shook his head. “Nope. But anytime you want to scratch your nails through my hair or over my skin, you just let me know, Hols.” His eyes darkened.
She blew him a kiss and turned to Tag. “What about you?”
He just smiled.
I snorted. “He hurt his back before he got out of the Marines. Every once in a while, it will give him some issues. He’ll just down a couple handfuls of ibuprofen and call it good.”
Hollyn gasped. “What happened to your lower back, grumpy?”
He slanted me a glare, before looking back at our girl. “One of my buddies got hit inside a blast zone. He went up into the air and landed on me.”
“Will you please tell me if it bothers you? I would like to help if I can,” she said softly.
Tag, the man who didn’t like being told what to do or asking for help until he was either hospitalized or on his deathbed, folded like a deck of cards under Stretch’s gaze. “Yeah, sweetcheeks. I’ll tell you.”
“Thank you, grumpy.”
“What are we going to do about the Ainsley situation, Thane?” Tove asked. “We can't get involved in the investigation.”
“Why did the lady on TV say that you are?” Stretch asked. “I know you didn’t kill that man and I just met you a couple days ago.”
Had it really only been a couple days? It felt like Stretch had always been a part of our lives. Part of the glue that helped keep us together and happy.
“It’s not that we killed him. But Ainsley can make it look that way. She’s the one who called the police with the ‘tip.’”
“And just so Grumpy understands, the police are what again?” Stretch asked as she shot a wink at Tag.
I explained what the police were and what they did for our society.
“Right. I knew that,” she said. Even she was unable to hide her smile this time. “We never had anything like that. We just had the tribunal if someone broke one of the rules.”
“What kind of rules had to be broken to go before the tribunal?” Tove asked. “That sounds big and important.”
Stretch shrugged. “I don’t know. I never got called to one. I just know that all the village elders had to have one at least once a week. Different people would get pulled in at different times.”
Tove nodded. “Well, I’m glad you weren’t breaking the rules all the time. Gives me hope of you being up here by yourself without a lot of trouble.”
Stretch rolled her lips in, scrunched her brows into a serious expression.
I groaned. “You just didn’t get caught, did you?”
She had a ‘sorry, not sorry’