Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,91
deer bone? Cow?”
He nodded. “Deer, yeah, how’d you know?”
I tipped my head at his cap. “That’s camo, and there’s a silhouette of a deer on it.”
“Ah, and here I thought you were a hunter as well.”
“Not of animals,” I assured him. I was, on occasion, a hunter of men when I was in bodyguard mode. “But if you’re telling people that you can tell the difference between cow and deer bones just by looking at them, you’re fulla shit.”
He snorted, bumping me with his shoulder. “No, no, that’s crap.”
“Did you make it?”
“I did,” he replied, turning it so I could see the marking that he’d carved and then burned into the small piece of smooth bone.
“It’s very artful.”
“Do you know what it is?” he asked, his gaze meeting mine.
“Yeah,” I answered, smiling at him as he leaned toward me. “You made a svefnþorn, a sleep thorn.”
He was surprised, and the smile I got was big and wide. “That’s right,” he said, moving closer, his knee bumping mine. “Nobody ever knows that. How the hell do you know that?”
I grinned at him. “My mother. I used to sleep with one of those, or I should say, one of whichever one I could find in my room. There were four altogether, a set, each one different, but they did the same thing.”
He nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Mine weren’t made of bone, though. She carved them out of palo santo. That’s way more her. She doesn’t much go in for animal bone.”
“Vegetarian?”
“Well, she doesn’t eat red meat, but it’s more about bringing whatever happened to that animal into her sacred space.”
“Like how it was killed.”
“Yeah. The energy of that.”
He tipped his head at me. “I gotta tell you, she sounds a bit nutty.”
I felt myself squint, and there was a prickling on the back of my neck. I could tease her, I could say things about her, but only me because my love ran so deep. I was a mama’s boy, and while some people used that as an insult, I never understood why. Anyone who loved their mother, didn’t that mean they could love you too?
“Oh, man, I didn’t mean it,” he said, squeezing my knee. “I think it’s amazing she made those for you. I have a friend who’s having trouble sleeping, so I made it for him.”
Placated enough, I nodded. “That’s nice of you.”
“I figured since they’re described in the Sagas as a charm used to put someone to sleep, it’ll help him when I’m not around.”
“So, more than a friend, then?”
“What makes you say that?”
“When you’re not around?” I said, paraphrasing what he’d said.
He shrugged and rubbed the small piece of bone in his hand.
“How come you can’t be around?”
He cleared his throat. “He’s…he’s married.”
I never knew what to say to that. Saying you were sorry wasn’t appropriate, it felt like an endorsement of cheating, and casting aspersions on a marriage you knew nothing about seemed unfair. Conversely, there could be mitigating factors that kept two people in a loveless marriage. But since Dez was clearly hurting, I clamped a hand down on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” I stated, because that, at least, was all his, and I did feel bad that he was miserable.
His gaze was back on mine. “I had no idea he was married until I was already in too deep to get out.”
“Sure,” I said lamely, wondering how it was that some people just knew things, were so perceptive, like my boss, my mother, my old partner when I was a detective, Chelle Amos, who used to shake her head and tell me who was full of shit and cheating on their better half. Some people just didn’t ask the right questions, and I always wondered why.
Dropping my hand, I sighed deeply. “I didn’t mean to––”
“No, you didn’t,” he rasped, pressing sideways against me before he slipped his arm around my shoulders. “You’ve been—I haven’t talked, really talked, to someone in a long time.”
“I know how that is,” I told him as he turned his head, and I felt his warm breath on the side of my neck before his lips grazed my skin. “So, we should get some water,” I suggested because suddenly I understood that, yes, he was in some semblance of a relationship with a man who he didn’t sleep well without, a man who was married, but he was ready to make me a diversion.
It was the beer that had slowed my reflexes and had my mind drifting while I should have