All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,46
way, but I wish you couldn’t see me like this.”
Oh. Oh no. He was embarrassed. “You did something really brave tonight, Tucker. I’m only sorry I couldn’t protect you better.”
Tucker nodded, tears sliding from the corners of his eyes to his pillow.
“That’s nice of you. You didn’t seem this nice when I first got here. I like you nice. It must be the kitten.”
“No,” Angel whispered, almost sure he’d fallen asleep. “It was that you wanted a kitten for yourself, and you picked one out for me.” She kept up the stroke through his hair, and he smiled and tilted his face into her touch.
“Feels nice,” he murmured. “Real human touch. Not sexual. God, I miss it.”
Angel gasped—but she didn’t pause. She kept up the motion, figuring it was soothing him as he slept. She was exhausted too, and she lost track of time. One moment she was running her fingers through Tucker’s hair, and the next, she was asleep as she sat, kitten on her lap, chin tucked against her chest.
“BUT YOU took apart the bed! It’s in the hallway! Why would you do that if you’re not going to finish?”
Tucker grunted and threw a knapsack with sandwiches and water bottles into the truck. “I wanted to get the bed out of the way so we didn’t have to… feel it anymore.”
No other pieces of the puzzle of Sophie, Bridget, the monstrous father-in-law, and the mysterious brother had been found on the bed.
But the aftermath of that touch had put Tucker out of commission for another day. Twelve hours after the brush, twelve hours after the bed. It was slowly dawning on Angel that having a more powerful empath was not always to their benefit. When Angel had been dealing with Ruth, they’d been able to get to the catharsis of the soul after a week or less—but not at this rate. Not with Tucker. Of course, Angel had openly admitted that she’d given Ruth the easiest of the jobs, but this one? This one wasn’t easy. There were too many pieces in motion with these objects and these ghosts, and some of them were too painful to touch more than once.
“But why not finish with the room?” Angel asked almost desperately. Tucker looked so tired! His body moved slowly as he swung himself up into the cab, and as Angel materialized next to him, she felt a twinge of bitterness. Couldn’t he just do something human? Something physical and not empathic? Ruth used to garden, clean house, even, when she was younger, have friends over for cards. “Why can’t you spend a couple of days doing something normal?”
Tucker grunted. “You’re the one with an agenda, Angel. Don’t get all upset with me now that I’ve jumped on the ‘let’s clear the ghosts the fuck out of here’ bandwagon!”
“This is not good for you,” Angel said crossly, and was rewarded with one of Tucker’s manic little-boy smiles.
“You sound like my mother!”
Angel caught her breath. She knew Tucker’s mother and father had died fifteen years earlier in a car crash. Ruth had been devastated, and Angel had been… unaware. Unaware of human grieving and how hard it must have been for Ruth to exorcise other people’s ghosts when her heart was laden with the memory of her own people, whom she loved. Angel hadn’t wondered, then, why Ruth wouldn’t ask Tucker to come live with her. Now that she saw the extent of Tucker’s abilities, she thought she knew.
If Tucker had come to Daisy Place when he was a young man, it would have destroyed him. He would have been trapped here, wretched and bitter, before his time.
Ruth had kept him away, living on a stipend, to give him a chance to live, and whatever had happened to Tucker to make him so angry now, there were still deep pockets of kindness, like gold ore, and enthusiasm, buried like silver, in the mysterious caves of Tucker’s heart.
“What did your mother sound like?” Angel asked softly. Suddenly it became imperative to know.
“She was always telling me not to study so hard, to eat well, to remember my sweater. Don’t pet that strange dog. Don’t walk barefoot where there were stickers and bees. Don’t stand next to a draft. It was like my whole life she was giving me advice to protect myself, and then nothing could….” He swallowed.
“Protect you from losing her,” Angel filled in. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, “What about your father?”