I cleared my throat as emotions I hadn’t acknowledged in years surged to the surface. I did not want to cry in front of him. I barely knew him. Somehow sleeping with him would have been less intimate than sharing my family history and tearing up over it. I didn’t cry in front of anyone; I couldn’t afford that kind of weakness. Only strength mattered. I had to stay strong.
His expression darkened as he watched me, and his fingers dug into my ankle in slightly more than a reassuring grip. “They suggested abandoning you? They told you this?”
“They didn’t have to,” I said. I couldn’t meet his gaze. He’d probably grown up in some idyllic wolf pack, surrounded by support and love, and wouldn’t understand the burden of being such a disappointment to one’s family. “They fought about it all the time. They tried to leave me with a coven once, but the coven wasn’t…very nice, and I managed to escape and found them before my folks could skip town...” I trailed off, distracted by the horrible memory of being surrounded by the coven members who’d wanted to use me in a ritual.
Henry growled deep in his chest and kept up the gentle pressure on my ankle. “That is horrible. They deserve death for such a thing.”
I attempted a smile. “You didn’t know me when I was a kid. They didn’t have any other choice.”
“No child deserves that,” he said, with enough fierceness that I had no doubt he believed it all the way to his core.
It was an easy thing to say though, since he didn’t know all the awful things I’d done. Burning down houses, even if it was by accident, tended to alienate one’s family, the neighbors, the coven... and it drew the attention of the police and Child Services when that was the last thing witches needed.
When I didn’t speak, Henry made a rough noise and squeezed my foot more. “You didn’t deserve that.”
He desperately wanted me to believe it. I wasn’t sure whether it was possible, since I had the evidence in front of me every day, in every memory. The silence stretched and I wondered how long he would stay. A guy like him couldn’t possibly just want to talk, though he hadn’t picked a very sexy topic. Maybe he’d disengage and go find someone else to sleep with. But Henry was sprawled out and looked unmovable as a boulder, his whole arm draped over my legs as he watched me.
He reminded me of Cricket suddenly—he’d started with a hand on my ankle, then his arm over that ankle, then the arm over both legs, then sprawling closer. It didn’t strike me as seductive, like he meant to make more of it. No, it felt more like comfort. An urge to soothe the uneasiness out of me. My head rested back against the headboard as I watched him, waiting for him to run away like everyone else in my life that I wanted to stay.
Why was it only the people who hurt me who wanted to stick around?
Henry’s foot moved and toed my loom, though part of his attention remained on my face. “When did you start with the crafting? Weaving and…other stuff?”
“Oh.” I craned my neck to frown at where the loom rested on the floor, and thought absently that I should ease the tension on the warp before I went to bed. But I didn’t want to move. Fatigue weighed me down and it grew harder to keep my eyes open. Henry radiated heat and a comfortable confidence, and the fear that usually kept me awake through the night dissipated in his very capable presence. “I dunno. I started knitting when I was little and learned how to put some magic into it, and that seemed to be the only thing that helped my control.”
He sat up a little and sniffed the air as he peered at the loom, then at the bag of yarn. “You put magic into it?”
I sat up so I could maybe show him, but Henry didn’t move from where he sprawled across my legs, and blinked at me when my face got closer to his. So I gestured lamely at the bag of yarn. “Yeah. I can make the magic into just another strand that’s knitted or woven into the cloth, and if I siphon off that energy, the rest of it left over isn’t quite so out of control.”