Hush - Anne Malcom Page 0,94
the food.
“I didn’t mean it,” April said quietly once the woman left.
“Yes, you did,” Orion replied through a mouthful of her tiramisu. Her table manners left a lot to be desired. The trailer park would always show through.
April opened her mouth to protest and then shut it again. Orion watched her think. “Okay, I did,” she relented.
Orion almost smiled at her.
“I was being a bitch.”
“Yes, you were,” Orion agreed. “But so was I.”
“We’re just a couple of bitches then,” April said, lifting her glass.
“I’ll toast to that.”
April called Eric about halfway through the second bottle of wine. She wasn’t drunk. Teenage binge drinking and young adult casual drinking gave her a tolerance that most forty-year-old soldiers didn’t have.
She wasn’t drunk, but definitely had loosened inhibitions. Loose enough to call the man she was not so secretly in love with to give them a ride home. Of course he answered, and of course he turned up at the restaurant with an easy smile and a kick-ass leather jacket.
“You came to Maria’s without me, called me here to pick you up, and the kitchen is closed? You couldn’t have called me thirty minutes earlier?” he asked with faux anger.
April smiled. No, she beamed at the man. “Oh, as if you’d let carbs and fats inside that body, that temple of yours.”
He smiled—no, he beamed back. “Normally, that is true. But not with Maria.”
April rolled her eyes and then handed over a wrapped package she’d been hiding behind her back. “I’m not that selfish.”
Their fingers brushed as she handed the bag to him. If someone tried to describe the moment to Orion, she would’ve rolled her eyes. Because something passed between them with that simple touch. Something that even Orion, in her cold and empty heart, could feel. It was as if the two of them had just realized they were the only people left in the world.
She felt like a voyeur, like she was peeking in on a moment that was pure and right, and making it ugly and tarnished.
Luckily, as moments do, it ended.
Things worked under the guise of normal after that. Eric spoke to Orion, was polite, friendly, and warm. They all got into the car, spoke about light things. But there was an undertone. Even someone ignorant in matters of love and romance—someone stunted, crippled for life in those matters—could see it. Taste it in the fucking air. It was all she could do not to vomit all over Eric’s nice leather seats.
She was thankful when he let her out first. This was hopefully tactical. Hopefully, he’d make a move on April, though she was sure it was going to be the other way around.
Eric was the kind of guy that walked Orion up to her door. He would not be convinced otherwise. He was also the kind of man to order April to lock the doors while she waited for him to come back. She was the kind of woman to argue.
They didn’t talk much on the way up. Some casual conversation, but Orion didn’t do small talk and Eric didn’t seem to mind.
She was aware that she was spending time with the other half of the homicide squad investigating the murder she’d committed.
“Don’t fuck it up,” she said as they arrived at her door.
He raised his brow in surprise.
“April,” she clarified. “I’m not good with feelings. I don’t have them like other people do. That’s not how I am anymore. But I see what April is. What you are. I see what happens in the bowels of fucking hell, or life as I know it. You’ve seen it too. Grab onto that kind, crazy, little bitch. Don’t fuck around. Don’t make excuses. Just hold on to the one thing that might give you a semblance of happiness. Until it all falls apart at least.”
Orion was surprised at her own words. For interjecting herself further into April’s life. The life of cops. Was it the wine, or was it this other half of her, freed from the monster, finally finding her voice?
Eric looked sufficiently stunned too, but to his credit did not try to deny what he felt for April. “I won’t fuck it up,” he said. “Or, at least, I’ll try my best not to.”
Orion nodded, uncomfortable. She met his hazel eyes. “If you break her heart, I’ll kill you.” She hadn’t planned on saying that either. She sure as shit hadn’t planned on being so damn serious about it, but April meant something to her, for