we’d score food.”
“Yeah,” Freddie said, his eyes half closed but his grin widening. “It worked.”
“And you smelled like shit,” I pointed out. Literal shit. They were using compost and manure, and we had to shovel it.
Worst. Job. Ever.
Freddie groaned as he laughed. “But I keep thinking about those tomatoes. So juicy…”
Yeah. The food had been good, even if it had made him sick because we gorged on too much of it.
His laughter faded away, and his breathing evened. But he really had turned the corner, and when I glanced over, Jasper had his chin tucked into his chest and his arms folded while he stretched his legs out. The light snores punctuated Freddie’s deeper breaths.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I stretched out in the chair to wait for Doc. The sooner we got Freddie better, the sooner I got to see Dove again. On my phone, I opened up the web page that led to her videos. I’d watched all her dances and silk performances a hundred times.
Still, I watched them again, and I searched for…something. Something to tell me what secrets she still housed. Secrets that once we exposed, we could deal with and keep her safe.
Because no matter what anyone said, I would make sure she was all right first and foremost.
Even if it meant letting her go.
Chapter 9
Emersyn
It was the second morning in a row that Kestrel took me with him to the auto body shop where he worked. I almost hated to admit how excited I was to roll over when he knocked on the door to my room.
“Breakfast downstairs in fifteen, Sparrow. We can grab some fancy coffee for you on the way to the shop.”
No argument from me. I dressed warmer than I had the day before, though. I didn’t have any heavy sweatshirts of my own that weren’t half cut up for dancing. When I mentioned that, Kestrel walked into his closet and came out with a heavy black and gray pullover cable knit sweater.
He eyed me a beat, then my feet. “You have heavier shoes?”
I glanced down at the running shoes I had on over double socks. The yoga pants weren’t that warm either.
“Not really, what’s wrong with these?”
“They won’t protect your toes if something heavy falls on them. You need steel-toed boots for the shop.”
“That’s what you said yesterday, and I basically stayed in the office.” Where they made the awful coffee and it smelled like week-old gym socks. The peeling linoleum and desk that only stayed even because there was a half-torn and mutilated paperback propping up one broken foot weren’t so bad in the face of the others.
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Here.” He tugged the sweater over my head. The act was so like Vaughn, I rolled my eyes and laughed. The action pulled some tendrils from my braid, but this wasn’t a performance and I didn’t need to be perfect.
In fact, a little messy seemed to fit right in. Something Kestrel pointed out when I’d come all the way back with grease on my nose from where he’d tapped it and I hadn’t seen it until I was getting ready for bed.
The night before had also been some of the best sleep I’d had in weeks. I needed to up my workouts. I hadn’t danced the day before, but I would today. I would also work on stretching out at the shop so I could walk right into the studio when I got back.
“You didn’t want to stay in the office,” Kestrel reminded me as I tucked my arm into the sleeves and he smoothed the sweater over my hips. It dwarfed me like it was a sweater dress, and if I had the right boots, it would look pretty snazzy with the yoga pants.
Not that I was going for fashion. Kestrel hooked one of the loose tendrils around his finger, and the barest pull kept me in place as he studied me.
He was waiting for a response to his earlier comment, and I rolled my eyes. “It smells in the office.”
A soft huff of laughter teased my cheek before he pressed a kiss to it and then let me go. Surprise rippled through me, but he was already moving, and he gave my ass a playful tap. “Move it, Sparrow, we need to feed that growling stomach of yours since there’s no reason to starve yourself.”
I barely covered the thrill that went through me at the action. This Kestrel was so different from the