Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
For now.
But it’s gonna get old real soon.
I ignore everyone, and they ignore me back, as I go back upstairs and enter the apartment. The door to the bathroom is open and there’s a cloud of steam hanging in the air in front of it.
I find Callistina back on the couch, wrapped in a towel and folded all up the same way she was before.
“I have food,” I say, setting it all down on the coffee table.
She doesn’t move.
“Sit up, Callistina. You need to eat something.”
I’m expecting a fight over this. Or indifference. But to my surprise she actually does what I tell her. Her eyes meet mine. They are… well, they’re kinda hard to describe. They could be brown. They’re just not. But they’re not quite yellow, either. She looks right at me as she adjusts her towel, and then says, in a low whisper, “You shall call me queen.”
“Right.” I chuckle a little, but it’s mostly out of frustration. “My queen. I didn’t know how you like your burger, so I just got it well-done with extra cheese, since that seems to be the standard operatin’ procedure these days.”
Her eyes dart to the food on the table and she lets out a long breath.
I open up the containers and then hand her a burger that’s halfway wrapped in paper. Which is a nice touch from this diner, I think, since you can hold the burger without getting your hands dirty.
She looks at it for a moment, then takes a bite. It’s a small, tentative bite. But as she’s swallowing, I catch a smile.
“OK.” I take my burger and lean back on the couch, kicking my feet out to stretch my legs. “It’s funny,” I say, “that we’ve been living together for a couple months now and I’ve never seen you eat. Have you been eating, Callistina?”
She doesn’t look at me. Her answer, as she chews on a French fry, is simply, “You shall call me queen.”
“Yeah. I keep forgetting.” Whatever last night was, it’s over now. She’s not going to talk to me. Not tonight, anyway.
I finish my food first, but she’s only about a minute behind me, so I clean up as she polishes off the rest of her burger. When I turn back to her from the small kitchen, she has dropped her towel to the floor and is already climbing into bed, naked.
Now this isn’t anything unusual. It’s been going on for nearly two months. She and I are… uh… well, I’m not sure what we are, I just know we’ve been sleeping together this whole time. Beyond that, I haven’t given it much thought. And I’m pretty sure she has given it zero thought.
But now, for some reason, after I rescued her from the fog and we had a bite to eat together, it feels much more intimate than it did and I’m not sure what to do.
I would like to fuck her. Which is what I normally do. But today doesn’t feel like a normal day.
She’s already under the sheet by the time I’m having this internal debate, so obviously, Callistina has no opinion on this.
I shrug and throw up my hands. Then I turn the lights out, strip off the boots and pants, and get in bed next to her. I’m lying on my back, wings pressing into my shoulder blades, and staring up at the shadows on the ceiling, wondering what to do next.
That’s when I hear her sniffling.
She’s crying.
As a rule, I don’t respond to crying women. It’s a hassle that I just don’t have the patience for. And if she had started crying two nights ago, I wouldn’t even hesitate. I’d get up and walk out. I’d find another place to sleep. I am not the kind of god who soothes. That’s not my thing.
I don’t have any intention of soothing Callistina tonight, but I don’t have an urge to get up and leave her, either. So once again, I get caught up in overthinking things.
But just as I’m about to close my eyes and sleep, pretending none of this is happening—just get this day over with so I can start a new one—she turns over and reaches for me. One hand snuggling up under my shoulder, the other stretching out across my chest, her head positioned somewhere in between.
I go stiff, but she begins to cry harder.
And then I’m right back to where I was.
Why is she here?
What is she doing?
What am I doing?
That last question is the most important.
What am I doing?
CHAPTER SIX - CALLISTINA
Crying is a weakness I don’t display. In the twenty years since my little sister was pulled out of her world and thrust in the human one by the man lying next to me in bed, I have cried a total of four times.