ecstasy | corpse husband

chapter 39.

"You're limping," Elowen mutters against his jacket, beginning to pull away. "Where are you hurt?"

"It's nothing," he brushes it off, pulling her close again with no regard for her concern. Rather, he presses a chaste kiss to her temple and speaks shallowly into her hair, "Thought I'd lost you for good, Win'."

With a sigh, she relents, her heart squeezing painfully in her chest. "Never," she whispers, "Never me."

Not me, too.

She's all he has.

Acknowledging that what he really wants is to just hold her right now, to be held, she lets her eyes clench shut with her concerns. He's not asking for much. But it's right then, hearing him call her the nickname, that it resonates with her how long she thought—no, believed—that the last time she would have ever seen him was on her porch on New Year's eve, giving her off to Mason. They didn't even hug goodbye that night. For weeks, she loathed herself for picking a boy over her father.

She has the chance to make up for it now.

Elowen doesn't realize tears have begun to slip from her eyes until they've parted, feeling one drip from her chin, but she composes herself well. Not only does she despise the thought of her friends seeing her cry, Tommy Foster isn't good with criers—a friend of her father's told her that once during a small gathering at their house after Elowen had scraped her palm. A massive man, she remembers well, all corded muscles and tight skin. Maybe he felt larger because he was so intimidating, or maybe it was because she was ten at the time. Either way, that dried her tears right up.

A hand still holds her chin, and she sees her father inspecting her, a frown set into his hardened features. Elowen averts his eye contact while trying to see herself from his eyes. Hollowing cheeks, restless shadows under her eyes, bruised cheekbone. A minor cut on her lip—although, she isn't mad about that one. Corpse gave her that, a little reminder of last night. Still, she can only imagine how unwell she appears.

He doesn't say anything about it.

"Let's get you into the kitchen." Taking his arm over her shoulder, Elowen leads the way, hearing footsteps and whispering from her friends following behind them. They must have a lot of questions.

She gets her father through the doorway and situated on a chair at the table, moving aside some bags and noticing party hats peeking out of the top of one. It hits her with the sad realization that these are the things her father bought for them to celebrate New Year's Eve together. If she could only relive that night...

Elowen clears her constricted throat. "Your leg. How'd you hurt it?"

Her father straightens out his right leg in front of her, palming at the spot right above his knee with a grimace. "Told you it's nothing," he insists. "I have a bad knee."

"You've never had a bad knee."

"Really?" He asks genuinely. "Coulda swore I did after that one Thanksgiving. With the football. I knew that was a bad idea from the start."

Elowen smiles thinly, remembering how she had been the one to encourage him to join the game with the rest of his mates from the guard. Her father isn't out of shape, by any means, but he also isn't the burliest man out there by comparison. Many of them are younger—more green, as she remembers him calling them. They ruthlessly tackled their Chief seven minutes in and he sat on the bench for the remainder, bag of frozen peas on his knee.

But it was nothing more than a mild sprain. "How, Dad?"

His face grows serious then, an edge to his tone when he says, "Not now, Winnie. Not here." He leans back in his chair while his eyes shift to the entrance of the room. "Who are they?" He prioritizes his own question with a disconcerting look.