Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(11) Midnight

“Princess?” I replied dubiously. He shrugged.

“It’s a fitting nickname for you.”

“I’m not a princess,” I assured him, deadly serious. “I don’t need rescuing, and I damn well don’t need someone else to think that I need to be saved from anything—dragon or stepmother or anything. I don’t have a carriage waiting for me in the wee hours of the morning and I doubt if there is a moral to my story. I am me, Rian, and I am not some stupid pet name that you pulled from your player days.”

“Whatever you say, princess,” he told me without blinking, without smiling. I felt my eye twitch, but I didn’t say anything else.

We stared each other down.

“Are you going to tell me?” he demanded.

“I didn’t know you were the kind of guy that enjoys having heart-to-hearts, Blackwell,” I replied. “If I would have known this, I would have asked if I could paint your toenails weeks ago.”

He raised his arm as if to point at me but winced, his hand flying to the stab wound on his chest just shy of his shoulder, his face contorting into pain for a split moment before it transformed back to unreadable. He rubbed at the spot for a moment before he let his arm fall back down to his side, breathing out deeply. “I am not a patient person, Caitie, and I sure as hell am not a gentleman. I will hook you by your thumbs to the ceiling if I have to, but I will learn why you’re being such a pussy right now.”

“His mother is dead,” I said.

“Well, damn, Alastair, congratulations—you read the file.”

“That’s not it,” I insisted, my temper growing furiously with his behavior, but he pretended as though I hadn’t even spoken.

“If I would have known that you would be all teary-eyed and star-struck by every young lad that came by without a mother then I would have been at your feet weeks ago. Haven’t you done this before, Alastair? Haven’t you had to force men to fall for you, only to have them fall at your hand? Did you spend your nights lying awake at night because they didn’t have a mommy around to tell them that they are her special little man?”

“Blackwell,” I said flatly.

“Oh, so you have more to say—I would love to hear this, Caitie, I would really love it, but I am a little busy with something called reality, and it is about time that you joined me. People feel, princess, and you might too, but no one in the company is going to give a damn what one of their little foot soldiers cries about at night. Keep your eye on the prize, Alastair, because I swear to God or whatever it is that you believe in, if you pussy out on this mission, I’ll slit your throat myself.”

“Blackwell,” I said again, and this time something in my voice caused him to fall silent. I stared him down. “It’s not that he lost his mother at all that is bothering me—I read the file. The case file.”

He watched me impatiently, waiting.

“It’s not just because his mother died,” I told him. “It’s because his mother knew mine.”

~*~

It was only the second day, and it already felt as though twenty years had gone by.

I moved slowly, lethargically. I felt as though I was living underwater with my exaggerated movements, my eyes stinging from the severe lack of sleep I had received the night before, tossing and turning wide awake in my bed, all of my thoughts on the still picture that had been tucked into a forgotten crevice and left to rot, the still photo of Jonathon’s deceased mother laughing at a café table with my own. I had worried the page with my fingers, ruining it slightly with the oils from my hands, but when I wasn’t touching it, it felt as though I was letting go of the big picture, and it was about to fall down around me and shatter into a million and one pieces.