Sliced Trees and Dead Words

26 - Stay.

I tried to listen to it all and not hear the hesitation in his voice, or see the way he tried to keep his wandering gaze in check whenever he found himself almost looking at me. Or how quickly his hands retreated when he realised they were moving instinctively to touch me—my back and shoulders against the chair his arm rested on, my thighs when his hands were in his lap, my fingers when my hands were resting on the dining table, my cheeks when I turned to smile at him next to me. But it seems all my efforts in trying were futile, and my patience with everything was wearing thin.

"So, what are your plans now, Wolfe?" asked Mason, offering Wolfe another beer, which he refused, having reached his limit at two for the night, ever the responsible one by comparison to me, who's anxiously consumed three large glasses of vino in an attempt to feel more at ease with this whole disastrous situation. "Do you think you're going to be sticking around here for a while?"

Mason doesn't usually sound so coy and suggestive when he speaks to other men, even the few he's liked. He usually reserves this tone for his beautiful wife, and it's making me even more nervous.

"I actually might have some work going for you if you don't mind switching up bricks and a trowel for some wood and nails if it sweetens the deal . . . anymore than it already is, of course," Mason added pointedly, and he reacted quickly to the pinch Nella must have given him below the table by jerking his leg upwards, hitting the wooden tabletop and rattling all our glasses and crockery.

Mason takes his business very seriously, and he doesn't offer people work lightly. He likes Wolfe, and he's trying to keep him around for my sake, I know it. I both love and hate him for it, mostly because it would be kind of humiliating if he didn't want to stay for me.

I turned to face Wolfe, just as the other two heads around this table did, everyone holding their breaths and awaiting his answer. Even if nothing eventuated with the two of us, I still don't want him leaving. He and Medusa are all I have left of Dalen, and I'm not ready to let that go yet.

"Not sure yet, Mase. We had a few jobs lined up before Dal—" he faltered briefly. "Just before it all. I had to skip out on the first one down in Albury with everything, but I should be able to get back for the next one in Bendigo in a couple weeks. Medusa should be up to travel by then."

This is when my impatient nerves decided to get the better of me—when he started talking about leaving and taking Medusa with him, which I categorically would just not allow. If she wasn't with Dalen, she should be here in Byron Bay with me.

Without a word, I pushed my chair out across Mason's precious floorboards, making a mental note to apologise for it and offer to re-sand and polish it myself if I had to later. I walked down the hallway to the downstairs bathroom decorated with charcoals and pinks like in our salon—further evidence of Nella's influence over both the design and manual labourers who had renovated Moonlight—intending to hide out until I had calmed down enough to face Wolfe and not immediately bite his head off for presuming I would let him take Medusa.

I could hear scurrying feet following me down the hallway as I moved, and I initially thought they might be Nella's and that she was coming to make sure I was okay. But Nella smells a hell of a lot more sweet and rosey than this man-boyish scent, her feet are maybe five sizes smaller than these giant's, and she wouldn't be caught dead wearing tattered but relatively clean work boots like these unless it was some kinky thing she and Mason role-played between the sheets that I didn't yet know about, nor do I really want to.

"You can't take her," I said to Wolfe, trying to be assertive off the bat so as to not be swayed by any one of his many overwhelming charms as he stood behind me, looking over my shoulder into our shared reflection in the bathroom mirror. His face twisted a little as he contemplated my statement, shifting from confusion, to understanding, and finally amusement. "Don't even think of smirking at me like that, Wolfe. I'm serious. You aren't taking her with you. If you're going to leave, Medusa is staying here with me."

"And I get no say in this, even though I just paid thousands of dollars to fix her broken body, and have spent significantly more time with her than you have in recent years?" he said, a slight smile pinching the corner of his mouth. I can't be sure, but he may be teasing me here and saying all this to get me riled up. Regardless, it upset me a whole lot more than it annoyed me.

"I said I would have paid for it, Wolfe, and I still will if that's what it will take for you to let her stay with me," I said, trying not to let my tears take me over. "It might take me a few days to organise that much with my bank, then you can take it and piss off to wherever your next job is. But Medusa is staying here."

He looked at me in the mirror, watching me carefully as I tried to stare back at him without cracking, which I could sense was inevitable, and would be happening very soon. He opened his mouth a couple times to say something, seeming conflicted over whatever it was that he was keeping to himself. Then, out of nowhere, he blindsided me when he said, "Do you want me to stay?"

He looked as nervous as I felt, and I swear I could hear his heart hammering in his chest behind me as he took a step closer and closed the distance between us. But, it could also have been my own overactive pulse I was hearing pounding into my own ears.

"Your life is your own to do whatever it is you want, Wolfe," I said dismissively, hoping beyond hope that the possibility he might just want me to want him to stay wasn't as observable from the outside as it was on the inside where it was beginning to suffocate my body with unruly, fluttering spasms of excitement.

"That wasn't what I asked, Luna. I want to know whether or not you want me to stay," he said, amber eyes pouring into mine in the mirror, as if begging me to be the courageous one here because he can't bring himself to do it any more than he already has by asking me. I didn't answer for a while, because I didn't know how. The way his eyes remained focussed on me had me breathless and chasing oxygen which decided in this moment to learn the art of evasiveness. It seems oxygen and I have something in common at the moment.

"You're most welcome to stay," I said, looking away from his reflection in the mirror and turning the tap on in the basin to wash my hands and give me a distraction from his waiting gaze. "But I'm not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, and I won't be the reason you do stay if you don't want to—"

"And if I do want to stay?" he cut me off, reaching his arms around me completely to turn my watery distraction off, and not bothering to move back to where he was previously standing at all.

The closeness of him surrounding me was making it even more difficult to breathe but I mustered the lung strength somehow to do it, and ducked under one of his thick arms to escape and head towards the door, pausing briefly before I walked out and back to Nella and Mason, and whatever conclusions they've already drawn about why I left the table unannounced and why Wolfe followed me.

"As I said, you're most welcome."