Those Words I Dread (Tales of the Tuath Dé #1)

7

Trent lingered in his bedroom in the morning, not wanting to venture into the living room and be forced to interact with Ciaran. He would just stay in his room until it was time to go to class in the afternoon, and then he would leave without having to listen to any more of that taunting Irish brogue.

He stood under the shower for longer than was necessary, letting the hot water run over the back of his neck until he heard his phone chime on the counter nearby. With a reluctant sigh, he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, rubbing a towel over his head as he picked up his phone. He flicked open the text from Hannah.

Let me in already.

Trent paused. Let her in? He dried off in a hurry and pulled on the first pair of jeans he could reach. He was only beginning to button his shirt when he reached the living room.

He paused on his way to the door and glanced into the guest room. Ciaran lay curled up under the blanket, a very small-looking lump in the center of the overly large bed. He didn’t seem to show any signs of moving, so Trent quietly closed the door and stepped down the hall to look through the peep hole in the front door. Hannah stood outside, looking down at the phone in her hand.

Trent unlocked the door and pulled it open, still fighting the buttons on his shirt with his free hand. When Hannah looked up at him, her eyes went first to the bare chest at his collar, then she looked into his face with a slight flush on her cheeks.

“Uh, did I wake you? I’ve been knocking.”

“What are you doing here?”

The girl paused. “Yesterday, I asked if you would help me study for this Econ exam.” She lowered her voice. “I said I’d come by today before class so you would have an excuse not to talk to your company, remember?”

Trent only frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

She stared at him for a moment, and then a look of realization came over her face, and she sighed. “I get it. You were doing that thing you do where you act like you’re listening, but really you’re just agreeing with whatever I say until I stop talking. I should have known.” She shook her head with a small laugh. “Look, I’m here already. Do you want to study or not? I want to see your place.”

He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder toward the guest room door. He couldn’t even guess whether or not Ciaran would show himself to a stranger. He might come out and make a fuss, but it seemed equally likely that the fairy would stay hidden away in his room until the coast was clear. He had hidden from Trent at first, after all. At worst, Trent would have to explain to Hannah what a strange, pointy-eared man was doing in his apartment, but at best, he would get some peace and quiet while they studied.

“Fine.” Trent opened the door completely and stepped back to let the girl inside. She slipped past him, holding the straps of her backpack, and turned a full circle in his living room.

“Holy crap,” she muttered as he shut the door. “You could fit my entire apartment in here.” She moved to the windows and looked out the tall French doors. “You’ve got a balcony? Nice.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” he agreed in passing, and he stepped across the room to shut his bedroom door despite how she leaned to get a glimpse of it.

“So,” she said, looking a little awkward as she stood near his leather sofa. “Where’s your guest? ”

“Sleeping.” He gestured to the guest room door.

“So who is it? Extended family or something?”

“No.” He moved toward the office and paused. “Just…put your stuff wherever.”

He took his laptop and textbook from the desk and shut the door behind him. Hannah had taken a tentative seat on the sofa, her backpack in her lap, and she shifted uncomfortably as Trent sat down beside her. He opened his laptop and looked over at her. “What do you want to read over?” She only watched him without answering for a moment, but that was all it took for him to say, “What?”

“I don’t know,” she chuckled, looking down at her bag as she unzipped it to retrieve her notebook. “I’m just…in your apartment, sitting on your couch, and you look like you just got out of the shower. You’re not even wearing shoes. It’s more casual than I ever expected to see you.”

“You’re the one who showed up here first thing in the morning.”

“I was under the impression you had agreed to that, remember? Anyway, it’s fine. Weird, but fine. I can pretend we’re even friends, maybe.” She set her notebook on the coffee table and put her bag on the floor by her feet. “I’ve never seen that necklace before,” she remarked casually, pretending she hadn’t been eyeing his open collar.

Trent glanced down at himself with a frown, then shifted the jade pendant so it was better hidden beneath his shirt. “It’s just a good luck thing. It was my grandmother’s.”

Hannah smiled briefly at him before looking back down at her notebook. “That’s sweet.”

He only grunted in response as he flipped open the textbook and turned to the latest chapter.

Ciaran had barely shut his eyes the previous night before being woken up by a sharp pain in his heart, and he had rushed to the window and thrown it open, straining his ears to listen through the wind rushing between the tall buildings.

“Maddy,” he whispered, feeling the creature’s loss in his chest. “I did this. Tá brón orm, a leanbh. So sorry.” The cú dorchadas had been close to his family for generations, and had always seemed to have a soft spot for Ciaran himself. He had thought the beast would be an easy solution to his hunter problem, but it seemed he had underestimated the man’s abilities. It was a mistake he’d made twice now, first by assuming the human couldn’t see him when he went back to Vivian’s house to retrieve a shirt he had left behind. He had already suffered for that oversight, and now poor Maddy had suffered for his pride.

He still didn’t know how the hunter was able to see through his glamour, but the how didn’t matter as much as the fact that he could. The man would clearly need to be handled personally, and Ciaran intended to end their chase as soon as the wound in his stomach stopped aching. If he laid low for another couple of days, he could be on his way. Then he would be able to be gone for good, free to move on and leave Trent the apartment to himself again. Somehow, that thought stung him, and he found himself wishing for a less speedy recovery.

It had been difficult to get back to sleep.

Ciaran stirred underneath the blanket, curling up into a tighter ball and pulling the warmth closer around his chin. His stomach was rumbling. He sat up in bed and checked the bruise on his stomach, gently prodding it with one finger. Better, but sore. He still felt slow and slightly feverish, but he was improving.

He paused when he heard voices through the bedroom door. He slipped out of bed and put his ear to the door, scooping up his abandoned jeans on the way. Someone else was in the apartment. A womanly someone else, at that.

The fairy slipped through the door without opening it and stepped silently past the dining table to peek at his host. A young woman was on the sofa beside him, sharing a textbook. She was cute in a girl-next-door sort of way, with her strawberry blonde hair tied up in a messy bun. Ciaran watched them for a minute or two, listening to them discuss the contents of the book in front of them. It was boring stuff. He was about to help himself to the pantry and go back to bed when he saw her smile. Trent reached across her to point out a formula written on her notebook, and Ciaran caught the slight blush in her cheeks as Trent’s chest pressed into her shoulder. Not such an innocent study date after all.

Ciaran realized that he was frowning, and he didn’t at all like the sudden tightness in his chest. It wasn’t anything to him what Trent did with this girl—he hardly knew anything about the boy, and he didn’t intend to get so involved that he should care if he was sleeping with a classmate. Still, the anxious feeling crept into his stomach, though he refused to name it jealousy.

Before he really knew what he was doing, he opened the guest bedroom door and shut it noisily again, feigning a yawn and a slow, sleepy stretch. The couple on the sofa looked up at the sound, one with curiosity and one with frustration. Ciaran allowed both of them to see him as he showed himself to the girl—as himself, minus the suspicious injury on his stomach and the pointed ears that marked him as something other than human—which seemed to relax Trent a bit, but the younger man still frowned as Ciaran approached.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Trent said without any attempt at even mock enthusiasm. “Put a shirt on.”

Hannah smiled at him as she shifted on the couch. “So you’re the house guest,” she said. “I’m Hannah, Trent’s friend.”

“I didn’t know he had any,” the fairy grinned, but he didn’t offer the girl his hand. The last thing he needed was some classmate of Trent’s getting any of his toxin on her. It usually only passed through a kiss or some other fluid exchange, but he had accidentally infected people before and wasn’t anxious to do it again. “Ciaran. Lovely to meet you, Hannah.”

“Oh wow, you’re Irish,” she said, then she laughed. “As you know, I’m sure. Sorry. Trent, why do you have a, uh…half-naked Irishman staying with you?” She looked back at Ciaran. “Are you a friend of the family?”

“Put a shirt on,” Trent ordered again, but the fairy ignored him.

“Oh, Trent and I go way back,” Ciaran chuckled. “Bosom mates, aren’t we?”

“Sure.”

“And look at this; he hasn’t offered you a thing to eat or drink, has he? Such a bad host. Can I get you something, love?”

“Oh, I mean, some water would be good, but I can—”

“Not at all,” Ciaran insisted. “Your servant, love.” He gave the girl a winning smile and padded into the kitchen to fill a glass of water for her. As he leaned over the back of the sofa to put the glass on the table, he braced himself on Trent’s shoulder, letting his chest press against the younger man’s back and push him forward. Trent growled at him, but Ciaran could feel the boy’s muscles tense underneath him as he set down the glass. He lingered half bent over the couch for a moment, his arm draped around Trent’s shoulder.

“So, what are you two studying?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to Hannah’s open-mouthed stare.

“We’re studying get the hell off of me,” Trent snapped, but he froze when Ciaran’s thumb tenderly brushed his cheek.

“So cold,” the fairy murmured against his ear. Trent got to his feet in a rush, jerking himself free of Ciaran’s arm and scowling at him.

“We’re studying,” he said firmly. He paused, noticing Hannah’s bewildered stare. “Will you just—be quiet. We don’t have that much more time before class.”

Ciaran held up his hands and mimed locking his mouth shut. “Not a peep. I won’t interrupt. I’ll just watch you two be studious.” He ambled back into the kitchen, leaving Trent to clear his throat and settle back on the couch.

Trent ignored Hannah’s questioning look, instead pulling the textbook into his lap to skip ahead a few pages. The girl glanced over her shoulder into the kitchen, but Ciaran had disappeared into the pantry. By the time she opened her mouth, Trent was already talking about what was likely to be on the exam, so she let her question go and inched closer to him to get a better look at the open page.

Ciaran took up a place across the sofa from them when he returned, a glass of milk in one hand and a gooey sticky bun in the other. He was staunchly ignored when he offered Trent a bite, so he only settled with his legs curled up underneath him and quietly watched them discuss microeconomics. He caught Trent looking at him once or twice when he licked a bit of sugary glaze from his fingers, but a sly smile instantly returned the younger man’s focus to the book in front of him. He certainly didn’t seem all that interested in the fairer sex.

Eventually, Trent excused himself to get dressed properly before they had to leave for class, but he gave Ciaran a warning look before shutting himself in his bedroom.

Hannah packed up her backpack and then sat stiffly on the sofa, peeking over at Ciaran with questions clearly threatening to burst from inside her.

“So,” Ciaran began in her place, “you and Trent have a lot of classes together?”

“Yeah,” she answered promptly, seeming slightly startled at being addressed. “We knew each other before, in high school, but we’re in the same major, so we still see each other a lot.”

“Ah, old friends, is it? That’s sweet. You don’t strike me as the finance and banking sort,” he mused. “I wonder what it is that drew you to it.” He smiled at her sudden, shameful blush.

“Stop talking to her,” Trent’s voice came distantly from behind the bedroom door. He opened the door before he was ready, one hand behind his back as he straightened his tucked-in shirt. He grabbed his messenger bag from the floor and looked down at Hannah as he closed his laptop and scooped it up. “Are you ready?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” she said. She hopped up from the couch and settled her backpack on her shoulders.

Trent strapped his messenger bag across his chest and slipped his laptop into its sleeve. “Then come on.” He urged her ahead of him toward the front door, but he paused in the entrance when he felt a light grip at the back of his sleeve.

“Give us just a tick, please, love,” Ciaran called with a smiling wave to Hannah. “Very nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too,” the girl answered with less certainty. “I’ll wait for you in the lobby, Trent.”

With a slow sigh through his nose, Trent turned to face the intruding fairy as soon as Hannah was out of sight. “You couldn’t just stay in your room?”

“She fancies you,” Ciaran said instead of answering. He gestured out the front door with his chin. “You know that, don’t you?”

“What? Hannah? Why?”

Ciaran laughed. “Hell if I know, lad, but I know the way a young girl looks at a boy she likes.” He didn’t add how seeing the look had turned his stomach.

“So what?”

“Just wondering if you’d noticed.”

“I don’t care. I’m going now. Don’t fuck the place up while I’m gone.” Trent pulled his sleeve from the fairy’s grip and stepped out of the apartment, not looking back before shutting the door. Hannah was waiting for him when he got out of the elevator, and Trent realized with mild horror that they would have to make the entire commute to campus together. He watched the street for the man who had stopped him that morning as he approached his building, but there was no sign of him. He supposed it was a slim hope to imagine he had given up, but at least he wasn’t lingering now. Hannah was looking up at him with a small smile; they didn’t even make it to the bus stop before she started talking to him. Maybe once they were on the bus he could put his ear buds in and ignore her.

“So, your house guest,” she began, “he’s a…friend of yours?”

“More like a pain in the ass,” Trent grumbled.

“It’s just, you guys seemed…you know, close.”

“Close?” Trent echoed with a hint of disgust. He stood at the bus stop a fair distance from the people already waiting, and she stopped beside him.

“Well I mean, he was all leaning on you and touching your face—”

“He’s just annoying,” Trent cut in. “He does it because he knows it pisses me off.”

“So then, you’re not…?” She shook her head when he looked down at her with a ticked eyebrow. “No, of course not. Stupid, right? It would have come up by now if you were gay, I hope. And he wasn’t even staying in your room, was he? And anyway, he’s so much older than you; it would be weird. What is he, in his thirties? A little creepy to be flirting with a college student, even if he is just teasing.”

Trent frowned. He didn’t want to acknowledge that he had been too distracted by the green of Ciaran’s eyes and the wicked twist of his thin lips when he smiled to take much notice of how old he appeared to be. He could look like anything anyway, probably; who knew how old he actually was? Aside from that, Trent’s firm position in the closet was the very last thing he wanted to talk about with Hannah.

“But still,” Hannah went on, “you clearly like him, no matter what you say.”

“What? How does that even remotely follow?”

“Well, with people you don’t care about, you’re…you know, rude. But it’s a different kind of rude. Like you don’t even care enough to be ac tively rude to them. Like not listening when they’re talking to you, even when they’re trying to invite themselves over to your apartment,” she finished with a slightly sad smile.

“You’d rather I was actively rude to you?”

She chuckled. “At least he gets a reaction out of you. I’ve never seen you so worked up.” She smiled up at him as the bus squeaked to a stop in front of them. “But your place is really nice. I’m glad I got to see it. Maybe,” she started, fidgeting with the straps of her backpack, “maybe next time you can give me more of a tour.”

“A tour?” Trent climbed up onto the bus ahead of her and made his way to a pair of empty seats, letting her take the spot by the window. He didn’t like sitting so close. Her arm brushed against his as she shifted her backpack into her lap, but there weren’t any more empty seats to move away from her.

“Yeah, you know…after you don’t have company anymore.” Trent glanced down as he felt her inch slightly closer to him, her thigh lightly pressing into his. “I didn’t get to see all the rooms,” she added, and she peeked up at him with a faint redness in her cheeks.

“What other rooms would you need to see?” he asked warily. This wasn’t happening.

“You’re going to make me come out and say it, aren’t you?” she chuckled, pushing an escaped lock of hair behind her ear. “I mean I didn’t get to see…you know, your room. But maybe next time, we could be alone.”

Trent’s heart almost stopped cold in his chest. This wasn’t happening. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said bluntly. “I didn’t even mean to invite you over this time,” he reminded her, and he turned his attention to the opposite window of the bus to avoid looking at her.

“Oh,” he heard her say in a weak voice. “Right.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way to campus, and she walked a few steps behind him until they reached their classroom door. She took her seat next to him as normal, but they didn’t speak again until she wished him a hasty goodbye the moment the lecture was finished.