Page 12 of Smoke

The thought of opening up to a stranger was tantamount to torture. I didn’t even open up to my family. Why would I share my thoughts with her?

She shrugged, and was kind enough not to press the issue or even smile knowingly. “Fine. That’s all right. You don’t have to. Just know that if you ever want to, I’m here. I mean…” She jerked her head in the direction of the door. “I doubt any of the others are good listeners. Even Pierce.”

I chuckled. “That’s a diplomatic way of putting it.”

“I know you guys don’t exactly sit around, sharing your feelings, either.”

“That’s also true. It’s not how we’re built.”

“I get it. But it’s how I’m built. And I’m a good listener. So, as I said…” She got up, pulling the blanket tight around her, and picked up the tissue box.

It looked to be full of crumpled, tear-soaked tissues. How long had she been sitting there alone? Of course, it was Pierce’s night on duty. She would’ve had nobody to talk to if I hadn’t come out.

“Hey,” I offered as she was leaving. “If you ever need to talk and Pierce’s not around, you can find me. I’m not such a bad listener, myself.”

Her smile was warm, grateful. “Thank you.”

I took her place on the couch when I was alone and flipped through the hundreds of available channels. It amazed me that Jasmine found anything to watch in the middle of all the garbage that passed for television.

I remembered when it first came out, how thrilled we all were to have a little entertainment right there in our home. Granted, it took a little time to figure out how to get reception when the set was in the middle of a cave, but we’d experimented and improvised. It wasn’t like there was anything better to do when we didn’t have guard duty.

The one thing Cash and Miles told me about driving Alina home when I pressed them for details was how she’d guessed about the treasure.

I sure as hell had never told her about it, and Pierce swore he hadn’t told Jasmine exactly why we lived under the mountain.

How had she guessed? Because she was so damn smart, that was how. And smart enough to not mention what she’d guessed until she was already well on her way home. I had to give her credit for that. It would seem funny to an outsider, the way we guarded a treasure we had never seen and could never use even if we wanted to. Sometimes it even seemed funny to me.

I stopped myself right there, before I could go any further. That was the dragon doing my thinking for me, trying to sow discord so he could get what he wanted.

We cannot go out for her, and that’s final.

I was sure he would torture me to the end of my days, which made me wonder how much longer I would live. It wasn’t a life I was looking forward to if living meant spending night after sleepless night thinking about what I had lost.

I didn’t lose her, because I never had her to begin with.

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