Page 87 of My Monster's Keeper
How long can the secret keep?
I settle back on the ceiling where I can see all the entrances and exits. When she whimpers, I rattle my scales, and she subsides, relaxing peacefully.
If it comes down to anyone coming for her…well, they’re just going to have to die. She’s mine.
What has Becky Dawson done to me?
Chapter 26
Becky
On day thirteen, Diablos called and told us that it was the last day of our vacation tomorrow. I’d growled at him but ultimately accepted his decision. If I was honest, I wanted to get home.
A knock on the door delivers my last present to the guys. Four huge cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, slices, pastries, cookies, and candy. It’s a smorgasbord of desserts.
We eat until I feel like vomiting. I’m sitting between Wilder’s legs. Since he’d gone on his nature walk, he’d come back more settled and more in tune with the world. He’s apparently discovered that he needs to touch me, often in small ways that stir my blood and drag my attention to him.
Frost, too, is easy with his touches now. Sliding against me with a wicked smile that makes me burn. Winking at me because a Korean pop star who looked like him did it. He’s even picking up some of the speech patterns. But my prince is guarded. He’s holding back.
I get up and go to the bathroom, pausing to look back at them. This haven was never meant to last forever, but I kind of wish it would.
Grant would love them.
That thought sends grief crashing through me. I haven’t really had a chance to stop and really grieve for him. I miss him constantly, and whenever I think of that night, it all comes back; I shove it all deep inside me. Locking it down.
I splash my face with cold water and let my memories of Grant rise to the surface. He was more cautious than I was, less reckless, but once he decided on an action, he threw himself into it one hundred percent. It was my idea to join the force, but Grant would have been the one perfect for a life as a cop. What would he think of me being here with these guys? I think he would be happy for me.
I hope he would be happy that I'm not alone. We spent enough time alone as kids.
My roomies glance at me when I return. It’s a habit that I’ve gotten used to when I enter a room. When anyone enters a room, they all check. They are far more attuned to their environment than anyone I’ve ever met.
Stix lifts his arm, and I slide in against his side, turning my face into his chest and inhaling the dark scent that is uniquely him.
“We need to go back to work the day after tomorrow,” I murmur.
“Yes,” Stix murmurs and strokes his fingers down my arm.
I huff and wiggle out of his arms, sliding down so I can lie with my head in his lap.
It’s ironic that in all the places I’ve lived and with all the people I’ve met, the exception being Grant, that these four beings are the most humane I’ve ever encountered. I have not felt safe around, well, anyone the way I do with them. Even under the threat of being eaten, I can sleep soundly with them in my bed.
I shift my weight and then shift it again. But it does nothing to ease the tension that’s slowly filling my skin. I get up and pace towards the hotel door. I barely acknowledge my escort that keeps pace with me. I just follow that feeling until I’m downstairs, and two blocks away.
I don’t have shoes on, and it’s raining. The realisation comes and tries to jar me out of whatever this is, but I can’t. I keep moving until I stop in the middle of the road. I’m breathing hard when I turn my head slowly to stare at the little house on the right side of the road.
It’s an unassuming piece of shit house. The paint’s flaking, and the wood is rotted in parts, but, other than that, it looks like every other house on the street.
It’s the house where I met Grant. I understand now the buzzing under my skin.
“This is where I met my brother. The social worker dropped him off in the middle of one of my beatings. I remember hearing his voice and feeling so sorry for him. But angry, too, like how dare you come here so late because I knew the asshole hitting me would just start from the beginning.” I shrug my shoulders as Frost reaches down, his fingers brushing mine. I turn my hand, clinging to him. “As soon as the car was backing down the driveway, I was yanked out of the cupboard, and the asshole, hell, I couldn’t even remember his name until you’d said it the other day, hit me with his belt. I remember my scream and braced myself for another.”
I snort a laugh and look up at the sky.
“But there was Grant, tiny, shorter than me, pencil thin, hanging off our foster father, his teeth sunk deep into the asshole’s shoulder. He was screaming, Frost. Howling. Iwatched with wide eyes until I realised I needed to do something. So I grabbed the belt and started to swing. I’ll never forget the sound it made when it landed on his thighs. Or the squeal. But we knew we’d fucked up. We tried to take the others with us, but they were too scared. So we ran.”
Frost moves behind me. He wraps his arms around me and sniffs my neck.
“We got picked up again, but we were sent to a different place. No nightmare foster home was ever as bad when I had Grant there with me. We survived all of them…only for some prick in a uniform to put a bullet between his eyes.”
