Page 59 of Skinwalker's Bane
“What?” Adam demanded.
“You would have danced with her if she wasn’t important to you, Adam,” Noa said gently. “You wouldn’t have cared about how it would impact her, or what anyone else would think. You never have.”
“Until now,” Haydn added.
Adam looked down at the dark, damp spot on his thigh, his heart thundering.
Haydn shifted on his chair. “I can’t tell you not to fall in love,” he began.
Something shifted in Adam’s chest. The beat of his heart hurt. He couldn’t look Haydn in the eye.
“What I can tell you,” Haydn continued, “is that I’ve been managing the skinwalker crews for ten years now. I’ve never seen a skinwalker fall in love with someone who isn’t in the game andnotscrew up his life, his crew and his career.” He paused. “Gelin Merrit is the one exception,” he said, “Although even he couldn’t manage it without co-opting two other people to help keep his life on the rails.”
Adam got to his feet. “I amnotin love with Devin,” he said heavily. “Noa, thank you for the coffee. I’m heading back to the engine room. See what Peter found.”
“Go home and think it over,” Haydn told him. “That’s not a request, either.”
Noa had already called for a spatula and Adam stalked onto the platform, his anger stirring. He barely managed a polite farewell to the small woman. She didn’t seem upset at his curt goodbye, either. That made it worse.
He walked back to the Beehive through the quiet Field of Mars, peering into the pipes and shadows. Devin had spent two years hiding here as a child.
How dare Haydn lay out the law! Even if hewasright—and Adam wasn’t agreeing with him, yet—even if he was correct about skinwalkers and non-skinwalker relationships, that didn’t give him the right to demand Adam do anything about Devin at all.
He couldn’t seem to think clearly. Walking or moving his body somehow—usually doing heavy work—always helped him think. The tightness in his chest and the thudding of his heart kept him circling around the same unhappy thought; that his boss, one of the few men he looked up to, was telling him to give up Devin, for the sake of his crew and his career.
He reached the path where he needed to turn to make his way through the single dwellings to the Beehive, just on the other side of the Field, and hesitated.
He couldn’t go home. He just couldn’t. It was still all jumbled up inside him. He wouldn’t be able to sit still.
So he walked. He thought he was walking aimlessly, until the upper edge of the Palatine hub appeared over the top of the buildings he was passing through and he realized that he had been heading there all along.
In his mind, he agreed with his wandering feet. “Fine. Why not?” he said aloud. He wouldn’t be able to sit still at home. He knew exactly where hecouldfind calm and peace.
Chapter Fifteen
Devin roused sluggishly when she heard the house AI bring the daylight blinds down around the house in reaction to the coming daylight line. Then she woke properly, startled.
Adam was sitting on the end of the bed, watching her.
In the artificial darkness, he was just another dark shape. The shape was unmistakable.
“Why aren’t you outside?” Devin asked, shocked.
“Long story,” he said softly. “It’s the end of the story that’s the reason why I’m sitting here.”
She tapped the light controls in the headboard, then sat up, put her back against it and hugged her knees.
Adam was fully dressed. He sat with one knee resting on the cover, the other long leg stretched out, his boot on the floor. The pants leg of the knee on the cover had a stain on it. She suspected it might be coffee, although against the dark blue, it was hard to tell for sure.
He looked tired, which was not possible. He had slept all day and would normally be in the middle of his shift outside. He should be alert. Yet his eyes were drawn and there was a deep furrow between his brows.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’ve been sitting here, trying to think. I can’t get anything to settle in my mind,” he told her. “I keep having the same thought over and over. I’ve been sitting here arguing myself out of it.”
“Out of what?”
“Waking you.” He shrugged. “I thought you would be able to figure it out.”
