Finders, Keepers 15
The next chapter! It's kind of slow at this point in the story, I think. Spike continues to find his way back to himself. Though not without the occasional mis-step.
Warning: Prostitution, angst, and wedding planning
Previous Chapters Here
Chapter 15
Spike was getting used to life, again. So much time had passed, now, that it was only in moments of forgetfulness, like upon first waking, that he thought he was still a prisoner.
Yet he did feel like an actor, a pretender in his own life. He filled the hours with cleaning and repairing the crypt. He pretended not to panic every time he got dirty or injured. (It wasn’t allowed. Can’t break someone else’s things.)
He gritted his teeth and pretended he was over it. If he was a little more careful, well, at least that wasn’t a bad thing.
Darkness fell and he stood a long time, looking out at the night from the safe, candlelit interior. He should go patrol, he thought. That’s what he would have done, before this. He would have gone out looking for trouble, and maybe scored some entertainment from cards or drink.
Instead he made a small, careful list of all the things he needed that could only be gotten now the sun was down. Then he mapped out his route, to take the least amount of time.
Though he forced himself to walk at a normal, if quick, pace to the convenient store and to the restroom by the public pool - where he filled a bucket with clean water for washing - he ran the last hundred feet back to the crypt.
Every shadow held danger. A thousand small motions in the periphery of his vision could have been something sneaking up on him.
Half the water sloshed out of his bucket in his panic. In anger at himself, he kicked it over.
So the floor was washed, and the dusty water dripped down into the charred lower room, which couldn’t have hurt it. No doubt it would join the muddy trickle on the floor. Some day he’d have to find that pipe and fix it, or live with moss and mildew. He poked around the earth-and-concrete wall for a bit with a candle. He stuck a charred bit of wood in the mud where he thought the moisture originated and wrote “pipe fixing stuff” on his shopping list.
Work made him feel a little more sane. He took the bucket and some rags back to the public restroom by the public pool on Wilson Avenue. He showered and rung the rags all out, scrubbing them and himself down with the awful pink soap in the hand-dispensers. Then he re-filled his bucket and walked home purposefully, slowly, counting his steps.
He was a little surprised to make it back in one piece.
Exhausted, he settled down on the mattress he’d made from folded blankets on the sarcophagus. Then, staring at the ceiling, he realized he’d neglected to get any blood. Sunrise was painting stripes of tangerine on the iron bars. He ruefully realized that part of him still expected to be fed, like some sort of pet. Or slave.
He tossed and turned, and woke up more than once panicked, from vague, forgotten dreams, or just unsure he would find the same room when he opened his eyes. Each time he touched the side of the sarcophagus beneath him, felt the soothing solidity of the concrete.
He was up before noon, and wandered around the crypt, unsure what to do. He was running out of mindless tasks, and his hunger was starting to feel like a knife in the gut. Somehow, hunger and cleanliness seemed to go together - like he was cleaning himself out as he cleaned out the crypt.
He sensed Buffy’s approach before he realized it, in the bright afternoon. By the time he smelled her, he was already tidying the bed, trying to make the room presentable for her.
Ponce. He sat on the corner of the coffin-box and waited for her to appear. He’d already opened the door to help air the place out - the must and smoke smell still lingered.
She stopped outside, in the safety of the sunlight. She twisted her hands together. “I just came by to see… if you’d like to move into my place. Willow and Dawn… I mean, we could use another adult around. And we set up a cot…”
He pretended to be unmoved, and then pretended, for her sake, to enjoy his independence. “Neither me nor the bit need a live-in babysitter, slayer. Leave well enough alone. Got the place almost cozy again.” He gestured at the collection of candle-holders on the other sarcophagus, neatly arranged and full of fresh candles.
“If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t,” Buffy said, and started to take a step forward, into the gloom. She stopped short. “It won’t cost me anything to have you there. If anything it will save… stuff. Time.”
“More convenient for you?” Spike tried to leer playfully.
She saw his pretending, and it made her angry. “No! Just… look, come to me when you’re ready, okay? Ready to really talk.”
He ducked his head, close to the line of sunlight. “’M always ready for you, love. You know that.”
“Just stop it.”
“Come on. You have time, don’t you?”
She took a full step back, up the slope of grass that lead down to the crypt. Her voice was pleading, “Spike, you know we can’t.”
“Can’t what? We’re both consenting adults.” He reached into the sun. She jogged away, stopping only at the last moment to glance back, before continuing.
What had gotten into her?
At dusk, he pulled on the duster and headed straight for Revello drive. The lights were on inside the house, and someone’s shadow crossed the dining room as he watched, afraid, somehow, to go up to the door.
He knew he’d agree to stay, if asked, inside those walls. He wasn’t ready for that. He turned on his heel and headed toward the late-night grocery on Third that carried cartons of pigs’ blood in the back of the beer cooler.
He walked down the road behind Sunnydale’s little downtown, between the back parking-lots and the nicer warehouses, converted now into various businesses, like the carpentry shop and the Bronze. He felt safe enough, there, though he didn’t know why. He’d been walking between warehouses when the ex-initiative bastards had bagged him. But it was well-lit along the road, and there was no place to hide from sight down its abandoned length.
A car rolled to a stop behind him, crunching gravel and debris under its tires.
“Need a ride?”
The bloke was human, middle-aged but dressed younger, and as Spike opened his mouth to ask him if he was out of his bloody mind, stopping to pick up vampires in Sunnydale, he caught a whiff of nervous arousal.
He was hoping to get lucky, picking up the rough-looking bloke on a deserted stretch of road.
Before he knew quite what he was doing, Spike folded his arms on the edge of the driver’s window and purred, “Do you give free rides, then? Because I don’t.”
Arousal, fear, and heart rate all spiked, filling the car with a delicious, human musk. If Spike’s heart could beat, it would be racing, too. He felt almost as nervous as the human fumbling for his wallet.
He slipped into the passenger seat wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before - it was a logical way to make money. Illegal, sure, but in that sort of nancy, no-victim way, like stealing from Wal-Mart. Surely the slayer wouldn’t object. He could earn money for his blood and help her out.
He closed his hand around shaking fingers, slipping the money free before the bloke could finish counting it. “That looks like just enough,” he said, tucking the bills into his back jean pocket.
“Y-your hands are ice cold.”
“Let’s see if you can warm me up, yeah? Where do you want to do this?”
The john kept glancing over at Spike, as though surprised he was really still sitting there, while he did a sloppy job of driving to the motel by the freeway. It was a good thing Sunnydale didn’t have much of a night-life, or they would have hit someone the third time he ran a stop sign. Spike slipped his hand into the other man’s lap, feeling the shape of his cock. The man emitted a high-pitched gasp and slammed the gas pedal down.
The night-clerk at the Siesta Inn probably thought the bloke was having a heart attack as he raced through paying for the room and then dropped the key twice trying to open it. Spike walked calmly up behind him, took the key and opened the door for him.
After that, it was pretty quick. Fumbling and rushed. Spike was shoved over the nearest item of furniture and his jeans were shoved down. The guy tried to go right into him without any lube or prep and hissed in frustration as his cock-head stuck to flesh and refused to go in. Spike made a show of sucking his fingers and used the spit to ease the way. The john wasn’t well-hung, but it still burned as he shoved impatiently in. He huffed and groaned, hands gripping the hard formica table on either side of Spike’s hips. He jerked and swore, and came on the fifth thrust, before Spike was even adjusted to the feeling.
“Fuck!” The man wheezed, full weight pressing Spike uncomfortably into the little table, which, Spike suspected, couldn’t really support both of their weight, so he tried to hold himself a little off of it.
“Give me… give me a few minutes,” the john said.
“If you want,” Spike said, and bit his lip, glad he was looking at the stupid pattern of rounded pink chevrons and not the bloke’s face.
This time, for the first time, he was there by choice. The realization was sickening.
“No. We’ll go again.” The guy lifted himself up with a groan and waddled into the bathroom, his pants still undone and sagging, exposing a bottom that had never seen the light of the sun. “Paid for the whole damn hour,” he muttered before closing the bathroom door.
Spike half expected some beloved figure from his past - his mother, perhaps - to appear and give commentary. Of course it didn’t happen. This was reality. He sat on the bed and slipped off his docs and jeans.
***
Buffy left the Doublemeat Palace to find Spike waiting for her, as he had many times before, just outside of the pool of light cast by the bare bulb over the employee’s exit. His hands were in the pockets of his duster, and he was looking down, the light gleaming off his bright hair.
But he shifted nervously when she approached, which was new. “Thought I’d walk you home,” he said, not looking at her.
Buffy felt a surge of relief. Maybe he understood what she’d tried to say earlier, understood it without needing to hear the words. She felt a little guilty, but relieved - off the hook. “Thanks.”
They fell into step, a step apart from each other.
“Here.” He held something out toward her.
She looked, and stopped in her tracks. “Spike. I don’t need your money.”
He looked pointedly behind them at the fast food joint. “Yes you do.”
“Where did you get that?” She nudged her chin toward the folded twenties.
“Didn’t steal it.”
“I didn’t ask you if you stole it. I want to know where you got it.”
Spike swallowed, looked down in a distinctly guilty way, and muttered, “Fine. Never mind.” He tucked the money back into his pocket.
Buffy let out a long breath. Being virtuous should leave you feeling happy, proud, not sad. (God, she really could have used that money!)
The Doublemeat Palace stood on the access road near the freeway, no doubt so its sign could be seen by commuters driving by. The walk home wasn’t terrible: across the parking lot, cut through Grand View Cemetery, cross Main, and there you were at the head of Revello Drive.
Buffy vaulted the cemetery fence first. Spike landed next to her just as she straightened her legs from the impact. He put his arm around her waist. “Nice and private here,” he whispered.
She shrugged him off. “No,” she said, and picked up the pace through the tombstones, one hand, as always, on the stake in her purse.
“Come on, love, get you off your feet for a while.”
“Yesterday was a mistake, Spike. It’s not going to happen again.”
They walked in silence a while.
When they turned onto Revello, Spike asked, quietly, “Do you not want me anymore?”
“Oh, if only.”
“You want me; I want you. Where’s the harm in a little fun?”
Buffy sighed heavily. Oh so very not off the hook. And he looked damned delectable, pouting, walking backward in front of her.
“Believe it or not, the harm is to you, Spike. I don’t expect you to see it. You’re only… what you are.”
She didn’t like the look of sad resignation on his face, so she hurried past him to the welcoming glow of her own front porch. “Come inside, Spike,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t refuse a direct invitation.
“Thank the gods you’re here,” Anya said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “It’s only a week to the wedding and we have barely any RSVP cards!”
Cards and confetti were strewn across the living room, along with piles of cut tulle and green ribbons - centerpieces and bundles of miniature blowing bubbles. Dawn, seated under a mountain of lace, pleaded with her eyes to be rescued.
Buffy reached behind herself for Spike’s hand. “Do you want to stay and help out?”
He winced at a high-pitched squeal and shook his head. “Ta. Think I’ll just stretch my legs a bit.”
“I’ll go with Spike,” Dawn said, jumping off the couch.
Buffy caught her by the upper arm. “Uh-uh. You have to suffer through this, junior bridesmaid.”
Spike slipped out the door and walked around to the back of the house, peering in the windows. Sure enough, Willow was in the kitchen alone, with a cup of tea and a pained expression.
He knocked lightly on the doorframe as he entered. Willow stood. “Oh! Sp…”
He held a fingertip to his lips. “Just popping in for a quick favor. Don’t rouse the nuptial brigade.”
Willow sat down again with an aggrieved sigh, looking in the direction of the living-room, where Anya was continuing to dictate proper bow-tying technique. “I’ve heard stories of Bride-zilla, but I think being a former demon makes it worse.”
“Listen, Red. You pay Buffy rent, yeah?”
“Uh… yeah. Not much, though. We worked it out with my parents. They weren’t willing to pay more than the dorm fee.”
Spike slid his small wad of bills across the table toward her. “Tell her your folks coughed up a little extra.”
Willow’s eyes got big. She picked up the money and flipped through it. She stopped counting after the fourth bill. “This is a lot… where did you get this?”
“I didn’t steal it. And Buffy won’t take money from me. So, will you give it to her? Make up whatever story you like.”
Willow frowned, and Spike bit his lip, expecting another moral lecture. But she pocketed the money and nodded.
Relieved, he turned to the door.
“Spike?”
Willow put her hand over the doorknob. “You could pay rent here, yourself, you know.”
“Not ready for that. Don’t… I don’t belong here, yeah?”
“Sometimes I feel that way, too.”
He chuckled. “I doubt it’s the same. But thanks, Red. You’re a real peach.”
And he ducked past her and out into the night, leaving her standing alone in the kitchen, wearing a worried expression.
Continued -->
Warning: Prostitution, angst, and wedding planning
Previous Chapters Here
Chapter 15
Spike was getting used to life, again. So much time had passed, now, that it was only in moments of forgetfulness, like upon first waking, that he thought he was still a prisoner.
Yet he did feel like an actor, a pretender in his own life. He filled the hours with cleaning and repairing the crypt. He pretended not to panic every time he got dirty or injured. (It wasn’t allowed. Can’t break someone else’s things.)
He gritted his teeth and pretended he was over it. If he was a little more careful, well, at least that wasn’t a bad thing.
Darkness fell and he stood a long time, looking out at the night from the safe, candlelit interior. He should go patrol, he thought. That’s what he would have done, before this. He would have gone out looking for trouble, and maybe scored some entertainment from cards or drink.
Instead he made a small, careful list of all the things he needed that could only be gotten now the sun was down. Then he mapped out his route, to take the least amount of time.
Though he forced himself to walk at a normal, if quick, pace to the convenient store and to the restroom by the public pool - where he filled a bucket with clean water for washing - he ran the last hundred feet back to the crypt.
Every shadow held danger. A thousand small motions in the periphery of his vision could have been something sneaking up on him.
Half the water sloshed out of his bucket in his panic. In anger at himself, he kicked it over.
So the floor was washed, and the dusty water dripped down into the charred lower room, which couldn’t have hurt it. No doubt it would join the muddy trickle on the floor. Some day he’d have to find that pipe and fix it, or live with moss and mildew. He poked around the earth-and-concrete wall for a bit with a candle. He stuck a charred bit of wood in the mud where he thought the moisture originated and wrote “pipe fixing stuff” on his shopping list.
Work made him feel a little more sane. He took the bucket and some rags back to the public restroom by the public pool on Wilson Avenue. He showered and rung the rags all out, scrubbing them and himself down with the awful pink soap in the hand-dispensers. Then he re-filled his bucket and walked home purposefully, slowly, counting his steps.
He was a little surprised to make it back in one piece.
Exhausted, he settled down on the mattress he’d made from folded blankets on the sarcophagus. Then, staring at the ceiling, he realized he’d neglected to get any blood. Sunrise was painting stripes of tangerine on the iron bars. He ruefully realized that part of him still expected to be fed, like some sort of pet. Or slave.
He tossed and turned, and woke up more than once panicked, from vague, forgotten dreams, or just unsure he would find the same room when he opened his eyes. Each time he touched the side of the sarcophagus beneath him, felt the soothing solidity of the concrete.
He was up before noon, and wandered around the crypt, unsure what to do. He was running out of mindless tasks, and his hunger was starting to feel like a knife in the gut. Somehow, hunger and cleanliness seemed to go together - like he was cleaning himself out as he cleaned out the crypt.
He sensed Buffy’s approach before he realized it, in the bright afternoon. By the time he smelled her, he was already tidying the bed, trying to make the room presentable for her.
Ponce. He sat on the corner of the coffin-box and waited for her to appear. He’d already opened the door to help air the place out - the must and smoke smell still lingered.
She stopped outside, in the safety of the sunlight. She twisted her hands together. “I just came by to see… if you’d like to move into my place. Willow and Dawn… I mean, we could use another adult around. And we set up a cot…”
He pretended to be unmoved, and then pretended, for her sake, to enjoy his independence. “Neither me nor the bit need a live-in babysitter, slayer. Leave well enough alone. Got the place almost cozy again.” He gestured at the collection of candle-holders on the other sarcophagus, neatly arranged and full of fresh candles.
“If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t,” Buffy said, and started to take a step forward, into the gloom. She stopped short. “It won’t cost me anything to have you there. If anything it will save… stuff. Time.”
“More convenient for you?” Spike tried to leer playfully.
She saw his pretending, and it made her angry. “No! Just… look, come to me when you’re ready, okay? Ready to really talk.”
He ducked his head, close to the line of sunlight. “’M always ready for you, love. You know that.”
“Just stop it.”
“Come on. You have time, don’t you?”
She took a full step back, up the slope of grass that lead down to the crypt. Her voice was pleading, “Spike, you know we can’t.”
“Can’t what? We’re both consenting adults.” He reached into the sun. She jogged away, stopping only at the last moment to glance back, before continuing.
What had gotten into her?
At dusk, he pulled on the duster and headed straight for Revello drive. The lights were on inside the house, and someone’s shadow crossed the dining room as he watched, afraid, somehow, to go up to the door.
He knew he’d agree to stay, if asked, inside those walls. He wasn’t ready for that. He turned on his heel and headed toward the late-night grocery on Third that carried cartons of pigs’ blood in the back of the beer cooler.
He walked down the road behind Sunnydale’s little downtown, between the back parking-lots and the nicer warehouses, converted now into various businesses, like the carpentry shop and the Bronze. He felt safe enough, there, though he didn’t know why. He’d been walking between warehouses when the ex-initiative bastards had bagged him. But it was well-lit along the road, and there was no place to hide from sight down its abandoned length.
A car rolled to a stop behind him, crunching gravel and debris under its tires.
“Need a ride?”
The bloke was human, middle-aged but dressed younger, and as Spike opened his mouth to ask him if he was out of his bloody mind, stopping to pick up vampires in Sunnydale, he caught a whiff of nervous arousal.
He was hoping to get lucky, picking up the rough-looking bloke on a deserted stretch of road.
Before he knew quite what he was doing, Spike folded his arms on the edge of the driver’s window and purred, “Do you give free rides, then? Because I don’t.”
Arousal, fear, and heart rate all spiked, filling the car with a delicious, human musk. If Spike’s heart could beat, it would be racing, too. He felt almost as nervous as the human fumbling for his wallet.
He slipped into the passenger seat wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before - it was a logical way to make money. Illegal, sure, but in that sort of nancy, no-victim way, like stealing from Wal-Mart. Surely the slayer wouldn’t object. He could earn money for his blood and help her out.
He closed his hand around shaking fingers, slipping the money free before the bloke could finish counting it. “That looks like just enough,” he said, tucking the bills into his back jean pocket.
“Y-your hands are ice cold.”
“Let’s see if you can warm me up, yeah? Where do you want to do this?”
The john kept glancing over at Spike, as though surprised he was really still sitting there, while he did a sloppy job of driving to the motel by the freeway. It was a good thing Sunnydale didn’t have much of a night-life, or they would have hit someone the third time he ran a stop sign. Spike slipped his hand into the other man’s lap, feeling the shape of his cock. The man emitted a high-pitched gasp and slammed the gas pedal down.
The night-clerk at the Siesta Inn probably thought the bloke was having a heart attack as he raced through paying for the room and then dropped the key twice trying to open it. Spike walked calmly up behind him, took the key and opened the door for him.
After that, it was pretty quick. Fumbling and rushed. Spike was shoved over the nearest item of furniture and his jeans were shoved down. The guy tried to go right into him without any lube or prep and hissed in frustration as his cock-head stuck to flesh and refused to go in. Spike made a show of sucking his fingers and used the spit to ease the way. The john wasn’t well-hung, but it still burned as he shoved impatiently in. He huffed and groaned, hands gripping the hard formica table on either side of Spike’s hips. He jerked and swore, and came on the fifth thrust, before Spike was even adjusted to the feeling.
“Fuck!” The man wheezed, full weight pressing Spike uncomfortably into the little table, which, Spike suspected, couldn’t really support both of their weight, so he tried to hold himself a little off of it.
“Give me… give me a few minutes,” the john said.
“If you want,” Spike said, and bit his lip, glad he was looking at the stupid pattern of rounded pink chevrons and not the bloke’s face.
This time, for the first time, he was there by choice. The realization was sickening.
“No. We’ll go again.” The guy lifted himself up with a groan and waddled into the bathroom, his pants still undone and sagging, exposing a bottom that had never seen the light of the sun. “Paid for the whole damn hour,” he muttered before closing the bathroom door.
Spike half expected some beloved figure from his past - his mother, perhaps - to appear and give commentary. Of course it didn’t happen. This was reality. He sat on the bed and slipped off his docs and jeans.
***
Buffy left the Doublemeat Palace to find Spike waiting for her, as he had many times before, just outside of the pool of light cast by the bare bulb over the employee’s exit. His hands were in the pockets of his duster, and he was looking down, the light gleaming off his bright hair.
But he shifted nervously when she approached, which was new. “Thought I’d walk you home,” he said, not looking at her.
Buffy felt a surge of relief. Maybe he understood what she’d tried to say earlier, understood it without needing to hear the words. She felt a little guilty, but relieved - off the hook. “Thanks.”
They fell into step, a step apart from each other.
“Here.” He held something out toward her.
She looked, and stopped in her tracks. “Spike. I don’t need your money.”
He looked pointedly behind them at the fast food joint. “Yes you do.”
“Where did you get that?” She nudged her chin toward the folded twenties.
“Didn’t steal it.”
“I didn’t ask you if you stole it. I want to know where you got it.”
Spike swallowed, looked down in a distinctly guilty way, and muttered, “Fine. Never mind.” He tucked the money back into his pocket.
Buffy let out a long breath. Being virtuous should leave you feeling happy, proud, not sad. (God, she really could have used that money!)
The Doublemeat Palace stood on the access road near the freeway, no doubt so its sign could be seen by commuters driving by. The walk home wasn’t terrible: across the parking lot, cut through Grand View Cemetery, cross Main, and there you were at the head of Revello Drive.
Buffy vaulted the cemetery fence first. Spike landed next to her just as she straightened her legs from the impact. He put his arm around her waist. “Nice and private here,” he whispered.
She shrugged him off. “No,” she said, and picked up the pace through the tombstones, one hand, as always, on the stake in her purse.
“Come on, love, get you off your feet for a while.”
“Yesterday was a mistake, Spike. It’s not going to happen again.”
They walked in silence a while.
When they turned onto Revello, Spike asked, quietly, “Do you not want me anymore?”
“Oh, if only.”
“You want me; I want you. Where’s the harm in a little fun?”
Buffy sighed heavily. Oh so very not off the hook. And he looked damned delectable, pouting, walking backward in front of her.
“Believe it or not, the harm is to you, Spike. I don’t expect you to see it. You’re only… what you are.”
She didn’t like the look of sad resignation on his face, so she hurried past him to the welcoming glow of her own front porch. “Come inside, Spike,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t refuse a direct invitation.
“Thank the gods you’re here,” Anya said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. “It’s only a week to the wedding and we have barely any RSVP cards!”
Cards and confetti were strewn across the living room, along with piles of cut tulle and green ribbons - centerpieces and bundles of miniature blowing bubbles. Dawn, seated under a mountain of lace, pleaded with her eyes to be rescued.
Buffy reached behind herself for Spike’s hand. “Do you want to stay and help out?”
He winced at a high-pitched squeal and shook his head. “Ta. Think I’ll just stretch my legs a bit.”
“I’ll go with Spike,” Dawn said, jumping off the couch.
Buffy caught her by the upper arm. “Uh-uh. You have to suffer through this, junior bridesmaid.”
Spike slipped out the door and walked around to the back of the house, peering in the windows. Sure enough, Willow was in the kitchen alone, with a cup of tea and a pained expression.
He knocked lightly on the doorframe as he entered. Willow stood. “Oh! Sp…”
He held a fingertip to his lips. “Just popping in for a quick favor. Don’t rouse the nuptial brigade.”
Willow sat down again with an aggrieved sigh, looking in the direction of the living-room, where Anya was continuing to dictate proper bow-tying technique. “I’ve heard stories of Bride-zilla, but I think being a former demon makes it worse.”
“Listen, Red. You pay Buffy rent, yeah?”
“Uh… yeah. Not much, though. We worked it out with my parents. They weren’t willing to pay more than the dorm fee.”
Spike slid his small wad of bills across the table toward her. “Tell her your folks coughed up a little extra.”
Willow’s eyes got big. She picked up the money and flipped through it. She stopped counting after the fourth bill. “This is a lot… where did you get this?”
“I didn’t steal it. And Buffy won’t take money from me. So, will you give it to her? Make up whatever story you like.”
Willow frowned, and Spike bit his lip, expecting another moral lecture. But she pocketed the money and nodded.
Relieved, he turned to the door.
“Spike?”
Willow put her hand over the doorknob. “You could pay rent here, yourself, you know.”
“Not ready for that. Don’t… I don’t belong here, yeah?”
“Sometimes I feel that way, too.”
He chuckled. “I doubt it’s the same. But thanks, Red. You’re a real peach.”
And he ducked past her and out into the night, leaving her standing alone in the kitchen, wearing a worried expression.
Continued -->