Stolen Melody (Snow and Ash #2) (10 page)

I gather my plate and stalk to what counts as a fridge. I’m about to shove the meal into the ice-box thingy when Axel catches my arm.

“Hey, I ain’t mad,” he says with a frown.

I’m clenching my teeth. I don’t want to fall apart; I really don’t. “Okay.”

I want my mother. I want airplanes and sunshine and green grass. I want to be around people who like me.

I can feel the heat of his stare, but I know if I look at him, I’ll just feel worse. After a moment he sighs and returns to the table.

I clean the tiny work area. This morning I washed all the clothes and sheets in the hand-crank washer and—you guessed it—hand-crank roll thingy that wrings out the water. I hung them near the stove, and by the time I got back from the exchange, they were dry. I grab the folded laundry and cut across the room toward the hall.

“What’s all that?” he demands.

“Laundry,” I mumble.

His fork clatters to the plate. “What else did you do?”

“Look, I’m doing the best I can!” I lose it then, and I stalk from the room before he can see me cry. I just don’t want a witness, you know?

Axel catches up with me. He grabs me again, spilling the clean clothes to the floor.

“Damn it!”

Axel steps back. “Fuck. Shit. I’m sorry, Mel. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I’m not crying.” But my nose is running, my voice is thick, and my eyes are about to spill.

“Aw, man.” He pulls me into a hug. “I just…no one’s ever done stuff like this for me.”

“What stuff?”

“Making me dinner, folding my shorts. Hell, I been doing all that since I was ten.”

“Well maybe you should have told me that. I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. It’s just…I, ah…I’m not used to people being nice. Doing things for me.”

“Your mom didn’t—”

“She died of an overdose when I was fifteen. Been on my own ever since.”

A chill starts in my chest and shoots up my scalp. “What about your dad?”

He grimaces. “I visited him in prison a couple times when I was a kid. After he got out, I don’t know where he went.”

The concept of having parents like that is so completely foreign to me that I have no idea what to say. I can’t even imagine what a kid does when he realizes he won’t have anything for lunch. What did he do? Eat chips?

“I ain’t mad,” he says again. “That dinner, all this, no one’s ever…done that.”

His tone, that soft, uncomfortable wonder—it tells me everything he can’t say.

I nod at the front room. “So, it doesn’t suck?”

I’ve been cooking for Pastor North for years. If I’ve been slowly poisoning him all this time, he’s been too polite to tell me.

A smile picks at the corners of his lips. “Best damn steak I ever had.”

“It’s turkey, you ass.” But he’s made me smile.

He smiles out the corner of his mouth, but then he blinks, the smile fades, and he leans into me ever so slightly. For a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. I think.

He takes a step back. “You going to finish your dinner?”

My rotten day is still half curdling my stomach. “No, I sort of pigged out on the potatoes before you got here.”

He averts his gaze and retreats another step. “Okay. Sorry,” he says, indicating the pile at my feet.

I shake my head. “Don’t worry about it.”

I bend down and begin picking up the clothes. A moment later he returns to the front room.

For a guy who was hell-bent on getting his dick inside me, he sure did lose interest fast. He’s acted like I have herpes ever since that guy went after me. I’m not sure if it’s because the guy touched me—you know, that way—or if it’s because Axel had to kill him, but I’m positive he regrets claiming me.

Right now I feel like a polar bear adrift on an iceberg with no land in sight.

I can’t stop brooding over what Axel’s life must have been like growing up. He’s so powerful he looks like he could rip apart an ox. I don’t know if anyone’s shown him a spark of love his whole life. Dad in prison, mom an addict—what kind of childhood is that? I think about my own parents. They were both lawyers, but my mom quit working to stay home with me. Dance lessons, piano lessons, birthday parties don’t even cover it. They loved me. They showed me in thousands of little ways.

No wonder the guy has a prison record. I don’t blame him. I’ll bet before he could even walk, he knew that if he needed something, he had to take it.

Just like he took me. I spread the yellowed white sheets over the bed. Our bed. The place where we turn our backs to each other night after night as if the other person isn’t even there.

Part is my fault. I’ve made it perfectly clear I don’t want him sticking that huge thing in me. Guess that adds to the so-not-worth-it aspect of having me around. He’s been kind about it, but he has to be thinking “Melody” is a huge disappointment.

I finish the bed and put the clothes away. Then I take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror. My hair needs washing again, and even though I scrub down every morning, I know I probably stink of sweat. I don’t wear makeup, but then no one does. I wouldn’t even know where to get any. The sour expression looking back at me, however, is completely my fault. Who am I, Melody or Misery?

I’m lonely. I have been for years. I need to do something about this or I’ll die inside. Either that or I’ll get all wrapped up in self-pity, forget to take a pot off the stove, and burn the house down. I could get pneumonia because I just don’t give a damn if what I’m wearing isn’t warm enough. Big girls don’t act like this. They adapt.

Axel is sitting on the couch sharpening an ax as I heat a bucket of water on the stove. The thing looks like it could take a man’s head clean off. I hope for my sake it’s for chopping down trees. I don’t ever want to see him cleaning bloody guck off the thing.

While he’s busy, I carry the bucket to the bathroom and do my best to scrub away the stink and sweat. I know it can’t be anywhere near as good as a real bath, but I don’t want to bug him, not when things are so weird between us. When I’m clean as I think I can get, I wash my hair and change into something fresh.

I take a comb with me into the front room. Axel looks up and does a double take. I clutch the comb to my chest.

“I hope you don’t mind.” I’m wearing one of his shirts, and it hangs almost to my knees.

He sets the sandstone aside like he’s forgotten all about it and shakes his head.

I plop down in front of the fire, which is what passes for a hair dryer in the apocalypse. I tuck my feet under me and begin the long process of digging knots out of my hair. I need conditioner badly. The scrape, scrape, scrape of the sandstone tells me Axel is sharpening his tools again. Every so often, though, he pauses.

I catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye, and he stares at me with such hunger that I feel the shock of it all through my body. I forget all about my hair. I moisten my lips, and I can’t look away.

Axel ditches the ax, crosses the room, and kneels behind me. My heart thunders against my ribs as he takes the comb from my unresisting fingers.

I tense, expecting him to yank the comb through my thick, waist-length hair. Instead he begins with soft, subtle tugs on the ends and works his way up to the roots. It’s not sexy, but I’m so hungry to be touched that I close my eyes at the slow, deliberate strokes. Until that moment I didn’t realize how desperately I need to feel his hands on me.

The sound of his breathing soothes me. I suck in a breath and taste his scent—a mixture of wood smoke and musk. I get drunk on it, and all I want to do is lean back against him. He’s made it clear, though, that he doesn’t want that from me.

Not anymore.

“I guess that’ll do it.” The gentle tugging stops. Axel hands over the comb and gets to his feet.

I’m overwhelmed with blissful sadness, and for several pulses I’m silent.

“Thank you,” I mumble finally.

Axel averts his gaze as he collects his tools, and I get to my feet. It’ll take hours for my hair to dry this way, and right now all I want to do is climb between the sheets and brood. This is not the behavior of a square-jawed Amazon woman, I know. I’m not feeling very square-jawed.

I’m still awake when Axel finally joins me. In the dim light of his candle I watch as he strips out of his clothes, his muscles flexing with each movement. It fills me with awe, how strong he is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as powerful as he is.

He wanted me, once.

I want to speak, but I can’t think of anything to say.

The bed shifts. For a moment Axel just sits there, and then he swings his legs up, settles onto his back, and pulls the covers over his long body.

I’m in a small bed with a big man, and I’ve never felt so alone.

“Melody?” His voice is soft, no more than a murmur. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

He rolls over and props himself up on an elbow. He strokes my hair again, and I lose it. I suck in a breath, and it’s so obviously a sob. Damn it. I clench my teeth, my muscles, my everything. I am
not
a wimp.

Until he scooches over and spoons me. Now I’m done.

“I’m sorry.” My stupid voice is thick.

He goes still as a slab of concrete.

“I know I messed up, and I know you feel like you’re stuck with me now, and I just—I’m really sorry.” My voice hitches.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I roll my eyes. “I’m completely oblivious about how things work; you said so yourself. You had to kill that guy because I got mad and walked off.”

He sits up. “What kind of shit is this? Hey, look at me.”

I don’t want to, though, so he rolls me over and presses my hands to the sides of my head. “I’m not mad. How could I be mad?”

“Well…”
Because I acted like a jerk, and because of me a man is dead? Because I wouldn’t listen, didn’t believe you, and acted like a child?

“Are you kidding me?” He’s looking at me like I’m being all crazy.

Kind of pisses me off. “Well, it is strange. You have to admit. Right after that guy tried to…and you had to…and now you don’t even look at me.”

He rakes his hand through the stubble on his head. “I remember giving you a very nice massage that night.”

“You were being nice.”

He leans in. “I am not a nice man. Wake up, Mel. I did it because you’re my girl and that bastard put his hands on you. I should have been there.
 
I should have gone with you and I didn’t.”

“He didn’t, you know, do it. He just smacked me around.”

“I promised I’d protect you, and I meant it.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s it? Thanks?”

“I guess. Clearly. I mean, before that, all you wanted was to get in my pants. Now I have the plague. Maybe being so repulsive hurts.”

“You’re mad because I haven’t touched you?”

“I’m not mad. I just don’t understand. You make me feel so alone…” My voice cracks. It’s painful to admit this, but the wound is deep. If you think about it, I’ve been alone since the day my parents signed that contract. Life on the road with no one my age, pretending to be someone I’m not, then all those years hiding in Sadie’s Bend, trying to be a nice, pure little thing and praying that no one would see the real me.
 
Now even Axel doesn’t want me.
 
I feel like I’m on the edge of this giant pit I didn’t notice until now, only it’s too late and I’m sliding in.

“I was giving you time. You know.
 
And…”
 
He presses his fingers between his brow, like he’s getting a headache.
 
“I wasn’t sure about you anymore.”

“Great.” That’s just perfect.

“You’re not exactly what I expected.”

“Sorry to disappoint!”
 
Fucker! I try to flip over, but he pulls me back.

He takes up a lock of my hair and twists it around his finger, never taking his eyes off mine.
 
“I thought you were some street slut who made it big, but you’re not.
 
You’re a nice girl.
 
I don’t know how to act around nice girls.”

“How do you know I’m nice?”

“The blood all over my dick, for one.”

“I thought you liked me being a virgin.”

He grins.

What the
fuck?
 
“Okay, so, you didn’t mind taking my virginity, and you still liked it enough to bring me with you, but now that you’ve thought about it you don’t want me.
 
Is that right?”

“No!”
 
He growls like a bear and flops back against his own pillow.
 
“Guys like me grind girls like you between our teeth.”

This makes no sense whatsoever.
 

“You said you liked hurting me.”

He nods, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I don’t want to if it makes me like that son of a bitch. I don’t ever want to see you cry like that again.”