The Things We Water

The kids and I were on our way to the nursery room the next morning when we heard it—voices coming from the back of the house, where the meeting room was.

And whatever conversation was going on, it had to be heated for me to hear them as well as I did. The funny part was, I wasn’t the only one drawn in by the argument. Duncan stopped right where he was in the middle of the hallway to listen. He just plopped his little butt down, his ears twitching like he wanted to listen better.

It made me smile.

“What are they saying?” I whispered, even though he couldn’t actually reply in a way that would give me any valuable information.

“They’re talking about the gnomes,” the little girl surprisingly answered in her normal volume, like she didn’t care if we got caught. We’d found her in the kitchen earlier, already eating her protein-rich breakfast when Duncan and I had come downstairs. We had gotten into the routine where I walked both of them to the nursery afterward, at least the five days during the week, when it was in session.

I’d wondered where Henri had been during breakfast but had figured he was busy doing ranch stuff. Not because he was avoiding me or anything.

Riiiight.

I wasn’t going to say that I regretted telling him the night before what Matti had suggested, but my execution could’ve been better. Then again, if I would have done it professionally, he might have taken me seriously. He’d asked, and I’d warned him. I had even grinned at him afterward.

All Henri had done was blink, then he’d laid back down. When it had been time to go inside, he’d gotten up and held out a hand to help me to my feet too. His expression had been normal, I’d thought.

Only a very small part of me had died inside after I’d admitted what I’d admitted, but I was still here and still refusing to be awkward about it. It hadn’t been my idea to tell him, and in the one or two moments I’d thought about it since, it wasn’t that crazy. Not really. The difference in age between us wasn’t huge. There hadn’t been a single sign he was anything other than single, and so was I. I didn’t think he found me unattractive, and I thought he might be the most handsome man I’d ever seen.

Matti was known to say some ridiculous crap, and his comment was on that level, but it wasn’t that crazy. But I might have also been delusional to think it wasn’t.

A voice louder than the ones before it had us all staring down the hall again, only to spot a face pressed up against the glass of the back door, hands flat on either side of it. It was Shiloh… eavesdropping?

I lifted my hand and waved, and from the other side, he had to see me, because he waved back before disappearing.

All right then….

I scooped Duncan into my arms, even though I wanted to listen more, and said, “Let’s drop you off, and I’ll tell you anything I find out later.”

His floppy ears drooped, and it made me laugh just as we arrived at the door to the classroom.

“I’m sorry, Donut. We’ll be nosey later,” I told my puppy. “I’ll tell you, if you’d like to know too, Agnes.”

All that offer got me was a mini glare tossed over her shoulder as she left us behind and went inside, and I set Duncan on the ground.

He licked my forearm.

“Have a good day. Love you,” I told him, ignoring that itty-bitty sense of grief that still hit me when he left for “school.”

But it was what it was, and his happiness was more important than anything. New normals weren’t supposed to be easy, and one day, I would look back on this period in our life and be grateful for just getting to carry him to his classroom. One day, he probably wouldn’t let me go near it.

That was the single worst thing in the world I could have thought of.

Those red eyes peered up at me suspiciously, but then he sent me “love” and turned on those growing feet to push through the doggy—or was it wolfy?—door. Through the window, I peered in, met Maggie’s brown eyes, and waved. I’ll be back later, I mouthed to her. She smiled. Other than Randall and Henri, she was the most interaction I had with anyone here. We hadn’t gotten very personal with each other yet, other than the uncomfortable pregnancy conversation I’d forced on her, but she invited me back every day, and when I’d asked Duncan if he thought she liked having me around, his answer had been a solid “yes.”

Not for the first time, I wondered what kind of magic was in Maggie. Whatever it was, it was real subtle. She didn’t feel like a werewolf, but she had their height.

Besides her, I’d also talked to some of the parents when they came to pick up their kids, just not for long. But now that Henri had given me his explanation for the distance the residents kept between us, it didn’t bother me so much.

A touch to the middle of my back had me flinching like someone zapped me. That’s what I got for zoning out. I hadn’t been paying attention to the magical presence coming down the hall.

It was Henri.

Henri who had irritation stamped all over his face, and I meant a lot of it. He was in normal clothes—jeans and a T-shirt. He must not have shaved that morning because his scruff was thicker than normal.

He tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Can you come with me?” he asked, not beating around the bush.

“Morning,” I greeted him, trying to read his body language some more. “Sure.”

Henri blinked. His tone was a little softer after that. “Morning, Nina.”

Setting my hand on his elbow, I gave his forearm a little rub. “You okay?” He was so tense.

His eyes flicked down to where I was touching him before meeting mine again. “I’m all good,” he answered, actually sounding sincere. Maybe not all good but better than he’d been a second ago.

He cleared his throat after I dropped my hand. “One second.” Henri leaned toward the little window built into the door, lifting his hand, a brief smile flashing across his features that made me smile.A second later, he stepped away, his expression melting off like it had never been there in the first place. He was so good at doing that. “The elders are in the media room.”

I followed him down the hall. “It sounded like there was some arguing going on in there a minute ago.”

Henri didn’t even try and muffle his growl. “You heard that?”

“Little bit.”

I wanted to ask what they’d been arguing over, but I figured the elders could probably hear us, so I kept my mouth closed and focused on following him, which reminded me of what he’d looked like from behind when we’d gone back inside the house last night. Those sweatpants had hugged tight, high muscles just right….

I put a lid on that thought just in time to spot multiple elders seated at the table. All of them minus Franklin, who was still missing in action.

These people had allowed me to join their community, then disappeared without a trace until now.

I wasn’t sure why it hit me then, this sense of hurt, but it did. Did they all really think we weren’t going to last?

Almost instantly, a solid weight landed between my shoulder blades. “What’s going on?” Henri asked against my ear.

The urge to make something up was in my mouth, but I squashed it when his breath puffed against my skin. This was the wrong moment to answer him. The wrong place to say what was in my heart, so I glanced over my shoulder and shook my head.

He didn’t need to say a word for me to know he didn’t like me not explaining, but what was I going to do? Tell him that I was disappointed everyone thought we were flakes? I’d just told him last night that I’d been lonely.

Hoping he understood the timing being off, I reached back and patted his leg before taking the same chair across from the elders as in the past. This time though, I was alone. I missed Matti and Sienna.We had been texting as much as we always had—video calling once or twice a month, which was also the normal—but it was different now.

I eyed Henri as he went to stand in almost the same spot as before too. I thought he was a little closer to the table this time though.

Pushing my chair forward, I said, “Good morning, elders,” in the most non-hurt voice I could come up with.

They murmured something in return that sounded like “good morning,” but it didn’t exactly sound enthusiastic.

“Nina, tell them what happened last night,” Henri demanded, his irritation back in its full glory.

One of the women aimed a narrowed look at him through her tortoiseshell glasses; it was the woman who had spoken the most after Franklin our first day. Silver-Blue Hair. She coughed delicately. “I will handle the questions here, Henri.” She offered a smile that was deceptively encouraging. “Nina, tell us what happened last night, step-by-step and word for word to the best of your ability.”

The faster I did this, the faster I could get it over with. I started. “We were outside, Henri, Agnes, Duncan, and me. We had just finishing playing tag and were eating our popsicles, sitting there talking⁠—”

“About what?” the cyclops asked.

I slid my gaze to Henri.

“That doesn’t matter,” he answered for me, his tone cool.

I didn’t smile, but a part of me wanted to. What I did do was tell them about the gnomes coming out of the trees and coming straight for us, like something out of a fairy tale. I told them about the color of their clothing and the way they had spoken in unison and what they’d said, at least how I remembered it, which was something I hadn’t even shared with Henri. I guess we’d both been too overwhelmed by the miracle of their appearance to notice. I told the elders everything, except for how we’d shared Henri’s popsicle and our conversation about my parents afterward. To me, those discussions weren’t any of their business.

The cyclops elder spoke up. “How do you know their language?”

“I don’t,” I replied. “I didn’t recognize that they were even speaking a different one until he mentioned it.”

“You have never met them before?” the woman with the glasses asked.

“Never.”

“Not even in a different location?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never seen, spoken to, or dreamt of a gnome in my life. I’ve only read about them.”

More stirring. More whispering.

A man with a faint green tint to his skin leaned forward. “Gnomes have long lifespans and equally impressive memories,” he noted, like that meant something to me.

It didn’t.

There were more murmurs from the group in what seemed like reluctant agreement over his comment.

“Now that you’ve heard that we both had the same experience, can we discuss something else?” Henri’s husky voice engulfed the room, less of a question than a statement.

“We only wish to understand why they would return after so long,” the woman said.

“If there’s more to it, they didn’t share it with us. Like I said,” Henri went on. “There’s no need to drag this out and have another meeting over it when there are other things around here that could benefit more from our attention. The gnomes are back, and it’s a good thing. We can leave it at that.”

The woman waved her hand. “We should continue this discussion. I would expect you of all people to be more understanding about our desire to understand why, Henri. This is unlike you.”

I was on Henri’s side with this. They could discuss hypothetical reasons and answers all they wanted, but if these were old, mysterious magical beings who could travel through a system in trees we couldn’t begin to understand… did it really matter? They hadn’t given either of us a single clue.

From the tension in the air, I could sense another round of arguing on the verge of starting, and there were other things I’d rather do. “Do you all need anything else from me?” I asked before they could begin.

“No, Nina,” a couple of them answered at the same time, dismissing me without a second thought before they turned on themselves and multiple people started talking at once.

Pushing the chair back, I slid out and went for the door, undisturbed. Forgotten again. I headed up to my room, grabbed the small cardboard box that had arrived a few days ago, and swapped into my hiking boots before I went right on back downstairs. The voices echoed from the library as I went in that direction, but I passed the doorway and ignored what was happening, going straight out the back door. The air was clean and sweeter than it had been earlier when I’d let Duncan out to pee, and I smiled wide when I spotted Randall, the redheaded security person for the ranch, outside of the building with the vehicles.

The man, who I had started getting to know over random meals the last few weeks, was leaning against the building, texting on his phone, but when he sensed me, he dropped his hand and gave me a friendly smile. “Morning,” he called out.

“Hi, Randall. How’s it going?”

“All right.” The man who had told me he was one of the few people who had been born at the ranch tipped his head toward the clubhouse. “They wrangle you into their gnome discussion?”

“Yeah….” I trailed off, not being willing to talk badly about the elders.

I figured he understood when he grinned. “What’s going on?”

“I wanted to ask, could you tell me how to find Spencer the sasquatch?”

You would have figured I’d told the nice man a few years older than me that I had proof Santa was real from the way his entire body reacted to my question. “You want to find Spencer?” He made a face. “Why?”

I held up the bar of conditioner, feeling about an inch tall. “Remember I hurt his feelings when I first got here? I wanted to apologize and give him conditioner to make up for it. I should have done it sooner, but it took a long time to get here. The conditioner, I ordered, I mean.”

“You hurt his feelings?” Randall couldn’t believe me.

But he needed to.

I nodded. “Can you tell me where to find him?” I thought about it. “I’ll be all right. He can’t hurt me unless I let him.” I wanted him to understand that, otherwise he might be worried that this could go wrong.

It could. Only if I let it.

I wanted him to forgive me, but not at a risk to my safety. I wasn’t that dumb. “Please?” I tried again.

The redhead thought about it for a second. “Sure, but I might as well take you. Someone needs to head out that way to check some batteries, I’ll switch.”

“Okay,” I agreed, so grateful. “Can I help?”

“I got it. Let me swap the UTV for the side-by-side, and we’ll get going,” he offered, and I nodded.

It didn’t take him long to change vehicles, and I heard the door to the main house open and close before a voice I recognized spoke up. “All good?”

It was Henri making his way over, all six-foot-six, prime rib of a man.

How did normal people not tell he was something else just by looking at him? Did they assume he’d played football at some point in his life? Or imagine that he’d been a wrestler? People just weren’t built the way he was.

I put a lid on that thought too.

“Everything’s fine,” I answered him as Randall wandered out of the warehouse.

The other man lifted his chin. “Hey, boss. We’re heading to the western side of the property. Probably be gone a couple of hours. You mind taking the north⁠—”

Henri’s steps slowed, and those dark eyebrows crept up a millimeter. “You’re going together?”

Did his tone come out a little… different, or was I imagining it?

I nodded. “I asked Randall to go with me to run an errand.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to know where we were going, but I didn’t want to risk getting a lecture on why I didn’t need to apologize, or whatever else he could come up with.

But I was underestimating the curious nature of a werewolf, and that was always a dumb thing to do. Henri asked, “What errand?”

“We’re checking batteries along the fence and going to see Spencer,” Randall answered.

“Spencer?” He sounded even more surprised than Randall had.

I gave him a weak grin. “Yes, Spencer the sasquatch, formerly known as the bigfoot.”

“Why?”

This was why I always explained everything at once to my parents. I was going to have to remember that. “I have a conditioner bar I want to give him that’s good for his hair. I feel bad about making fun of him.”

To give him credit, Henri looked perplexed for about two seconds more before his features smoothed back into that serious expression that was standard for him. His boss face. He held out his hand to Randall. “I’ll go.”

Dang it. “I want to go. I want to apologize to him,” I explained. “Not just give him the conditioner.”

Amber eyes slid toward me. “I understand. I’ll take you, and we’ll check the western fence line.”

Under no circumstance had I meant for this to turn out so complicated. “I can go by myself. You both seem busy….”

“No” came out of both of their mouths.

All right, I’d probably get lost anyway. I was going to need to learn to navigate with their map app and coordinates if we were going to be sticking around, which was the plan, contrary to popular belief.

Henri caught the set of keys Randall tossed and didn’t say a word from the moment we got into the side-by-side.

We traveled slowly through the parts of the forest closest to the residential areas, all the sections I’d become familiar with on weekends with Duncan. Soon after, we left the gravel road, then the dirt-packed one, until we made it to an area that was more remote. He did it on his own without any kind of GPS or navigation to lead us either. Henri knew exactly where we were going.

I rubbed my hands on my thighs, made it maybe two more minutes, and then I blurted out, “So? Are you being awkward, or are you frustrated with the elders right now?”

He didn’t look over, but “I’m not awkward” was what he decided to reply with.

I scrunched up my nose at him.

His jaw, though, looked even more defined than it’d been a minute ago. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He hesitated, then pressed his lips together like he was catching other words that wanted to come out too.

Reaching across the seat, I set my hand on his forearm one more time and gave it a squeeze. “You can talk to me about whatever you want. The only person I might tell is Duncan, and he can’t tell anyone.”

His eyes slid over to me before they moved forward again just as fast. Those tan hands flexed around the wheel, opening and closing. He did it for so long that I thought he was ignoring me. Then he said, “I’m busy. Here and at work. When it isn’t one, it’s the other.” His exhale was soft, and I thought he was done before he suddenly huffed. “And I’m not being fucking awkward around you. Give me a break.”

Give him a break?

The urge to joke about why he might be being weird was strong, but I had a vague idea of what this slice of honesty from him meant.

Henri Blackrock had opened up to me a little.

He’d complained.

I didn’t need to know him better than I already did to realize that had to be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

And now I felt guilty for taking up more of his time.

I slid my hand up and squeezed his elbow. His skin was nice and warm. “I’m sorry you’re swamped, Fluff. Being responsible for one person is a lot of work, and I haven’t spent that much time with you, but I’ve seen how busy you are. Your phone is always ringing, you’re always talking to someone about something at the ranch… I don’t know how you do it.” I thought about how Matti had mentioned his dad leaving here because of the responsibilities that came with it, then shoved that topic aside for the time being. The last thing Henri needed was to be reminded about how much he had on his plate, even if I sympathized with him. “Will work get better, or is that just part of it?”

His hands did that flexing thing again around the steering wheel. “As soon as we hire another deputy they will, whenever that is. There aren’t exactly a line of people moving to the county with the right qualifications.”

I kept massaging the muscle on his lower arm with my thumb, I was pretty sure the tension was slowly easing from it in the process. “I see.”

“It’ll happen at some point, but we’re all getting tired of working so many hours until it does. It isn’t just me,” he explained before clearing his throat, maybe getting a little self-conscious about what he’d admitted.

“Well, I don’t know how many of the other deputies have to deal with elders and giant hairy creatures with attitude problems on top of everything. I wouldn’t be too hard on myself.”

He dipped his chin like he thought I had a point.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.

His forehead wrinkled. “For?”

“I used to think that you were always so serious, but I get it now. It’s because you’ve always had to be. You knew what you were going to have to bear in the future, huh? When you were younger?”

He met my eyes. I smiled at him.

“I know I haven’t been here that long, and my opinion doesn’t mean much, but I think you’re doing a great job, Fluff. I mean it. The kids are happy, and they love you. They’re always ‘Henri this and Henri that’ in the nursery. All of them. Don’t tell Pascal I’m telling you this, but he’s been drawing a lot of pictures of you the last week. He told me you’re his hero. It’s the cutest freaking thing. Plus, the ranch is in great shape….”

“Your opinion matters.” Henri’s jaw muscle did that ticking thing some more. His hands flexed. Then a frown came out of nowhere. “Don’t say shit like that.”

It took me a gulp and a second to react. “It matters to me, but you know what I mean.”

“I know what you meant, but I don’t care.” He shot me a look. “Don’t.”

I gave his forearm another squeeze, so touched I wanted to put my hand over my heart. “In that case, thank you. I appreciate it.” I smiled at him even though he was focused in the direction of the windshield again. “You’re a good man, Henri Blackrock.”

When I let go of him, the way he turned to me….

“Don’t make that face. I’m not flirting with you.” I squinted at him. “I said you’re a good man, not….”

“You’re not asking me to marry you?” he cut me off with a straight face.

The gasp that came out of my body was a borderline shout. “And you tell me I’m a brat.” I shook my head, so completely caught off guard by the fact he’d bring it up, especially like that. Like in a joke. I laughed even harder. “I thought we were pretending I didn’t tell you what I told you!”

“It happened,” he muttered, his mouth twitching.

He thought this was funny?

I groaned. “Hear me out, I did not ask you to marry me. Your cousin⁠—”

“You said he was yours just as much as he is mine.”

This was happening. Henri was messing with me. “He was yours first, and I only told you what he said because you asked!” I laughed some more and shook my head. “I knew you were going to make this weird after I told you, I knew it.”

This man who had just finished telling me all about how he was overworked and tired, smirked. Right then and there. I might have even called it a semi-smile.

I liked this version of him.

I liked it a lot.

He wasn’t at all what I expected, with all these different facets of him.

I was thinking about that as he slowed the vehicle to a crawl when we got to an even thicker section of forest with slim trees clustered so close together it was impossible to drive any further.

“We’ll have to go by foot the rest of the way,” he explained, shutting the side-by-side down and unbuckling his seat belt.

I did the same, meeting him at the front of the off-road vehicle. We had to split up to get around the aspens, the gaps between them too narrow. There were branches and rocks of all sizes scattered everywhere, and I slipped on wet leaves more than I was proud of. Half the time, he made sure I was mostly standing, but every once in a while, he pretended not to hear me mutter “shit” to myself.

“We’re almost there,” he let me know after a while.

“Okay.”

What he considered “almost there” was not what I considered “almost there,” that was for freaking sure. We came up to a steep incline that had to be a hill or a mountain hidden in the trees that I’d never seen before from the clubhouse. My calves and thighs burned sooner than my ego would have expected, and I started holding my breath for longer and longer periods so he wouldn’t hear me gasping.

“Do we need to take a break?” he asked from up ahead after a few more minutes.

Breathing through my nose had never been harder, and I really wanted to know what altitude we were at because my lungs were under the impression we were at eighteen thousand feet. “Are we almost there?”

Henri stopped. His face wasn’t red. He wasn’t even sweating, while I was sure he noticed that my face probably resembled a tomato, and I might need an inhaler. “Breathe through your nose.”

“Where else am I supposed to breathe from?” I gasped.

His eyebrows rose. “We’ll be there in five minutes. You going to make it?”

Swallowing hard, I waved him forward, really, really wishing I’d brought some water with me.

Henri’s eyes twinkled for a moment before he continued up the dang hill. He had the nerve to talk in a perfectly even voice. “His home is up ahead. If he’s rude, we’re leaving. If you feel uncomfortable, we’re leaving. Am I clear?”

“Got it, your Royal Wolfiness,” I confirmed.

He slowly turned to look at me. His nose wrinkled a little.

I smiled at him, trying so hard to breathe normally when I wanted to wheeze.

His nose stayed scrunched, then he did that “come here” gesture with his index finger that was way more attractive than it should have been.

Maybe I should have asked what he wanted, but I didn’t. I stepped right up to him, so close I had to tip my head back. Henri dipped his, and at least half my brain cells stopped working as he lowered that masculine face—I knew he wasn’t going to kiss me, I knew it like I knew the exact shade of Duncan’s eyes—but still, the brain cells in my skull decided to make my heart race right then.

It wasn’t every day a gorgeous man got this close to me.

But instead of his mouth touching some part of my body, it was his cheek that moved across the top of my head. He tilted his neck so that he rubbed it across my ear and my own cheek… a little over part of my mouth too. He did the same with his other cheek on my other side.

Henri Blackrock was covering me in his scent, and I just stood there.

After maybe the longest minute or two of my life because I was trying so hard not to react, he looked down and nodded. “Good,” he grumbled.

Good?

His nostrils flared just a little. “You smell like mine now.”

Not choking right then might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done, because I knew what he meant, and at the same time, some part of me couldn’t help but take it the way it sounded.

“Spencer’s less likely to get aggravated if you smell like me. He’ll know if he messes with you, he messes with me.” He said it so nonchalantly, dismissing the moment like he did this kind of thing all the time. “Let’s go be nice, Cricket.”

Oh, sure. I was fine. Like nothing had happened.

I settled for a single nod and followed after him—pretending not to be in a state of shock—the side of the hill getting steeper with every step. I guess a part of me had expected to find a cave nestled in a rock formation, but what we came up to was a small but tall log cabin with solar panels on one side and a satellite dish on the other.

My mouth dropped open as wide as it had wanted to when Henri had started rubbing all over me. “What in the magical hell…?” I whispered.

The chuckle at my side got me. Henri was semi-smiling again. “He has a refrigerator.”

I couldn’t believe it. “He has TV?” I recognized the name of the company on the dish.

“Basic service. He doesn’t want to pay extra for more channels,” Henri explained. “It’s what comes standard with being a member of the community. We get a corporate deal.”

Before I could wonder about what kind of shows a sasquatch might want to watch in his cabin in the middle of nowhere, a big door opened and a booming voice called, “You’re on my land.”

The man beside me sighed. “Your land is in the northwest. This is my land, and you’re allowed to live on it. Any member of the community can venture out here whenever they want. You agreed in blood, and you aren’t old enough to start having memory issues unless you have a medical condition you need to see someone about.”

The level of confidence it took to talk back to an eight-foot-tall being….

The sasquatch stepped out of the house and into the clearing in front. Even with all the hair on his body, it was obvious he was irritated. “What do you want? I haven’t ‘wandered’ close again. I’ve kept my distance,” Spencer argued.

“Someone wants to speak to you.”

“The abomination?” the sasquatch huffed, those dark eyes landing on me.

I—oooh. Ooh. This was going to be harder than I thought. The urge to say something I’d regret once I stopped being mad lingered in my mouth, but the part of me that was trying to be nice reminded me to rise above.

But I still had to grit my teeth as I said, “That’s a really mean thing to call me when I came here to apologize, Spencer.” I was going to treat him like a person, even though he couldn’t do the same for me. Yet.

“You’re here to what?” the sasquatch barked like he hadn’t heard me correctly.

I looked at him. “I’m here to say I’m sorry for what I said before. You hurt my feelings, so then I retaliated, and it’s been bothering me since it happened.”

Those dark, beady eyes moved back and forth between Henri and me, like he wasn’t sure we weren’t pulling his leg or something. It made me feel more guilty. It also made me more resigned to saying and doing what I needed to.

I tried again. “You have a lot of beautiful colors in your hair. Look at mine. There isn’t a single highlight in it⁠—”

“It is plain,” Spencer agreed, way too easily.

I blinked. “Sure, plain⁠—”

“It isn’t even chestnut colored. That is a nice shade,” the sasquatch threw in.noveldrama

I nodded slowly and bit the inside of my cheek.

The compliments kept coming though. “Dark auburn, I would say.” He shrugged. “Meh.”

“Meh?” I echoed, not sure I was hearing him correctly. Was this giant legend with dry hair making fun of me? I didn’t have split ends. It was healthy, dang it.

A hand landed on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and I made the mistake of looking at Henri. He had a smug expression on his face. He wasn’t even trying to be discreet about it either.

I was glad someone thought this was funny. “I appreciate you sharing your opinion,” I lied in a flat voice, dang well knowing he could tell I didn’t mean it.

“You’re welcome, demon.”

Demon?

All right, I was done.

“It is shiny. You do have that going for you,” Spencer added just as I was about to grab Henri’s wrist and pull him in the direction we’d come.

I touched the ends of my hair. “Thank you.” I’d known he was vain about his appearance. “I stopped using shampoo two years ago, and it made a world of difference for me.”

I was surprised when Henri murmured, “But it smells good.”

A compliment. I dropped my hand. “I still wash it with castile soap, just not shampoo. And I use a vinegar rinse and a good conditioner. It’s a whole method.” And actually this was a good segue into why I was here. I took the little box out of my fanny pack—realizing then I should have gotten him multiple ones since he had so much hair—and I tossed it.

The sasquatch caught it and read the box, which was something I was going to have to tell Sienna about. Or ask Henri over. How did he know how to read? Did he walk around in human form sometimes? “Conditioner?”

“Your hair is fine despite what I said, but that’s a good conditioner. I can help you order more if you want.” Did he have money?

How I could tell a being covered from head to toe in hair was surprised was something I didn’t totally understand, but I did.

“If you want,” I offered, so he wouldn’t feel any pressure. Maybe he’d hate it, but I’d tried.

Spencer’s voice was loud. “Okay.” Not thank you, nothing else. Just okay. At least he hadn’t called me a demon again. I needed to quit while I was ahead.

“I’m sorry again for what I said in anger. Hope you like the conditioner.” I turned to Henri and raised my eyebrows, telling him I was ready to go if he was.

He nodded. We started hiking back in the direction we’d come. We hadn’t gotten very far when Spencer called out in his big voice, “Henri?”

“What?” the man beside me hollered, not slowing down.

“Tell Maggie I called her a traitor!”

“No!” Henri yelled back, shaking his head.

Maggie? Nursery Maggie? What in the…?

Going down the hill wasn’t any easier than going up it. My knees cracked and started hurting, and I slipped more than once again on damp leaves but managed to stay on my feet. But it was faster than going up had been.

We had just gotten to where the land levelled off when the rich voice that was becoming more and more familiar by the sentence spoke again. “You didn’t need to do that, you know.”

“What? Say I was sorry?”

“Yeah.”

He was a little further ahead of me, so I couldn’t see his face, but he couldn’t see mine either. “Maybe not, but I don’t know what his life has been like, who has hurt him. I don’t need to be one more person in a line of shitty people.”

That got him to stop between two aspens. He lifted his head but didn’t do anything else.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I just don’t think you get that distrustful or rude because it’s fun, unless you’re a psychopath.” I kept walking, catching his eyes when I got to his side. I shrugged up at him and that thoughtful, handsome face. “The people who are the hardest to love are usually the ones who need it the most. Funny how that works, huh?”