“This your room?”
I don’t know if I’m grateful or irritated that he’s going to ignore what just happened. Maybe a little bit of both. “Sometimes. It’s mostly Eli’s.” I’d claimed a room down the hall and spent more and more nights there in the last year. Eli never commented on it, simply taking my half-assed excuse about differing schedules at face value. Not a single fucking word to address the growing distance between us. No, he just kept on moving as if nothing had changed. It felt—it still feels—like further confirmation that he never really wanted me. He wanted what I represent.
Someone to save.
Proof that he’s not like his father, that he’s really a good man.
Joke’s on both of us, after all.
Abel looks around the room for a long moment. “Get what you need.”
“There’s nothing I need here.” I’ve long since moved most of my stuff to the other room. There’s just a handful of clothes and books here, but nothing irreplaceable. I give the closed bathroom door one last look and then follow Abel to the door and out into the hall. He motions for me to precede him, and I walk four doors down and open it.
My room started as a spare room, but over the last year, it’s acquired a scattering of my knickknacks on the dresser, most of my clothes in the walk-in closet, and all my various makeup and bathroom stuff in the large en suite bathroom. It still doesn’t quite feel like mine the same way that my bedroom with Eli used to, but it’s better than lying next to him every night, listening to him breathe and aching over our shattering relationship.
Abel moves around it, eyeing my bed, sifting his fingers through the container of jewelry on the dresser, disappearing into the closet and then the bathroom. When he returns, he looks just as unreadable as he’s been since I met him. “This will do.”
I know I need to dig in my heels, to tell him to fuck right off with what he’s obviously assuming, but I’m still reeling with how ugly things became with Eli. “You’re living on the edge if you think I really won’t smother you in your sleep.”
“Nah, you’re too practical for that.” He walks to the narrow window and peers out. We’re high enough to see over the wall, and this room has a decent view of the river that separates our faction’s territory from the Amazons to the northeast. “Even if you managed to kill me before I snapped your neck, my brothers would tear you to pieces.”
I know. It factored into my decision to accept Abel’s offer. I have little recourse. The Paine brothers might as well be a hydra. Even if someone manages to kill one, there are six more where he came from, and they’ll all howl for the responsible party’s blood. The only way would be to kill them all, and if Eli’s father and an alliance with both Amazons and Mystics couldn’t manage it, I doubt anyone living can.
No, better to work this from the inside and use his obvious attraction to me; anything to benefit my people. Abel isn’t the type to let desire cloud his mind, but he’s wise enough to realize what an asset I am.
I cross my arms over my chest. “What’s next?”
“My people will use today to get settled in. Tomorrow we start patrols out into the faction to let people know who’s in charge and see us.” He glances at me. “That means you and I will be taking a nice little walk through Old Town. Eli, too, if he can behave himself.”
Old Town is a sector that runs seven blocks long and about three blocks wide, filled with shops and bars and restaurants that have been here since Sabine Valley’s inception. Or that’s how the story goes. Most of the business owners can trace their lineage back at least three or four generations in the same place, and they compromise the backbone of the faction. If they don’t get on Abel’s side, then he doesn’t have a chance in hell of transitioning smoothly into power.
I almost sit on the bed but think better of it at last moment. What happened with Eli is too fresh; I don’t trust myself not to do something self-destructive like fuck Abel just to get the memory of Eli’s ugly words out of my head.
Enjoy my sloppy seconds.
He’ll be lucky if I don’t sink a knife between his ribs the next time I see him, the bastard.
“Harlow.” From the tone of Abel’s voice, he’s said my name more than once.
“Sorry, I’m listening now.”
He doesn’t move from the window, but somehow he seems closer. “Did you know that Eli and I were friends when we were kids? All the way up through our teens and most of our twenties until all that shit went down eight years ago.”