Luca cut a look at Nox. “Do you think I want to go sit at a table with them while you wait around in a fucking horse trailer?”
“Isaiah—”
“I don’t care what he says.” His promises. His plans. He’d convinced Nox to give up the Anubis. Even if it purged without killing him, he’d be gone in a handful of decades. A few days to people who lived as long as Isaiah. A few weeks at most. “I’m tired of them treating you like you’re a pariah.”
“He asked me to come too.”
Luca glanced at the people working to arrange a sitting area close enough to a metal drum for warmth but far enough out not to catch something on fire.
“If you don’t want to go, we won’t.” The disappointment in Nox’s voice mixed with worry.
“What do you want?”
“I want you—”
“This isn’t about me.” It wasn’t Luca who faced the possibility of dying. Not this time.
Nox sighed so deep he lifted his broad shoulders and strained the stitches of his coat. “I’d like to go.”
“Why? And don’t you dare say because you want me to be happy or feel normal or—” Luca waved a hand. “Whatever.”
“I’d like to sit down with some people, even if they’re people I don’t know, and eat at a table. Talk. Try to get a little drunk.” Nox cocked his mouth to the side. “I don’t even know if he’ll have beer, but…” He shrugged. “It’s just been a long time since I got to do somethingnormal.”
How many times had Luca thought those words when sick in bed? Getting treatment at the hospital. Watching out the window while the horses ran in the field.
Letting Koda open his birthday presents for him because he was too tired to do it himself.
Falling asleep before they could even cut the cake?
Luca put his hands in his pockets. “Okay. We’ll go. But I swear if he says anything negative about you—”
“We’ll leave.”
Luca nodded. “Oh, we’ll leave, but after I punch him in the face.”
“Fair enough.”
Isaiah’s people carried out poles and a tarp.
“I guess if we’re going to eat their food, we should go help them set up,” Luca said.
“You feel up to it?” Nox drew Luca against his side.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You slept a long time.”
“All the more reason to get up and do something?”
Nox studied Luca’s face, and he wished like hell he could read his mind or at least feel his thoughts.
Then Luca would know what Nox hid.
Because whatever it was made shadows in his eyes.
He gave Luca a little tug. “Come on.”
Luca dug in his heels. “I mean it. First word out of his mouth about you.” He held up his fist.