Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair Read Free Page B

a word he could say, even if his teeth hadn’t gotten there yet. “Da dafe only had do much.”
    “Fuck money,” Aiden snarled, and Craw, standing right behind him, said the same thing at the same time.
    “Tereo,” Jeremy said, and he made sure his lips quirked enough for a smile.
    “I’m serious,” Aiden growled. “And forget about the fucking safe. We’re not bringing the fucking safe to our new home. The safe means you can pick up and leave, and I’m not having it.”
    “I like de dafe. ’Th modprood.”
    Aiden’s green eyes bulged. “Mothproof my ass. You just want to be able to pick up that thing and run. No.” Aiden shifted his gaze to above Jeremy—Jeremy had almost forgotten the doctor. “He wants the cosmetic surgery.”
    “We’ll find a way to pay,” Craw said, but his voice sounded stretched thin. Jeremy knew enough about small businesses to know that this would be a doozy of a blow.
    “No,” he mumbled, not wanting to pay them back this way.
    “Shut up,” Aiden said, and he wasn’t growling anymore. In fact, he sounded about growled out.
    “Check my dafe.”
    “I will throw the safe off a fucking mountain and into a river,” Aiden said, sounding stubborn.
    “Dake de midden’ ou’!” All the mittens, gloves, cuffs, and fingerless mitts Aiden had knitted him over three years of friendship. Jeremy didn’t have much money—the mittens were the whole reason for the damned safe.
    “I will not!” Aiden snapped. “I’ll throw them all away and the cash too, and you will have to stay and wait for me to knit them all again. And by that time, you’ll have come to your senses.”
    The thought of all that beautiful knitting sinking to the bottom of the Colorado River made Jeremy’s eyes more than burn—they spilled over. “Craw! Don’ ’ed him!”
    “Then stop talking bullshit,” Craw snapped.
    Jeremy glared at both of them. “Abbholed,” he said, feeling the word deep in his stomach, and he was not surprised when Aiden smiled, predatory and proud.
    “I made your life miserable for years, Jeremy. No reason to change that now. Now you don’t worry about the money—you go ahead and tell that nice man yes, you’ll take another surgery, thank you.”
    Jeremy looked at the doctor and rolled his eyes, and the doc made a notation in his chart. Then the doc looked meaningfully at Craw, and Jeremy knew that the money was something to worry about, but that he was helpless and flat on his back and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do.
    He closed his eyes then and remembered his little apartment, sleeping in sweats because the heater wasn’t fantastic, but having Aiden’s young heat at his back like a furnace. Aiden, warm and protective—had Jeremy ever felt that safe? In his whole life?
    Aiden’s hand engulfed his, squeezed, and Jeremy grunted and squeezed back. He had nowhere to go but in his head, and Aiden was there too.
    He must have dozed because when he woke up, his bandages were back on and Aiden and Craw were gone. Ariadne was right next to him, on her side, looking at him anxiously.
    He could hear Aiden and Craw, their voices far away down a corridor, yelling. But not, from the sound of things, at each other.
    “How you doin’, Mid Ari?” He stopped—Ariadne was a mouthful during the best of times.
    Her sober hazel eyes grew shiny too, and he wanted to take back the question.
    “Pregnancy diabetes sucks ass,” she said softly, and he was relieved—so relieved—to be able to fixate on someone else’s ills.
    “I’m do dorry.” He meant it too. That baby—they had all been worried about that baby.
    “They think the baby’s got a cleft palate,” she said softly.
    Jeremy, his face under the new bandages, couldn’t even wrinkle his nose. “Bub dill okay,” he said, because he knew what that was. It was when the lip was split after the baby came out. Didn’t stop kids from being cute, he thought. Didn’t stop them from being loved.
    “Yeah,” she said,