The Awoken (New Unity Book 1) by S. M. Lynch & Sarah Michelle Lynch

Author:S. M. Lynch & Sarah Michelle Lynch [Lynch, S. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Being Human

Chapter Sixteen

SEVERAL WEEKS PASSED LIKE THAT, with us becoming closer every day. I taught him how to cook. How to pull vegetables from the garden. We trained in the home gym but also ran around the city streets, mostly early morning or late at night. I leaned on him as much as he on me.

As Christmas rushed towards us, I realized we were experiencing an actual winter for the first time in years—not just some cold blip. Camille’s house benefited from all modern insulation, but sometimes it got so cold overnight, I’d have to put a couple of eco-logs on the fire in our bedroom, just to keep us from shivering. And this was as we slept entwined in flannel pajamas, hats and socks. Camille wouldn’t have liked me to put the heat on overnight, so the eco-logs it was.

It was just a couple of days before Christmas when the front door opened of its own accord and Kyle took to his feet immediately—we hadn’t been expecting guests.

“It is just us,” she said in French, because whenever she crossed the Channel, French it was.

“Camille,” I told Kyle, and he took a deep breath, returning to the sofa where we were knitting a blanket together. He was working on one side, I on the other. We were making extra covers for the bed.

Camille could be heard chattering in French in the hallway. I heard something about the abhorrent weather, and their awful flight over. Camille was a bad flier, like my mother had been.

I was beginning to wonder who she’d brought along, when he arrived, filling the doorway. He hitched up his thermal trousers and sort of grimaced when he saw us sitting together.

“Why didn’t you call ahead?” I asked. “I’d have come got you if you’d said.”

Camille swooped in from behind my father, entering the room like a fast-moving moth.

“It was last-minute. The weather, you see,” she said, gesticulating all manner of unspoken complaints about the world. “York is dire. Six foot of snow. Manchester no better. We thought we’d come here, and it’s catching up. I was glad you shoveled the steps out there.”

I pointed at Kyle generally. “You’ve Kyle to thank for that.”

“Oh, hey, Kyle,” Camille said, “enjoying your time in my heart?”

“Your… heart?” he said slowly, not understanding.

“She means the city is her heart,” I explained.

“Tea, Ryken?” asked Camille.

“Would kill for a coffee.”

“Tea it is, then.”

He groaned and took the armchair on the other side of the room, filling all of its available space, some of Camille’s dainty pieces of furniture not quite suited to his bulk. Her stuff was all custom-made, some pieces with very extravagant upholstery, like the chair he was sitting in—some kind of bright, floral patchwork.

“Thought you were taking care of yourself,” I mumbled to Dad.

“Camille just doesn’t want to have to make coffee,” he countered.

“Hmm, that’s why.”

He was supposed to knock off coffee after lunchtime, and it being two in the afternoon, he surely wasn’t supposed to be requesting coffee. His caffeine habit was preventing him getting proper sleep, and encouraging overlong working hours.

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