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“No, I don’t think so either. But only time will tell.” He cocked an eyebrow.
I licked my lips. Wondered if I should tell him—though I already knew I was going to, regardless. “I saw Ma Greenwood the other day.”
“Really? Wouldn’t think there’d be anything left for her to collect, this time of year.”
I shook my head. “She wasn’t here for herbs. I think… I think she came to see me. For the first time, really. First time we’ve talked, anyhow. Since before.”
His brow furrowed, Red tucked his hands behind his head and watched me intently.
I was momentarily distracted by the curve of the muscles in his arms, the soft patches of dark hair in his faintly paler armpits, and the way his eyebrows almost became one when he made that face.
“Jack,” he said, one corner of his lips pulling up in amusement.
“Right, yeah.” I shook my head. “She said you passed your test.”
“My test?”
“Like I did, back in the bad old days. When she first found me starving and half-mad in her wood.”
Red watched me for a long moment, his dark gaze thoughtful. “You don’t think she planned it all, do you?”
“What?”
“Sent Wulfric after me. Knowing you’d save me somehow?”
I opened my mouth to say no, she couldn’t have. But then I remembered that knowing look on her face, and the way she held me hypnotized with just a touch. And I knew she was capable of anything. “She said you found a few of my missing pieces.”
He nodded as if this was perfectly obvious to him.
I began to explain, “I think she meant—”
“Your compassion. Your conscience. Your humanity.”
“Yes. I always thought I had compassion. I’m ashamed to have forgotten it along with everything else I left behind.”
“You had compassion for your forest,” Red said.
“I let an invasive species break the peace. More than one. I won’t allow cruelty here ever again. It took coming face-to-face with it, with the—the brutality of it, to wake me up.” I smiled. “It took you.”
He grinned. “Glad I could help.”
“Would it bother you if Ma Greenwood had put me in your way?” I asked. Seemed to me it’d be her playing with both our lives… but I couldn’t bring myself to mind. How could she know I’d been missing something? How could she know Red would find it? Too many questions that’d never be answered.
He shook his head. “I’d send her a fruit basket.”
“What?”
“A thank you gift.”
I snorted out a laugh. “You say that now. Wait ’til it’s time to shear and wash and card the wool in spring.”
“Maybe I’ll go help Amma while you do all that.” He pressed his lips together in a lovely smirk.
“I started making you a sweater,” I told him.
“Did you?”
“No, not really,” I admitted with a laugh. “But I sat on the couch and thought about you while I held the yarn.”
