Blackbird Knitting in a Bunny's Lair Read Online Free PDF

while.”
    His mom’s face grew, if anything, paler. “There’s not enough wool in the world—”
    “Bull,” he said shortly. If anyone on the planet believed in the magic of wool, it was that rabbit of a man.
    His mom risked a peck on his cheek and he returned it with a hug. She grabbed the two gallons of chocolate milk from the fridge, and he stood and saw her to the door. When the door closed, the apartment echoed, empty like a cardboard box, and he wandered dispiritedly.
    He found the thick throw that Craw had made Jeremy his first Christmas in an apartment of his own. He also found the lighter alpaca blanket, a lace spread that somehow still managed to look masculine because the yarn was brown.
    He took both of them to the bed he and Jeremy had shared for a handful of weeks, kicked off his shoes, shucked his jacket and pants, and laid them both on the chair by the bed. Then he crawled into the bed and buried his face in the pillow Jeremy had slept on four days before.
    The light was thin, edged like a knife, and it cut through the dark in the room with a blade of snow. Aiden propped his head on his hand and watched Jeremy sleep for a moment. He looked so peaceful, eyes closed, mouth for once still.
    Those brown eyes opened, and Jeremy’s strong, wiry body suddenly vibrated with the urge to flee.
    “Sh,” Aiden murmured, putting a hand on Jeremy’s hip and scooting closer to make their furry, warm spot under the covers even more intimate. He reached up and brushed the brown hair out of Jeremy’s eyes, not even thinking about Jeremy needing a haircut. Aiden liked it long.
    “Don’t we gotta — ”
    “Yeah, in a few. But right now, just kiss me, gentle like.”
    Jeremy’s smile grew wider, and every time he did that, Aiden was reminded of the childhood he hadn’t had.
    “I’ll kiss you any way you like,” Jeremy said, and his sleepy morning smile grew bolder.
    “Will you kiss me at my mother’s house?” Aiden asked sternly, and Jeremy’s smile faded.
    But the resolve in his brown eyes didn’t.
    “I promised,” he said. “I meant it. I’m done with running.”
    Aiden sighed into the pillow and burrowed deeper, wondering if he could smell the kiss they’d shared next, the sleepy lovemaking, Jeremy’s quiet groan of climax as he’d spilled in Aiden’s fist.
    “Oh, Jeremy—you couldn’t have remembered how to run?”
    Of course, if Jeremy had run, Stanley would have died—no two ways about it. And Jeremy would have had to live with that on his head.
    But that didn’t stop the simmering anger, the helplessness, so much of it aimed at Jeremy himself.
    “Just this once, you couldn’t have remembered how to be a rabbit after all?”
    Aiden’s bunny wasn’t so helpless, was he? Would he still be comfortable in his own fur when they brought him home?
     
     
    W HEN HE returned to Boulder the next day, Aiden had an entire garbage bag of things to bring Jeremy. He started out with the “emergency quilt” his mother and grandmother had put together in twelve hours, made mostly of flannel scraps and tied together at great intervals. He suspected they’d put an old blanket in the middle, the better to keep the center of the sandwich from bunching due to the hasty workmanship. The backing was made of one solid piece of material—more flannel—featuring realistic bunnies and sheep across the back.
    Jeremy stroked it with his good hand when Aiden laid it out, and his fingers found the wool ties as though drawn by a magnet.
    Aiden never told him, never even knew if he realized, but in the course of his hospital stay, Jeremy managed to felt and fray every tie on the blanket, just by his nervous fidgeting. Aiden figured if that was all he did after a beating like the one he took, then they were in a good place.
    But they weren’t. How could they be?
    The first time Jeremy went in for surgery, when he was getting his lung repaired and his insides looked after, Aiden was being questioned by the FBI.