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

He got out, he wasn’t going to jail, Jeremy was still alive—he figured that was a win.
    A week later, Jeremy went in again, this time for his shoulder. He mumbled fitfully through his mouthful of broken teeth, and Aiden held his hand. The nurse gave him the pretty pink pill that served as precursor to the anesthetic, and Jeremy started mumbling about home.
    They caught the word “bunnies” and “critters” through his broken teeth, and “boy,” always, always, “boy.”
    Aiden excused himself to the bathroom. Craw hauled him out fifteen minutes later, because he’d been sitting on the throne, fully clothed, holding his hands tightly so they’d stop shaking.
    Craw’s hands shook too as he dropped Aiden in the seat next to Ariadne’s bed.
    Ariadne was unabashedly wiping her cheeks with a tissue, and Aiden had the presence of mind to hold up a small trash can for her.
    “Thanks,” she mumbled. “What are you all going to do while he’s in surgery?”
    “I’m taking Craw out for a drink,” Ben announced, and everybody, including Craw, stared at him. His sweet oval face looked unusually stern, and the hipster’s stubble he usually kept had grown over in the past couple weeks until he was almost as bearded as Craw.
    “What? You asked. I’d take you all out for a drink, but Ariadne’s pregnant and Aiden isn’t going to leave this place until he’s out of surgery.”
    Aiden tried to make himself get up, but his knees were water. Next time he’d have to leave when they wheeled Jeremy out, because this thing here that he was going to do with Ari? The waiting and trying not to think about Jeremy? That was not going to be comfortable, that was for damned sure.
    “Go get a drink,” he heard himself saying. “Drink one for me—I’m finally old enough now.”
    Craw grunted. “I’ll drink one for Jeremy,” he said gruffly. “So he doesn’t have to when he gets out.” He stood there looking at Aiden for a few more minutes, but Ben was tugging on his arm, and eventually they went.
    Aiden was left sprawled in the ugly, cheap wooden hospital chair, his legs taking up three times the space they should have, and leaning on an elbow on top of Ariadne’s bed.
    He was staring out into space so he didn’t have to look inside the darkness of his own head and hear Jeremy calling for his boy.
    Vaguely, he became aware that Ariadne was knitting and singing into the heavy silence.
    Blackbird singing in the dead of night….
    Aiden looked at her and remembered the song. She’d sung it to Jeremy that first night to calm him down.
    Take these broken wings and learn to fly….
    He started humming it, there in the hospital room, and she looked up at him, her wide green eyes overlarge in her pinched face. She was in pain too, he remembered. She was supposed to be in the hospital to get rest, and instead, her bedroom had become Grand Central Station while they all fussed over Jeremy.
    “You got needles and sock yarn?” he asked, because he’d forgotten his own knitting back in Ben’s friend’s apartment. The guy was apparently in Florida until February—the perfect roommate.
    “Yeah.” She put her own knitting—a bright-red hooded cloak that looked to be for her—in her lap and reached down beside her. She came back with a basket full to bursting not just with Craw’s yarn, all wound for her use, but with yarn from other mills.
    Aiden found a smile in that pile of wool. “Stanley’s been by.”
    “Uh-hm,” Ari said, apparently finding her own sparkle in the basket. “And so has his boss, Alice. I’ve got those nice laminate needles and lots of worsted-weight yarn—choose your poison.”
    Normally, given all that selection, Aiden would have gone for some of the bigger mills, some of the more popular brands, just to see if he and Craw could up their game a little. But not tonight.
    He recognized a lone skein of yarn there, bright gold, bright azure, touches of midnight purple. It was a big skein—nearly