I grabbed my comb and the bundle of clothes I’d taken into the bathroom with me and squeezed by him toward my office, purposely not looking at him even when I brushed my arm against his on the way out, ignoring that buzz that I’d almost gotten used to getting since being around him so much. Locking the door, I got dressed and wrung out the water in my hair into the towel.
I needed to keep my chin up. Get this done. Then I could move on.
I had this.
I tugged on socks and left my office, stopping in the empty bathroom to put some oil in my hair. I spotted him out of the corner of my eye on the couch as I headed straight into the kitchen. Someone was feeling a little better, I guess. I pulled out plates from the cabinet as I waited for the timer to go off.
I was so caught up in thinking about how much I needed to do, that I didn’t hear him move into the kitchen until I heard, “Why… do you… live here… by yourself?”
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I glanced over my shoulder. He was shuffling toward the breakfast table, reminding me of how my grandma had tried to get around without her walker. Oh boy.
So, somebody wasn’t as healed as he’d tried to make it seem.
I knew I hadn’t imagined his face being pale in the bathroom.
“Well,” I started to tell him as I turned off the oven and opened the drawer where I kept my oven mitts. How much could I say? The whole truth? Only part of it? Maybe he couldn’t read my mind, but he might be able to hear if my heart started beating faster when I was nervous or lying. So where did that leave me? “I didn’t always live by myself. I lived with my grandparents until they passed away. I moved here after that.”
I knew he was asking because he didn’t totally trust me not to backstab him, more than likely. He didn’t worry about his food because he could smell if I put something weird in it. Could hear me if I spit in it. But he’d been here for about two weeks now, and he was finally becoming suspicious about my intentions?
I guess it had taken him this long to say more than three words to me at a time too.
“Explain.”
I gave him a look.
If I’d wanted to try something, I already would have. He had to know that, so he was just being nosy, and that put me on edge. Putting on the mitts, I took the trays out of the oven. “My grandpa had a stroke about six years ago, and we didn’t find him until it was too late, and my grandma got sick after that.” That same lingering sadness started to rise inside of me, mixed with grief and anger. Anger at the lives that had been so altered for things none of us had asked for.
Grief at the love and the life that I’d missed out on.
They had been my whole world. The boulder onto which I’d built my life. My grandparents had been the one thing that had never changed when everything else had been so replaceable and temporary. They were the only people who had ever really known me. The only people who had ever loved me. And they were gone now.
My nose stung as I shrugged and set the pan on the top of the oven. “We moved around a lot,” I offered up as another explanation because that part too was the truth.
Hopefully he wouldn’t ask why or ask for specifics on just how much we had bounced around.
“What was your grandmother sick with?”
That was a weird question. “She had colon cancer.” I didn’t tell him that she had avoided going to the doctor for years, and how much it had haunted me that I hadn’t forced her to go.
Not that you could have made her do anything she didn’t want to do. And that was exactly what she’d told me too.
Fortunately, my answer must have satisfied him because he didn’t say anything for a minute. It wasn’t until I had grabbed tongs to get the veggies that shared the tray with the steaks I had broiled that he chose to say even more words. “What are you hiding then?”
CHAPTER
SIX
His eyes were locked on me as he sat at the table, one hand braced on the top, his other one gripping his thigh.
He looked ridiculous. Just… absolutely out of place at the little breakfast table that had to be older than he was. I could easily picture him at a giant dining room table with silver candlestick holders and a maid coming up behind him to serve his food. There was something about his energy, about the high tilt of his chin, that seemed so… arrogant.
But I guess when you were what he was, anybody would be. I’d probably be insufferable.
“What are you hiding?” he asked again, taking his time with every word, staring at me while he did.
I tried my best to look innocent. I couldn’t get too riled up. “A lot of things, mostly stuff in my nightstand.” I mean, there was truth in that. And if he hadn’t already known what was in there, he would now, but I’d rather him focus on that than anything else. If it would distract him enough to change the subject, I would take out all my vibrators and give him a presentation on each one of their pros and cons.
He ticked his head to the side, not falling for my bullshit even a little bit. “You’re hiding… something.”
That wasn’t a question.
I lifted a shoulder and tried my hardest to keep that easy expression on my face. “A lot of things, but isn’t everyone?”
He didn’t buy that either.
I had never done anything seriously wrong in my life. The shittiest thing I’d ever done was illegally download music during our dial-up internet days two decades ago. I was a perfect angel when I wasn’t mad, and I was rarely mad. I didn’t put myself into enough positions to get angry. At least that was the kind of energy I tried to put out in the universe.
He got squinty. “You live in… the middle of nowhere. You don’t… have family or friends or hardly any belongings. You don’t leave the house.”
I held up my finger, telling myself I wasn’t going to let his comment about friends get to me again. “It isn’t like I’m going to leave the gate open for the FedEx driver to pull up and see you through the window.”
Nothing I was saying was getting through to him though. “Who… are you hiding from?” he had the nerve to ask as he emotionally kicked my own feet out from under me once again.
For one split second, I thought about running out the kitchen door and toward my car. I kept a set of spare keys in the wheel well. There was a bag in the back seat with a couple thousand dollars hidden in a small safe under a blanket, a few changes of clothes, and a prepaid credit card—things that would hurt me if they were stolen but wouldn’t kill me.
Maybe I could make it. Maybe I could beat The Defender to my car and drive away. Maybe he would never be able to find me. I’d had decades of experience staying under the radar. There were even more precautions I could take.
And maybe I was a fucking idiot if I thought for a second he wouldn’t dig as deep into his reserve as he could and beat me to the fucking door, then… do something to me until I told him everything.
I was no criminal though. I needed to quit acting like I was. I’d never done anything. I didn’t even speed.
I’d spent my whole life trying not to do anything so that I wouldn’t bring attention to myself.
On the slimmest of slim chances that I made it out the door and managed to get away, did I really think he wouldn’t eventually hunt me down? Because by trying not to be suspicious, I’d made myself more. Fucking great.