The side where all his monsters live.
After a long time, he murmurs, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Which means I should probably be incarcerated.”
He knows what I mean. “You’re not a danger to society because you can accept darkness more easily than other people.”
“I don’t know if accept is the right word. It’s more like welcome it with open arms.”
“You didn’t have a crisis of conscience over the others.”
“No, but Bob is close to home. And I’m not having a crisis of conscience over him. I’m glad he’s gone.” After a moment, I add, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. If you have others who need taking care of, make me a list.”
“Oh my God! Or wait, was that more gallows humor?”
“No. You can literally make me a list.”
I groan. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“You never know. Having a man like me around can be extremely handy.”
“Please stop talking now.”
“Okay.” There’s a short pause, then he says, “How am I supposed to answer questions if I can’t talk?”
“You know what? I don’t care if you’re bigger and stronger than me and know how get blood out of white carpeting. If you don’t shut up for a minute, I’ll kick your ass.”
He rolls on top of me and laughs into my neck. When he comes up for air, he kisses me deeply, pressing me into the mattress and making a soft sound of pleasure in his throat.
“Shay?”
“What?”
“Tell me you’re mine.”
Gazing up into the depths of his beautiful blue eyes, I know that whatever strange forces brought us together are the same ones that make resistance useless. The connection we shared that first night hasn’t diminished with time, it’s only grown stronger.
So I give up any lingering hesitations and surrender in full.
“I’m yours. I belong to you, Cole McCord, come what may.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they burn with a new—darker—fire.
“Good, baby. Because you offered this monster a home, and he’s taking you up on the invitation.”
Shay
He kisses me again, then rolls onto his back and arranges me on top of his body the way he likes to, cupping my head in his big hand as I rest my head on his shoulder.
He inhales deeply, exhales in a gust, then begins to talk in a low, emotionless voice.
“In Japan, people who go missing are called jouhatsu. Literally translated, the word means evaporated. Like people all over the world, they vanish for different reasons, but many of the jouhatsu in Japan do so on purpose with the help of companies called yonige-ya.”
“What does that mean?”
“Night movers. They’re specialists in helping people disappear.”
Already fascinated, I wait quietly for him to continue as he absently strokes my hair.
“I was first introduced to the idea when I was in boarding school in London in my teens. I had a friend named Kiyoko there whose family was wealthy, like mine. But one of her uncles had a gambling problem and went into deep debt. He borrowed money from the yakuza to try to repay it but defaulted on the loan. And if you don’t make good on your debts to the yakuza, you don’t get to keep breathing.”
“I take it they’re organized crime like the Mafia?”
“Yes. So Kiyoko’s uncle hired a night mover to help him disappear. He was never heard from again. The only reason the family knew what happened to him is because he left his mother a note. But they never spoke of him after that. Like suicide, becoming jouhatsu is a taboo topic in their culture. When it happens, everyone acts like it didn’t. You vanish, and nobody ever mentions you again.”
I lie in his arms and think about that. To permanently vanish without a trace. To start over somewhere new where no one knows you, and your past can’t follow.
I can’t decide if it’s wonderful or depressing.
“During boarding school, Kiyoko and I became close friends. After we graduated, we went to Oxford together.”
“You went to Oxford?”
“Yes. Don’t sound so impressed.”
“Why not? It’s impressive.”
“University doesn’t teach you how to think. It only teaches you how to conform and take tests. I wish I’d skipped it altogether, but my father has a thing about higher education. He didn’t go to college, so he made sure his three sons did. Oxford is where I met Axel, by the way. I hated him at first. Thought he was a snobbish jock. Archery, boxing, cricket, fencing, he did it all. Turns out, he only went so hard in athletics to annoy his father, a member of the British peerage, who wanted him to have a law practice like he did. Once I found that out, we became best friends.”