Page 10

Killian

I’m at a point where I don’t know how to express what I feel inside with words. I don’t understand how she can turn her emotions off so suddenly like they’re connected to a light switch, but she pulls it off without a hitch every single time.

When we got home from the store a few days ago, she was immediately back to being as distant as she was before, as if that blowjob never happened. And even more than that, like she didn’t buy me hella shit just to keep me comfortable. Getting my dick sucked is nice, I’ll never say otherwise, but what killed me more about all of it is the way she casually bought me things like she had no intention of asking me to reimburse her. She ensured I got a better pillow, waving a hand at me when I told her they had cheaper ones, and the navy sheets she picked out are more comfortable than anything I’ve ever owned. She even offered to get me a new lamp, but I passed on anything unnecessary because the room already had one. I don’t care if it’s pink. It was sweet of her to want to give me things of my own, but in all honesty I felt guilty accepting the few things I did.

I’m keeping her hostage here. I don’t deserve her kindness, and the fact that she wants to give it anyway is fucking me up. I guess it helps that she has the ability to be so cold sometimes, but even then I just want to be the one that warms her up. I’m starting to understand what she meant the longer we stay here though, because with each day that passes, I find myself obsessing over her more and more. How long do I have before that obsession turns into love? And if it does... what the fuck do I do? It’s not healthy, that’s for sure, but regardless of all the reasons I shouldn’t let myself want her, I can’t lie and say that I don’t.

I want her.

And it’s enough to keep me awake at night.

I check the time and sigh when I see it’s three in the morning. I want to go grab her and bring her in here, to show her how comfortable the bedding is that she got me, and then fuck her until we fall asleep tangled together, but I know that won’t happen. She’ll wake up the second I lift her from her bed and then tell me no, and then I’ll have to feel that familiar pang of rejection once again. I know it’s what I deserve, but I’m a starved man that’s desperate for any scraps this woman will give me, so on the off chance that she might be feeling anything near what I am I get out of bed and sneak my way into her room.

When I realize she’s sleeping in my old community college t-shirt, my entire body tenses. She looks so fucking beautiful I have to rub the knot out of my chest as I stare down at her. Cherry red hair is sprawled out along her silk pillow, the hunter green comforter bundled up around her thighs so I can see the skin below her navel and the fact that all she’s wearing underneath it is a pair of booty short panties.

Fucking hell, I want to eat her pussy so bad. I’m already addicted to the smell of her, and right before I decide to go for it and climb into her bed, I glance back up at her face and find her looking directly at me.

Oh shit. Guess we’ll see how she really feels now. No way she lies to me under the moonlight. Only witches have that power, and like I said before, this woman is a goddess.

“Sleepwalking, Killian?”

Will you deny me if I say no?

“Yes,” I whisper, taking the smallest step toward her so she knows I don’t want to leave.

Her eyes are dark, cloudy almost as she studies me. “And what do you want?”

“I want in.”

In your bed, in your head, inside of you.

“Why, so you can jizz all over my blanket, too? My laundry wasn’t enough?”

Oops.

“I’d rather jizz in you, but you won’t let me so I went to the second best thing. At least the clothes were already dirty.”

“And thanks to you, they were sticky,” she mumbles. “You should go to bed.”

She didn’t say my bed, so I climb into hers without another word and pull her to me. It feels so good I reach up to grip her throat so she doesn’t try to move away, her ass pressed against me in a way that drives me mad, but I feel her whole body go rigid.

“I won’t hurt you,” I whisper. “I promise.”

Slowly, I feel her start to relax until she’s sinking back against me.

There she is.

I didn’t realize how much I needed this until she’s breathing normally, and although I know she’s still awake she seems to be getting more comfortable by the second. “Thank you.”

“You’re sleepwalking, remember?” she whispers. “It’s dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.”

In other words: shut the fuck up before you ruin this. Got it.

I don’t mind. Her telling me to be quiet is better than her telling me to leave, so I bury my face into the back of her neck and take a deep breath of her scent. Who knows if she’ll ever let me in here again.

––––––––

When we wake the next morning, I’m surprised to find she’s still here. We’re still laying in the same position we fell asleep in, and I don’t even care that my arm is tingling. That was the best sleep I’ve gotten in years. “Morning.”

“Hi,” she whispers.

“You sleep okay?”

I roll over onto my back so she can hopefully roll over and lay on my chest, but I’m not surprised when she doesn’t.

She’s stubborn.

“I did. You?”

“Yeah. I came in here to tell you how much I like the sheets and pillow. Didn’t mean to climb in here too.”

Yeah, I did, but a little white lie to get her to communicate more won’t hurt.

“I’m glad,” she says softly. “Is there a reason you didn’t pick my parents’ room? Is it just because it’s upstairs and further away from the door?”

It’s too far from you. But also... “I feel better the closer I am. I don’t think anyone will find me here, but at the same time it’s hard not to be paranoid about the cops kicking down the door to shoot me. I don’t know if that ever goes away.”

“It doesn’t. I know Ryan can’t find me and I still lay awake at night hearing the click of his gun, wondering if he’s outside my window like he used to be. Just watching, waiting. I don’t see that ever going away.”

And here I am standing over her bed while she’s sleeping. “Did I scare you last night?”

She rolls over to face me, tucking her hand under her cheek. “No. Maybe at first, but I don’t think you’ll hurt me.”

“Good. I won’t.” At this point, I have a feeling I’ll be the one hurt in the end, but at least she warned me.

“Don’t you want to know why I think that?”

“I assumed it was because I haven’t already, but yeah. Tell me, Roo.”

She hesitates, biting her lip. “I never thought Ryan would hurt me because I didn’t think he was capable of hurting anyone. I underestimated him in that way, and that’s my mistake. You, though... you are. You have. I don’t know why you killed Jack Lawson, but I know you had a good reason. A really, really good reason. And I can see that killing him didn’t bring you the kind of joy you thought it would. You didn’t take pleasure in it, which means you won’t do it again unless you have a really, really good reason.”

Her words feel better than I expected even though they make me frown. She’s right, she sees me, and I don’t really know how to feel about that.

I thought killing the man who ruined my life would bring me some sort of peace, and instead it put me in a place where I’ll never feel peace again.

I don’t regret it. I can’t. But that doesn’t mean he won’t haunt me while I live on the run forever. Still, Lawson was a bad man, a piece of shit rich guy who got away with anything and everything all because he had money. I don’t feel any remorse for him at all. He deserved what I did to him.

Joey doesn’t. “Thanks for saying that.” I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it, but to be fair I don’t know if I ever will be. “Do you want to know what happened?”

“I can’t say I haven’t been curious, but it’s up to you. I won’t make you tell me.”

My fingers flex, my chest tightens, and I feel my heart rate speed up slightly before releasing a breath and diving in. “He killed my mom.” I haven’t said that sentence out loud since I screamed it to the police officers, and it isn’t any easier this time than it was then. “It was one of those drunk driving accidents people like me go away for, but not people of a higher class. No, for those people it gets brushed under the rug after they toss some money around, and the victims left behind have to pick up the pieces.” Even I can hear the anger in my voice, the exhaustion I have with a corrupt system filled with people who hide behind the Bible, and I don’t try to hide how I feel inside. Not with her. “I was in the car with her. I walked away with a concussion and six stitches on the side of my head and she didn’t walk away at all. She was killed instantly, and he didn’t even spend one fucking night in the drunk tank.”

Her fingers twitch as she reaches out to touch my face. “I’m so sorry. It’s not fair, it’s never been fair. No wonder you’re starting a revolution.”

“I don’t know about that, but I don’t understand how more people aren’t fucking tired of this. How long will we walk around like everything is okay while letting people like that keep us down? We outnumber them — we’re the other 99% and yet we bend or break to them? Because of money? Fuck money.”

I lean into her touch before she takes it away, but she doesn’t move.

“Haven’t you been paying attention? They don’t know who you are, but people are rallying behind you. The support you have from the public is unmatched. They don’t know why you did it either but it doesn’t matter. You stood up to them. You reminded the 99% that the elite bleed red just like them.”

I want to kiss her so bad right now it takes everything not to. “The news is still calling me a villain, and I haven’t looked anywhere else. Can you show me?”

“Yes.” Sitting up, she grabs her laptop and clicks around, and somehow it just now occurs to me that she could’ve used that to call for help at any time.

I really suck at this. “You had that in here the whole time?” I don’t know why but the knowledge that she could have turned me in at any point and didn’t helps ease all that tension inside of me as she pulls up the first article. “I’m an idiot.” But it seems that’s not all I am. Jack Lawson didn’t just kill my mom, he fucked over countless people, put a child in a wheelchair for life drunk driving before he ever crashed into us, and to top it all off he raped more women than we know of. He was a monster, and the world is a better place without him. “Holy shit.”

“Mmhm. Now look.” She switches to social media, showing me hundreds, maybe thousands of comments from people saying they hope I never get caught. That they’re proud of me, that they wish more people had my balls. They’re calling for change, real change.

I doubt we’ll ever get it, but this is more than I ever expected.

“If they knew how hot you were, the internet would explode.”

I meet her eyes and huff a laugh, but with how intensely she’s staring into mine I see she wasn’t joking. “You think that’d matter?”

She pulls up a thirst trap someone made from just seeing my eyes, and all the talk about men in masks, and I can’t help but smile. Women on the internet are feral.

“They love a man who stands up for what’s right. They love him even more when he looks like he could command the shadows around him.”

“And what about you? Where do you fall in this?”

“I’m with them. The newscasters keep saying violence is never the answer, but that’s false. Violence was always the answer, we’re just too afraid to do it. Change has never been brought about by asking nicely.”

Yeah. I’m a fucking goner. It won’t take me a year to fall for Joey if she keeps saying things like this. “I—” I clear my throat and try to pretend I didn’t just have that brain blip. “I agree. When I was eleven I was being bullied by this kid. I was shorter than him so he would make jokes about my height and overpower me when he could. He was reported multiple times, and they never even gave the guy a detention because he was the chief of police’s son. Most of the time I ignored him because my mom always told me not to hit people, but I wanted to hit him so bad, Joey. I used to lay in bed and think about punching him in the nose and what the crack would sound like. One day I went to school and he walked up and shoved me against the wall and I lost it. I beat the shit out of this kid because I believed he deserved it, and you want to know what happened? He never bullied anyone again. I got suspended, but it was worth it, and I learned that day that sometimes you have to make it right all on your own. The system won’t help you.”

“I get it. My parents do a lot, but it’ll never truly change anything. They make a difference where they can but I think they’re too scared to do anything real. I think you’re a hero, Killian. Even if nothing comes of this, you brought people together for a couple of weeks. That’s not something everyone can say.” She closes her laptop and sets it back down, then rolls to face me again. “If you ever do get caught, I’ll make sure you get the best lawyer money can buy.”

“Even after what I’ve done to you?”

“Good point. The dozen orgasms were really terrible, I’ve changed my mind. It’s the chair for you for sure.”

I want to give her so much more, but I bite back that comment to keep from scaring her away. “I was thinking the hostage bit, but yeah, let’s focus on those instead.”

“Yeah, but... I get it. You can’t let me go.”

The scary part is I’m starting to believe I could. I just know I don’t want to. “Well, I can’t let you go until you fall in love with me.”

She smiles sadly and settles back into the pillow, closing her eyes. “Good thing we’ve got nothing but time.”

I reach out and slide my hand along her cheek like she did to me, swiping my thumb along her perfect lips. “Good thing we do.”