Page 4

The intruder watches me like a hawk as I clean up and dry my hands. I’m more exhausted now than ever, but I’m not sure how this ends. Will he kill me? Will I somehow get one over on him?

I need a shower and a fourteen-hour nap. I’m not sure if I care how I get there. “My name is Joey,” I say flatly, giving in just a little to gain some ground. “Josephine Moran, but I’m guessing you already knew my last name since you found out about my parents. What can I call you?”

“Killer.”

Now I know his sense of humor just sucks.

“I’ll stick with big boy then.” Sighing, I slip my hands into my pockets. “You’re not leaving, are you.”

“No. And neither are you, huh?”

He crosses his arms in our standoff, muscles bulging in a way that has me distracted. I really wish he’d put a shirt on.

“Am I allowed to leave?”

“No. Call me an asshole if you want, but I can’t let you leave yet.”

I nod, lips pursed. “I thought so.” Grabbing my purse, I toss him my keys. “I already ditched my cell phone. You’re welcome to look through my shit if you don’t believe me, but I’m not responsible for whatever you find.”

“What might I find? An arsenal?”

He moves over to my bags and begins to rummage through them, pausing when he finds my vibrators. There are four of them.

“In so many words, yes.”

He stares at them long enough to have heat rising to my cheeks. “Why are there so many?”

When he picks one up and clicks it on, I look away. “Because sometimes batteries die. Sometimes I need... different things. I thought I was going to be here alone for at least a year, what does it matter?”

“A year?” he asks curiously, abandoning his search of my luggage sooner than I expected, and when he stands up to move over to the couch I notice he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s hard. “So no one else is expected to show up? I don’t have to worry about your parents coming here to look for you?”

My stomach drops. I might be brave, but I’m not stupid. He knows exactly what that means and so do I. “No, I guess not. My sister knows I’m here but that’s it.”

“And she’s not going to pop up and interrupt you while you’re jacking off? That’s not a shared sister trait?”

My eyebrows raise, but I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. At least not yet. “No. She has a family and we live thirteen hours away from here. It’s not like she can just swing by for a girl’s night.”

He seems to relax as he sets the gun on the coffee table. “Alright. Which room is yours? Is it the one with green bedding or pink?”

“Green. If I take a shower, will you promise not to shoot me through the glass?”

“Too messy. You have my word I’ll stay out here.”

Nodding, I grab my suitcases and drag them back to my room, only to find the bed messed up. He’s been sleeping in my bed.

For some reason, that makes me squirm.

My stomach won’t seem to settle as I undress and climb into the shower. I feel his eyes on me even though I can hear him in the living room, and every flicker of the dying bulb above the sink makes me twitch.

I’ll never be able to sleep here.

I’ll never be safe.

Maybe it’s time I just faced it.

Too much time passes before I shut the water off again and get dressed. He must’ve turned the heat up, because the mix of the lingering hot water on my skin and the temperature in the room makes me lightheaded — or maybe it’s just my circumstances.

Either way, I dress lightly in a tank top and shorts before walking back out.

I find him frowning at the television angrily even though it’s on silent, and before he can turn it off fast enough I see he was watching the news.

He was too quick for me to see what they were covering.

When I turn my gaze back on him, I find him watching me intently with that stupid mask still in place.

“Are you planning on keeping that on all year?” I ask.

I watch his chest rise and fall with a deep breath before he shakes his head no. “I’m going to need a little more from you before I feel comfortable enough to remove it. Will you sit?”

My eyes fall to the gun on the end table. Knowing I don’t have a choice, I obey. “You’ve asked about Ryan twice. He’s my ex-fiance. We were together for three years and everything was great, but one night he asked me for eighty-thousand dollars to pay his gambling debts. I said no. A few weeks later, he asked again, but for double the amount. Again, I said no and urged him to get help. The third time he asked, he was in for a quarter of a million dollars and threatening my life. I kicked him out of our house, ended the engagement, and spent the last year trying and failing to avoid him as he stalked me, threatened me, set fires to scare me. Two nights ago, he tried to shoot me. The gun jammed.” I sit back, curling my legs in front of me. “So that’s Ryan. And since the cops wouldn’t do anything about it, I came here to save my own life.”

He looks troubled as he takes in my story, his expression morphing into something more angry by the time he finds his voice. “Fucking cops. You’d think they’d have done more for someone in your tax bracket, but it seems they only give a fuck if you’re one of them or a politician.” His sharp jaw tenses. “So your ex. Why didn’t you stab him in the balls?”

“Because he was bigger than me,” I say simply. “As a woman, if you’re gonna hurt a man, you’d better be prepared — and able — to kill him. If you don’t, chances are good it’ll be you that ends up in the ground.”

His eyes drop to his lap, because unless he’s a piece of shit, he has absolutely no argument for what I just said. It’s a tale as old as time, and it doesn’t matter what year we’re in or whether women have voting rights, men will always feel superior. “Do you know who he owed the money to? Maybe they’ll get to him sooner rather than later. You’re right, men prey on who they deem weak and that includes other men like him.”

“I don’t know. I don’t care,” I admit. “If he lives, if he dies, I just hope I never see him again. So that’s why I’m here. Why are you here?”

“I had nowhere to go,” he admits. “I don’t have family or friends anymore, and unfortunately I used the last of my money to get me here. I’m pretty good with a computer so I managed to find this place after a little digging. Found the information on your parents and made my plans to disappear here when they went on vacation. All the family photos of this place are from Christmas time so I figured I’d have a few months before I had to find somewhere else. Imagine my surprise when you walked through that door four days into my stay.”

That’s something, but doesn’t tell me why he’s on the run. For all I know, he could be the guy who shot that senator. The eyes are similar enough. He has a gun. And four days... the timeline sort of checks out. He’s too damn close to that gun for me to say a word, though.

“I’m sorry you don’t have anyone. My parents are hardly ever around, but they support me. And my sister has been amazing.”

“It was always just my mom and I, and the friends I was surrounded by turned out to be nothing more than leaves in the wind when shit got real.”

How real? Like shooting a politician real?

“So where’s your mom?”

Pain and rage blend together in his eyes, a dark storm brewing together when they meet mine again. “Dead.”

There’s a heavy weight on that word as he delivers it through gritted teeth, alerting me that this is a really touchy subject for him.

Okay. He’s got mommy issues. Got it.

“I’m... sorry,” I say honestly. I can’t imagine how painful it is to lose a parent because it hasn’t happened to me yet. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Good.” He takes another deep breath, and I swear I can hear him mentally count before he releases it. “So if you’re not going to try and leave or call the cops on me, I need you to say it.”

He says this like he’d actually believe the word of a stranger, but with the way he’s looking at me it feels like he just might. Or maybe he simply doesn’t have another choice.

“The last time I spoke to a cop, I threatened him, and I don’t have anywhere else to go either. There aren’t many places Ryan wouldn’t be able to find me, so all of my eggs were in one basket.”

Nodding, he reaches up to pull his mask off and sets it aside, his hair messy and flat on his head as he watches me take him in.

He’s stunning, and I think I hate him for it. Thick eyebrows frame those expressive blue eyes, split by a slightly crooked nose and a cupid’s bow smile. High cheekbones, a sharp jaw and jet black hair make him look like something out of a fantasy novel — I half expect him to sprout bat wings and shroud himself in shadow.

How does someone like him end up with no one?

“Oh, fuck you,” I mutter. “You’re not allowed to have it all.”

That makes him chuckle. “Literally just told you I have nothing and that’s what you have to say? Fuck you right back, Josephine. Is that a Ouija board tattoo on your chest?”

Twitching, I hold up a finger. “First of all, yes. That’s what I have to say. You know how hot you are, so shut up. Second, my name is Joey. No one calls me Josephine. Third, yeah. I like to talk to dead people.”

“You say that like you aren’t the best looking woman in this entire state, and you’re wrong. I call you Josephine. Do you also let these dead people ogle your boobs? What if it’s an ass guy?”

Butterflies scatter inside me even as I try to shoot them down. This is ridiculous. He’s a stranger keeping me hostage in my family’s cabin, this isn’t some romcom. It doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m attractive. “Where do you think the planchette is?” I counter. “The good ghosts don’t discriminate.”

The way his gaze rakes my body has me squirming. “I guess you’re right.” He licks his lips. “Why don’t you like your name?”

“Because I don’t. There’s no reason behind it, it’s just always made me cringe a little. I’ve been Joey for as long as I can remember, so people only ever called me Josephine when I was in trouble.”

“And you don’t feel like you’re in trouble right now... Joey?”

Did his voice just get deeper?

Am I in trouble?

Am I mad about it?

“I thought we agreed to be friends... big boy. Fuck, I wish you’d just tell me your first name at least.”

I think I hate his smile.

It’s distracting, blinding, borderline painful, and I’m trying to play it cool here. “We can be friends. I didn’t lie about my name. Or better, I gave you a nickname just like you gave me.” The grin fades slightly. “My name is Killian.”

Killian. Even his name is attractive, but it’s hard to imagine ever having feelings for anyone again. Ryan destroyed my trust and broke my heart. There’s nothing left. “It’s weird to meet you, Killer.”

He laughs softly. “No one actually calls me Killer. Not since high school at least.”

If he looked half this good in high school, I bet he was a killer. “I’m still gonna call you big boy.”

“Is this about the boner again? Look, I know you’re impressed, but you have to let it go, girl.”

The rage that was radiating off of him when I walked out here is buried deep under a mask now, one that’s almost too disarming. I can’t forget there’s still a gun behind him, one that looked at home in his hand.

“It’s more because you’re built like a bodybuilding linebacker, but tell yourself whatever you want about my interest in your boner.”

“Linebackers are bigger than you think, Joey, but alright I get it. You have four different vibrators specifically so you don’t have to think about men and their random hard-ons. We can pretend it works.”

The audacity. The accuracy.

Fuck him.

“And we can pretend that finding said vibrators didn’t do anything for you,” I remind him. “I think it’s best we both go to bed. You have my keys and my word that I won’t try anything overnight. I’m about to drink half a bottle of sleep medicine and I’ll see you in three days.”

He licks his lips slowly before nodding in understanding. “Alright. It’s weird to meet you,” he repeats back to me. “I’ll stay out of your room.”

For now.

He doesn’t say it, but I swear those two words hang between us.

Let’s hope they stay there.