Page 75 of Hide and Seek

I chuckle at how much more visceral his reaction is to me telling him that he’s the only person I’ve found interesting than when I told him I’m a psychopath.

“You’re shitting me, right?” He blinks like a confused owl. “How is that possible? I’m just…me.”

“I’m not shitting you,” I say. “And I have no idea how it’s possible. I always assumed it wasn’t, then I started observing you, and that changed.”

“Wow.” He uncrosses his legs and lets them hang over the bed again as his posture relaxes. “That’s…I have no idea what to say to that.”

“There’s nothing to say. It’s just a fact.”

“So the whole hide and seek thing and all the stuff we’ve done…” He drops his eyes to the floor. “That’s like, your thing?”

“Define what you mean by thing.”

He wets his lower lip with his tongue nervously. “Do you do it a lot with people?”

“No.”

He relaxes slightly, but I can tell he wants to know more.

“I’ve never done anything like that before you challenged me,” I say, and it doesn’t escape me that I’m telling him this unprompted. “I’ve wanted to, but never saw the point because there was no one worth doing it with. Not until you put that message in your window. And I knew you were different when you didn’t run right back into Boone House when I told you exactly what you were inviting.”

18

MYLES

My chest tightens,and a flutter of something explodes in my stomach at his words.

It’s beyond fucked up that I give a shit about who or what he does at all, but hearing him tell me I’m the only one he’s done any of this with soothes some of the turmoil that’s been simmering in the back of my mind for the past few days.

“And the fact that you’ve kept challenging me tells me you’re as into it as I am,” he says, his tone knowing but not smug at all.

He’s not needling me about my kinks or how I seem incapable of not engaging with him. He’s just stating a fact. He knows I’m into it, the same as I know he is.

“Probably more, TBH,” I admit. “I’m the one who keeps initiating things and asking for it.”

“I’m the one who keeps accepting. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.” He pauses for a few beats. “Does what you know about me change that?”

“Are you asking if I’m going to stop challenging you because you told me you’re sort of but not totally a psychopath?”

“Essentially.” I can hear the amusement in his voice, and it makes me smile.

The only surprising thing about his diagnosis is the fact that he told me about it at all. I already knew there had to be something different about him because of the whole stalking thing and how he beat the snot out of those guys who jumped me. I didn’t have diagnosed psychopath on my bingo card, but it doesn’t scare me the way that it definitely should.

And him telling me I’m the only person he’s ever found interesting is way more flattering than it has any business being. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to being invisible and having people look through me that knowing someone like him, someone who literally can’t give a shit about people or their feelings, is fixated on me.

I’m not naive enough to think there’s anything beyond that between us. I understand he’s not capable of having any sort of real feelings for me beyond affection and interest, but it’s still heady as fuck knowing that out of all the people he’s ever met, he findsmeinteresting.

And knowing about him also makes confessing the shit that’s been weighing on me easier. He won’t judge me, and he even said he’d help if I asked.

I don’t know what I did to get on a psychopath’s radar, but I’m not mad that I did.

“Nope.” I shake my head. “I know I should, and I’m pretty much just collecting material for my future therapist to write a book about how fucked up I am at this point, but I don’t want to.”

“Good, because neither do I.”

“I was thinking about something,” I say, my voice low and breathy.

“And what were you thinking about?”