Page 30 of Hunting Gianna (Stalkers in the Woods #3)

Chapter Twenty

Knox

The next morning, the decision is made. I make a few calls, get the boys to start moving some of my shit to her apartment and we pack whatever we have lying around and start heading to her car.

Yep. The same car I never fixed.

Her car is a joke—a powder blue hatchback with shitty shocks and a carburetor that’s been dying a slow, miserable death since 2018.

How the hell it even got up here is a mystery.

She calls it the Egg. I get under the hood and fix what I damaged.

Clean the terminals, replace the spark plugs, slap some duct tape over the hose that keeps hissing antifreeze onto the manifold.

I offered for us to take my Jeep, but of course, Gianna being Gianna, huffed and puffed until I gave in.

I’ll get Noah to drive it into town later.

She watches me from a stump, arms folded against the cold.

She’s got my old flannel on, the one with the hole at the elbow.

It swallows her, makes her look like she’s playing dress-up in the worst way.

I want to tell her she looks hot, but she’d throw something at me, so I just keep working.

The memory of her hands on my back last night is a fever under my skin.

When the Egg finally turns over, she claps. “You’re a genius, you know that?”

“Least I could do since I was the one who fucked it up. Still gunna rattle though.”

“Good. I like the noise.” She’s already smiling.

She slams the hatch and we load up, heading back down the path.

She sings along with the radio, off-key but loud.

I don’t tell her to shut up. Her voice makes the hours pass like nothing.

The sky goes from black to blue to white, and by the time we hit the city limits, the sun is just a shadow behind the high-rises.

The city is always so dirty. The smell hits first—hot grease, old trash, ozone. I used to love it. Now it feels off. Wrong, somehow. Impure compared to the time we just shared together.

Her apartment is a converted warehouse, three stories, no elevator. The front door opens directly onto the street, which means any asshole with a crowbar and a bad idea could be inside in under five minutes. I make a mental note to fix that.

Inside, it’s better. High ceilings, old brick, pipes that clang at night. Her couch is a lumpy red sectional, the kind that eats you if you sit wrong. There’s a small kitchen with more bottles of liquor than food. Art on the walls—hers, mostly. Bright, angry colors that remind me of bruises.

She drops her bag in the bedroom, then comes out to the kitchen and leans on the counter, watching me unpack my own shit. I only bring have one bag until the guys drop my shit off. A change of clothes, a laptop, my knife, and the demon mask.

“So… what do you think?” she asks, half-mocking, half-hopeful.

“Mmmm, it’ll do.” I say it flat, but I mean it.

She smiles, one side of her mouth higher than the other. “Make yourself at home, then.”

I do. First thing: cover the windows. She keeps the blinds half-open all the time, like she’s inviting the whole world to stare in. I find some old sheets and tack them over the glass. Block out the sunlight, the neighbors, the prying eyes. It’s better this way.

Next, the doors. I dig through her junk drawer and find a handful of mismatched screws, a flathead, and a length of chain.

I rig a deadbolt out of an old hasp and some deck screws, reinforce the frame with a piece of two-by-four I scavenge from the dumpster out back.

If someone wants in, they’ll have to work for it.

She watches all of this with a kind of amused tolerance. “Jesus, Knox, you expecting a siege?”

I look at her. “Aren’t you?”

She shrugs, like it’s a game. “Not until next week. I’ll put it on my calendar.”

I don’t laugh, but I do touch her hair, just for a second. She leans into it before she even knows what she’s doing. “I’d start a war for you, Gianna. You’re my Helen of Troy.”

The blush that creeps over her cheeks is so beautiful I want to bottle it and carry it with me forever.

The first night in the city, I can’t sleep. My high rise is in the fancy part of town, away from the noise. It’s built like a community, with ponds and walk ways and shit. Like bougie. It’s quiet. But no, not here. This is loud and obnoxious.

She knocks out quick, wrapped in my shirt, her feet digging into my shins under the covers.

I stare at the ceiling, counting the pipes.

Every few hours, a siren starts up in the distance and echoes down the alley outside our window.

I picture the city as a kind of wound, never letting anyone forget that it’s dangerous, that it’ll eat you if you let it.

After spending time in the woods with my little bird, I realize that I fucking hate the city and I’d rather be anywhere but here.

After a week, my hands start to itch for the cabin. There’s nowhere to run here—no dark, no wild, nothing but concrete and the hum of too many lives stacked on top of each other. I take to walking the block at night, circling the room, waiting for something to happen.

She notices. She always does.

“You’re gonna wear a path in the floor,” she says, voice muffled by the pillow.

I shrug. “Keeps the rats away.”

She rolls over, fixing me with those predator eyes. “You don’t have to be on guard all the time, you know. We’re safe here.”

I don’t answer. I don’t want to lie to her.

Some days, I work. Kairo is working on closing some deals for the cobalt mines, so my job right now is mostly emails and calls, shuffling numbers on a spreadsheet, pretending to care about whether or not a wind farm in Wyoming gets a new battery.

Kairo texts every couple of days, sometimes just dumb memes, sometimes a string of coordinates and a time, sometimes nothing at all. Slade messaged the group chat wanting guys night, but I don’t want to. I don’t give a fuck about that. I just want my girl.

Creed, though. Creed is a different animal. He calls at dawn, always. Never texts. Never emails. Just the flat, uninflected drone of his voice on the line, like he’s reciting a script written by someone who doesn’t believe in punctuation.

First time he calls, I almost don’t answer. I’m in the shower, steam pouring off me, water as hot as it’ll go. The phone rings three times. I let it. Fourth ring, and I can picture his face—expressionless, patient, waiting for the world to bend to his will.

I pick up. “Yeah.”

“You moved out,” he says, no preamble.

“Yeah.”

A pause. “Cabin’s empty?”

“It is.”

“Got someone I want to bring up there,” he says. “You sure you’re not going back?”

I think about it. Honestly, I want to go back, but the deal was we shared it. “Don’t kill her, ight?” I say.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, but I know he’s smiling, even if I can’t see it.

He hangs up first.

After I dry off, I tell Gianna. She’s making coffee in the kitchen, her hair tied up with a pen, wearing nothing but panties and my old t-shirt. She pours me a cup, adds too much sugar, hands it over.

“Creed’s taking the cabin for a spin,” I say, watching her reaction.

She raises her eyebrows. “You okay with that?”

I nod. “I don’t have a choice. Besides we aren’t there, are we?” I can’t help but add a slight bite at the end.

She sips her coffee, licking foam off her upper lip. “Who’s he bringing?”

“Didn’t say. Probably a girl.”

She smirks. “Good for him. Hope she doesn’t give him too much trouble. Cassidy was right, it is easier to just let you take care of me.”

I watch her, watch the way her eyes linger on my hands, the way her fingers tap out a silent code on the rim of her mug. I want to ask her if she misses it—the woods, the quiet, the feeling of being completely alone together. I don’t. I already know the answer.

At night, I sit on the windowsill, watching the city breathe.

Cars slide by in slow procession, headlights painting the walls with thin bars of light.

Sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can see the patterns—who’s coming, who’s going, which buildings never turn off their lights, which people never sleep.

I think about the future. I think about whether or not this is sustainable.

I think about whether or not I can make her happy here, surrounded by all this noise and rot.

I think about whether or not she’ll wake up one day and realize that, no matter how much you love a monster, it’s still a monster.

Most days, she seems fine. Better than fine. She’s settled into being a good little house wife.

But we both know something is missing and it’s the foundation of our relationship.

One night, after too much wine, she slumps against me on the couch, feet in my lap, blanket around her shoulders.

“You hate it here,” she says, not a question.

I consider lying. “Yeah.”

She closes her eyes, like she’s waiting for something.

“Why stay?” she asks, voice gone soft. “You could go anywhere.”

I don’t answer right away. I watch her for a while, the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest, the way her hand tugs at the edge of the blanket like she’s worried it’ll slip.

Finally, I say, “Because you’re here.”

She opens one eye, gives me a look like I’m the biggest idiot on earth. “That’s not a good reason, Knox.”

“It’s the only reason.”

She laughs, but it’s a sad sound. “You know what I want?”

“Tell me.”

She leans in, her breath warm on my neck. “I want to disappear. I want to run away and never look back. I want to live in a place where no one can find us.”

I nod, because I want the same thing.

She kisses me then, soft at first, then hard enough to hurt. My little bird has some tension to work out and I’m more than happy to oblige.

We fuck on the couch, her hand clamped over my mouth, her hips grinding down with a fury that almost scares me. She’s trying to make it real, trying to make it stick, trying to prove that we belong here, now, in this moment. It’s not me that needs convincing.