Page 46

46

Eva

Jonathan takes me up to his hotel room. It’s all wooden floors and dark walls. High ceilings, a private patio, an epic shower.

I need to call Sherri, but I don’t want to. I don’t have the energy right now to find someplace secret to grill her. I’m also afraid of what she might tell me.

Once inside the room, Jonathan takes off his clothes to examine the stab wound. He has a neat cut between his sixth and seventh ribs, to add to his scar collection. The scar I added myself this morning is still an angry red.

He sits on the bed and starts to clean the cut using items from his very extensive first aid kit. I recognize a lot of them.

“Here.” I sit beside him. “Let me.” I dress his wound. He watches me with reverent eyes. I’m doing exactly what I told Sherri I would do: I’m becoming his weakness. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

“You’ve done this before,” he says. I don’t have to make up an explanation for my skill. He thinks I did this for Andrew, and I did. What Jonathan doesn’t know is that Andrew did it for me, too.

“So,” I say, focusing on the wound so he won’t see my wheels turning, “how did you get into assassin work? Job fair? College major? Bet gone wrong?”

“No,” he says. “Nothing like that…” He hesitates, as if debating how much to tell me. How much I can take, maybe. How much to trust me with, definitely. He catches my eyes. His eyes seem deeper than other peoples’, but I wonder if they’re deeper for me, like I can dive further into them than anybody else. “I don’t want to scare you,” he says.

“Do I seem scared?” I ask. I know I don’t.

He takes a deep breath, preparing himself, preparing me. “I realized that I could kill people. I realized that it was a kind of talent, not something everyone could do.”

I have to hold back a smile, because I’ve sometimes thought the same thing. How great and how terrible it is that I can do this thing that other people can’t do. “Who was your first kill?” This is just pure curiosity.

“My father,” he says.

My hands freeze for a second. He notices. I force myself to focus, to finish bandaging him up. “I’m assuming he deserved it?” The agency warned me that Jonathan was dangerous, the most dangerous, but this still surprises me. Maybe because I want to believe he’s safe.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” he says. “He was abusive, but I didn’t have to kill him. We had found someone to help us. We were leaving the next day. I knew that.” His eyes grow distant, sinking into the memory. “I didn’t think it was enough. And I was afraid he might find a way to take us back. I couldn’t let that happen. So I killed him. The next morning, we left. The next day, I was arrested. I was charged with murder. I did murder him. I was so fucking stupid, I thought…I didn’t even try to cover it up. I was just a dumb kid, who was fairly ambivalent about murder.”

His story is intense, but I’m not even thinking about it. Not thinking about what he did or why. All I can think about is one thing. He said “we.”

I know Jonathan’s weakness.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says, startling me from my thoughts. I realize he’s expecting me to be horrified. He’s expecting me to be afraid of him. But I’m not. I’ve killed dozens of people. Killing a parent so negligent that Jonathan and his sibling had to find a way to escape seems fairly tame in comparison.

“Why would I leave?” I ask.

“I’m not a good person.” He sounds almost frustrated with me. Frustrated that I’m staying. That I’m not afraid of him. “It should be obvious. I shouldn’t have to explain it.”

I shrug. “It’s not obvious to me.” I’m saying what he wants to hear, but as I say it, I realize I mean it.

All my life, I have never felt that anyone could ever understand me, because of what I did, because of who I was.

I would meet people, anywhere, anytime, have ordinary conversations until it would hit me—and it always did— If they knew what happened to you, if they knew what you did, they wouldn’t want to be around you. The wall would go up. The real me lived in a separate world. No one could ever reach me.

Sometimes I thought I was exceptional. Sometimes I thought I was cursed. But I never thought that I would find someone like me. As exceptional and as cursed. I think I could forgive Jonathan anything, and I know just how dangerous that is.

I reach out. I brush his jaw with my fingers. Then I lean in and kiss him. It’s like kissing my own broken heart.

He pulls away from me and pushes himself off the bed. “You shouldn’t be okay with this,” he says. He starts pacing in front of me. He runs his fingers over his palms again and again.

I watch him calmly, quietly. I don’t even know who’s the real predator here. I guess only time will tell.

“Do you want me to leave?” I ask.

“No…I don’t know.”

“You keep asking me if I’m scared, but it seems like you’re the one who’s scared. I don’t mean scared of me. I mean scared of yourself.” I cross my legs, feeling very Zen.

“I’m scared that you’re not scared.”

“And you’ve lived your whole life this way? Hating yourself? Blaming yourself?” Just like me.

“Eva, I’m a bad person. I’ve killed a lot of people.”

“How many?” I have to know. I told you I was competitive.

“I haven’t kept count. Over a hundred.” Damn, that’s way more than me.

I shrug. “If it bothers you, don’t do it anymore.”

He laughs in surprise.

“I’m serious,” I say. “Just stop.”

He shakes his head, climbs back onto the bed. He takes my hand, squeezes it tight.

He kisses me. It’s like no kiss we’ve had before. It’s better, even, than our first kiss.

I’ve never had that happen before.