Page 42 of Only for Him

“Giselle!” he calls, and there’s a real happiness in it.

For a second, I hate him for it.

When I slide into the seat opposite, he pushes a glass of whiskey toward me.

“Woodford, neat,” he says.

I take a sip. “You still remember?”

“Hard to forget you puking it all back up that night.” He laughs, and I remember the guy who once drove forty blocks through Queens the next morning after making sure that I was alright the night before.

Like I said. Too safe.

Sincerity and kindness have only ever left me ravenous for cruelty and punishment. At some point, I decided to live with the hunger rather than find someone to slake it.

But it seems like my days of living with it might be numbered.

“So, how’s the city treating you?” Teddy asks.

“Same as always. Wake up angry, go to sleep even angrier.”

“The city, or you?”

“Yes.” I grin.

He smirks back. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

It’s probably a compliment.

“Neither have you.”

He laughs. “Really? The old me was a mess.”

“Tidiness is overrated.” I sip at my whiskey and start softening in all the places that have hardened since those simpler days.

We drink and Teddy tells me about D.C. About the soullessness, the politics, and the way no one ever looks you in the eye unless they want something from you.

“At least in New York, a threat is a threat. You don’t have to worry about someone stabbing you in the back, they’ll just do it in front of your eyes,” he says. “There’s honesty in that.”

Everything Teddy says reminds me ofhim,even this. Part of the draw is not needing to worry about what my stalker might be hiding behind a pretty smile.

He’s feeding me the black heart he wears on his sleeve, bite by delicious bite.

“Certainly more preferable,” I say, and mean it.

I watch Teddy watch me, his eyes never quite settling as he keeps scanning for the next threat. He spins his half-empty glass on the table, and then asks the question I knew he’d always ask.

“You ever find out who killed her?”

“No,” I snap, a little faster than I like and definitely harsher than Teddy deserves.

But it’s the honest fucking truth. Because what else am I supposed to say to that? That six years in the NYPD haven’t gotten me any fucking closer? That instead all I’ve done is nurse an anger and hatred for an imaginary face of her murderer with nowhere to express it?

With every passing day, I can’t help but feel myself starting to believe that poisonous lie that it’s the city that took my sister, and that it was the city that killed her.

I hate it. Not because I don’t have an answer, but because I won’t ever have the satisfaction of hurting the person responsible.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to my stalker. Because in his own fucked-up way, he’s putting a face to those same crimes before he snuffs out their worthless lives.