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The music pounds, tempo heightening, and my heart lurches up my throat. Gunshots. More screams.
“Look, Briar, they’re shooting the incorporeal being now, as though that will work.” He rubs circles into my back. “Often, I find the realistic display of human idiocy to be the most disturbing factor in these sorts of films.”
“Why do you like horror movies?” I whisper.
“They’re funny.”
“Funny?”
“And predictable.” His chest fills, and his arms solidify around me before he whispers, “How I’ve missed holding you.”
My heart—which is currently unstable at best—stumbles around where it’s lodged in my throat. He’s a monster. An absolute monster. He plotted this. How dare he deduce that I was ready to officially break up with him and make it impossible to separate myself from him?
The shrill, piercing sound of the thing’s harrowing call sends a prickle all the way up my spine. “Rowan, I want to go home. Now.”
“No.”
“Please.”
He kisses my temple. “Absolutely not. I’ve never enjoyed myself more.”
“Rowan…” My voice is weak, wobbly, all the things it never should be, least of all in front of another person.
Purely conversational, Rowan says, “To think a cliché movie date could be so fun.”
I am going to cry.
Broken, I plead, “Please, Rowan. I don’t like this. Take me home now. Please.”
He chuckles—it’s a deep, alluring, wicked sound—and it turns my spine into jelly. “Baby, it’s okay.” His fingers slip through my hair. “You’re overreacting.”
He’s actually gaslighting me right now.
He thinks this is hilarious.
“You are morbid. And dreadful. A-and the worst.” I sniffle. “I’m never going on a date with you again.”
His finger traces down my spine, and I never want to leave. Never. “Uh-huh,” he murmurs, breath skimming through the strands of my hair. “What do you think they use to make the entrails? All CGI? Props?”
He is a complete and utter monster.
“There’s miles of the stuff. It has to be CGI, right? Where would they store such a large prop?” Absently, he kisses the top of my head. “Just remember who between us wants to keep fingers in jars.”
“Fingers are cute. Entrails are gross.” Being hunted is terrifying. Supernatural monsters have no humanity to exploit. Horror movies are built around hopelessness. Even if you do everything right, even if you win, there’s still a bad ending.
Life is a horror movie, and I hate bleak reminders.
“You are a true mystery, princess.”
A blood-curdling scream pierces through my skull, so I cover my ears and curl closer.
Lifting one hand off my ear, Rowan says, “When you think about it, the people are in the wrong here. Nobody knows about the monster, so it’s not leaving its territory. It’s not like it’s trying to destroy mankind. They invaded its woods. This reaction to uninvited guests is perfectly justified.”
“That is the most introverted thing you have ever said. Could it not have asked them politely to leave?”
“They saw blood on the trees and kept walking.”
“They were lost! It could have given them directions!”
