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“Nothing about you is easy, Rae Everett.” But he’s smiling when he says it. A real smile, not the sardonic twist of lips I’ve grown accustomed to. This one reaches his eyes and crinkles the corners in a way that makes my heart do something acrobatic and inadvisable.
“Good,” I tell him. “You could use a challenge.”
He laughs. Like that rare smile, real laughter transforms his whole face.
“You’re trouble,” he murmurs, pulling me closer until our foreheads touch. “I knew it the moment I saw you.”
“Yeah?” I tease with a saucy smirk. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
“Keep you,” he says simply.
He kisses me again, on the lips this time. I kiss back and he kisses some more, and I kiss back and he kisses some more, and we just… do that for a while. Necking in the bathtub like nervous teenagers.
But it’s nice. There are no expectations as to what happens next. It’s like we’ve stepped sideways out of time and space and found a safe little pocket that’s ours and ours alone.
What a treat.
What a thrill.
What a life.
What a man.
When we finally break apart after making out for a long time, I’m breathless, pruney, and happier than I have any right to be.
“We should get out,” I say. “I’m turning into a raisin.”
“A very sexy raisin, though.” He grins—another real one, two in one night, I’m collecting them like Pokémon—and rises from the tub in a cascade of water.
I try not to gawk and fail miserably. Who can blame me? The man is easy on the eyes.
He wraps me in a fresh, fluffy towel that also came from that mysterious Uber haul, then carries me to the bedroom despite my protests that I’m perfectly capable of walking.
It’s okay, though.
I don’t mind being carried for once.
60
LUKAS
[FOUND: Bedroom 2B, sealed 18 years]
Crayon on construction paper. Three stick figures holding hands beneath a yellow sun.
Written across the top in wobbly capitals:
MY FAMLY BY KIRILL LAZAREV AGE 7
On our fourth day in self-imposed captivity, I wake to cold sheets and an empty space where Rae should be.
The panic is instantaneous and primal. I reach out and find nothing but rumpled linen. The ghost of her warmth is already fading.
She’s gone.
I’m on my feet at once.She left. She finally saw what you are and she ran.
I deserve it. Fuck, I knew it was coming, too. I’ve been living on borrowed time from the moment I touched her, and now, interest is due.
