Page 33 of Captive

“Sorry,” I instinctively say, but she doesn’t take offense. No, she just stands there and grins up at me, and then she actually takes me by the wrist and pulls me along, like I’m a wayward child in need of assistance.

“I don’t need you to lead me in my own house,” I say, though I do say it quietly. I also don’t yank my wrist from her grip; suddenly all my energy is drained, and I choose to blame the fact that I’ve been sleeping in my office.

“Actually, I do,” she says, tossing a glance back at me. “Otherwise you might run away.”

I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. Eye-rolling is a very Royal-like thing to do, and I am not like Royal. My mother taught me manners. More often than not, those manners are still around.

Every once in a while, though, those manners tend to disappear, like they did day the blood circled the drain.

Oh, yes. I might not join Royal and Ezra on the kills, but these hands of mine aren’t clean.

Downstairs we go, to the kitchen, where she has a stool pulled out from the island, at the ready. “Sit,” she says, finally releasing my hand.

I sit on the stool, and before I can fix the towel around my shoulders, she grabs it and wraps it around my neck. I reach up to pinch it closed, holding it in place as I ask, “Have you ever cut a man’s hair before?” Small talk, which I loathe. Never understood the point of it; if you don’t have anything important to say, then don’t say anything at all. Simple.

“No, but how hard can it be?” When I toss her a worried look over my shoulder, she smiles. “What? Worried you won’t be so cute once I’m done with you?” As if that wasn’t enough to say, she also adds, “Have a hot date you need to look like one of those old-fashioned models on a romance novel for? Fabio with his windswept hair?”

Fabio with his windswept hair? Oh, for the love of…

“My hair is not nearly that long,” I say, facing forward once more, mostly to break the eye contact between us. Staring into those silver eyes for too long makes me feel things I’d rather not, and it brings to the forefront of my mind all of her comments about stress relief and whatnot.

“Maybe not,” she says, “but you’re getting there. You are getting there.” She grabs a comb off the island and runs it through my hair. “And, for your information, I cut my own hair. How hard can cutting someone else’s be? I imagine it’d have to be a hell of a lot easier.”

“Do you dye your own hair, too?” I don’t know why I ask, maybe to see if she’ll open up about her last name.

“I do, usually. Now I have to, don’t I?” She chuckles and goes to pick up the metal scissors, switching them in her hands so her dominant holds the scissors and the non-dominant holds the comb. “It’s okay. I like doing it. It’s a solitary activity that relaxes me, believe it or not.”

That is definitely not something I would ever find fun, but to each his or her own.

“So, have you really been sleeping in your office this whole time?” I hear the first snip of the scissors behind me.

“Even before you were here, I tended to.”

“You must have a lot of aches and pains, then. That can’t be good for your back. I bet sleeping on the couch is better for you.”

All I do is shrug. Coming downstairs to sleep on the couch in the living room seems like a lot of work when it’s well past midnight and the house is eerily silent. Besides, I really am used to passing out at my desk these days.

Drowning myself in my work, in finding more possible targets, is the only thing that keeps me sane most days.

Abby doesn’t really take the hint that I don’t want to talk. The entire time she cuts my hair, she’s a chatterbox—which goes in line with how she was the night she fell out of the closet, if what the guys told me is true. Chatty, chatty, chatty. Rambling, some might say. At the time, she was worried for her life. I wonder what her excuse now is.

It feels as though the haircut takes an eternity, but in reality, I believe it’s only a few minutes. I don’t have that much hair to cut, and it’s just a trim to get it out of my eyes. It’s when she moves to stand on my sides, when I can see her with my peripheral vision, that time stretches on to infinity.

Looking at her too much is a bad idea, but I can’t really control my peripherals. She’s there. She’s there and she’s concentrating so intently on me that it makes me uneasy in a weird way.

I was so young when my entire life changed. I don’t really have much experience when it comes to women—other than the typical, three-second experience that goes hand-in-hand with being a horny teenage boy with an equally horny teenage girl. You can’t really include those encounters.

Yeah, it’s been a long, long time.

And the thing is, it really isn’t something I put a lot of thought into. Why would I? I was content with how things were, the turn my life took the day the Benefactor sent a lawyer to help me with my case.

My murder case.

My mind wanders a bit too much as Abby finishes my haircut. I find myself glancing at parts of her I shouldn’t—namely, her mouth and that perpetual smile she seems to wear. Those lips of hers seem to draw my attention far more than they should.

“There,” she says, moving to stand before me. She holds the scissors and the comb in one hand, her other hand on her hip as she inspects her work head-on. “All done, and not a moment too soon. Do I make you uncomfortable or something? I know my personality is a love-it or hate-it kind of thing.”

“No,” I say quickly, “it’s not that. It’s… not you, it’s me.” Such a clichéd saying, but it has found its way in the cliché hall of fame for a reason: more often than not, it’s true. Not always, but in my case, it certainly is.