I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t do anything but stare at the closed elevator doors as my pulse burns like wildfire under my skin.
I recall the murderous expression Cole wore the night of our dinner date when I told him my mother’s boyfriend beat her up. I recall his scraped knuckles and blood-stained shirt the morning I woke with no memory at my apartment when he told me about Dylan. And I recall his eerie calm and splattered briefcase the night he wandered into his kitchen after leaving me alone to “work.”
Goose bumps form all over my body.
It was him. He’s the reason Bob left.
Disappeared, more accurately, probably into a deep hole dug in the desert sand.
Holy shit. I’m in love with Tony Soprano.
“Hello, Shay.”
With a strangled scream, I jump and spin toward the voice. Simone stands there, smiling at me.
“Are you just breaking for lunch now? It’s a bit late in the afternoon. I hope we haven’t been working you too hard. How’s the 401(k) audit coming?’
Breathless, I stare at her in her lovely cream-colored suit and triple strand of pearls and don’t know whether to burst into tears or hysterical laughter. “Fine. It’s coming along fine. I’ll have it completed by tomorrow.”
“Good.” Her smile turns into a frown. “Are you all right? You look a little pale.”
I swallow and nod, desperately trying to pull myself together. “Yes. Just hungry. I have, um, what’s that low blood sugar thing?”
“Hypoglycemia.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
I can tell by her expression of doubt that she doesn’t believe me, but I don’t care. Without another word, I stumble past her, headed blindly into the cafeteria. I don’t bother trying to get any food down, I just navigate to an empty table, collapse into a chair, and stare at my hands when I flatten them on the tabletop.
They’re shaking hard.
I stay in the cafeteria until my shaking has stopped, and my pulse has settled. I know I won’t be able to concentrate on work, but I take the elevator back upstairs and sit at my desk looking busy for the benefit of the cubicle field visible through the glass walls of my office.
I shuffle paperwork, click around aimlessly on the computer, and smile as if I’m not having an existential crisis, and my boss/sex partner isn’t a man who makes other men disappear.
All very normal, nothing to see here.
At five o’clock on the nose, I leave the office and drive home to wait.
I know it’s not a question of if Cole will show up. It’s only a question of when.
Like a werewolf, he arrives at midnight with the full moon.
I’ve been pacing for hours. I’ve had three glasses of wine. I’ve resisted the urgent need to call Chelsea for assistance with my nervous breakdown, but I know this is something I have to handle alone.
Plus, she’ll probably advise me to find a new job ASA-fucking-P, and I don’t want to hear it.
I can’t deal with logic right now. That part of my brain expired with one simple question this afternoon.
“How’s your mother?”
So innocent, yet so not.
The master of mindfuckery strikes again.
I’m in the middle of pouring myself another glass of wine when I hear a floorboard creak. I look over and there he is, standing in my kitchen doorway like some sort of gorgeous, murderous ghost who appeared from thin air.
My heart starts to thud. My mouth goes dry. I slowly set the glass back down on the countertop and turn to him, trembling.
“It’s after midnight.”
“Yes. I apologize for the hour. I was delayed by work.”
I glance at his knuckles, but they’re not covered in blood. Licking my lips, I look into his eyes again.
“How did you get in? The front door is locked.”
“Was locked. And I’m going to install a deadbolt. That lock isn’t safe.”
My laugh is small and only slightly hysterical. “You picked it. Are you a professional burglar too?”
“Amateur.” From his back pocket, he pulls out a credit card and holds it up between two fingers. “Not very sophisticated, but it does the trick.”
“Evidently.”
He doesn’t move closer, he only watches me with smoldering intensity as he slips the credit card back into his pocket, and I try to calm down by gulping air.
“You’re hyperventilating.”
“Seems reasonable under the circumstances, don’t you think? I’m surprised I’m not bleeding from my eyes.”
“How much wine have you had?”
“Not nearly enough to help me cope with the fact that you made Bob disappear. I think I’ll need a few cases of wine before I can handle that.”
“You’re fine. It’s just fresh.”
“I’m going to sit at the kitchen table now. Don’t make any quick moves, or I might pass out from nerves.”
“No, stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”
He moves toward me slowly and with caution, like he’s approaching a wild animal who might bite.
Tonight is the first time I’ve seen him wearing anything but a suit. He’s in jeans, boots, and a T-shirt, all black. He looks ridiculously handsome. And normal, like he’s just an average guy, and not the morally gray vigilante billionaire unaliver-of-bad-guys he actually is.
I remember how I replied “All the most dangerous creatures do” when he remarked that Chelsea looked innocent the first night we met, and marvel that the universe so enjoys playing its little jokes on me.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, reaching out and caressing my face. “You’re okay, baby. Just breathe.”
I close my eyes and breathe deeply as he takes me into his arms. We stand together silently for a while, our bodies pressed together, until he decides it’s time to pick me up.
He carries me out of the kitchen and down the hallway into my bedroom, then kicks off his boots and lays next to me on the bed so we’re facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Hi, beautiful.”
“Hi.”
“Talk to me.”
“I was hoping you’d start.”
“What do you want to know?”
I study his features for a moment, admiring how fine and symmetrical they are and wondering how a rich guy who looks like a GQ model winds up doing what he does.
“How much leeway do I have? Because I know you’re Mr. Secrecy, and you don’t normally answer questions.”
Looking contemplative, he rubs his thumb slowly back and forth over my cheek. “Can I ask you something first?”
“Yes.”
“Are you mine?”
My throat closes. My chest tightens. If I cry, I’m going to beat myself up. “You know the answer to that.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I thought you didn’t do relationships?”
“I don’t. But you stole my heart the first night we met, and I finally realized it’s hopeless to keep trying to resist you. Every time I see you, it’s like the first time I’m seeing the sun.”
I close my eyes and remind myself to breathe. He strokes my hair until I’m calm enough to speak again.
“I’d be lying if I said I wanted anyone else other than you. Or can think about anything else. You’ve taken my brain hostage.”
“Hostage is good.”
“No, it isn’t. Hostage is bad. Hostage is when something’s held against its will.”
“Open your eyes.”
When I do, he’s gazing at me with a look of such adoration, my heart skips a beat.
Eyes shining, he says quietly, “I meant it’s good because you’ve taken my brain hostage too. And my heart. And my soul. What’s left of it anyway. It’s all yours, if you’ll have it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut again. When I speak, my voice is choked. “Goddammit.”
“What?”
“I’m in love with Tony Soprano, and everybody knows what happened to him in the end.”
He pulls me against his body and hugs me tightly, sliding an arm underneath me so I’m cradled. Then he throws a leg over both of mine so I’m completely surrounded by his warmth and strength.
Inhaling against my neck, he sighs.
“I dream about your smell,” he whispers. “I wish I could replicate it from eating cologne and flowers like that idiot Florentino did.”
I raise my head and look at him with lifted brows. He rolls his eyes.
“Yes, I read Love in the Time of Cholera. Emery said it was your favorite book. But I have to tell you, baby, I’ve never read such depressing bullshit in my entire life. I needed a prescription for Xanax by the time I finished. ”
“You talked to Emery about me?”
Instead of answering, he makes a face.
“When?”
He admits grudgingly, “The day you started as my assistant.”
“After I told you she was the one who referred me for the job?”
“Yes. But don’t be angry with her, she wouldn’t answer any of my ten thousand questions about you except what your favorite book was. She said I should have a conversation with you instead.”
“That’s a surprising suggestion, considering conversations are your least favorite thing.”
“Not my least favorite.”
“No? What is?”
He answers with total nonchalance. “Getting blood stains out of white carpeting.”
When I stare at him in horrified silence, he chuckles. “I’m kidding.”
“I can’t deal with gallows humor at the moment, Cole. Have mercy.”
He tucks my head into his shoulder and kisses my hair. “Mercy it is.”
I close my eyes again, flatten my hand over the center of his chest, and count the beats of his heart until I get to sixty. Then I sigh and snuggle closer to him, hoping this man I’m so enamored with won’t someday be the subject of a true crime documentary.
He strokes my back and hair, stopping every so often to kiss my cheek or my forehead. He’s so gentle and sweet, it’s almost impossible to reconcile this side of him with the other side I know exists.
The side where all his monsters live.
After a long time, he murmurs, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Which means I should probably be incarcerated.”
He knows what I mean. “You’re not a danger to society because you can accept darkness more easily than other people.”
“I don’t know if accept is the right word. It’s more like welcome it with open arms.”
“You didn’t have a crisis of conscience over the others.”
“No, but Bob is close to home. And I’m not having a crisis of conscience over him. I’m glad he’s gone.” After a moment, I add, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. If you have others who need taking care of, make me a list.”
“Oh my God! Or wait, was that more gallows humor?”
“No. You can literally make me a list.”
I groan. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“You never know. Having a man like me around can be extremely handy.”
“Please stop talking now.”
“Okay.” There’s a short pause, then he says, “How am I supposed to answer questions if I can’t talk?”
“You know what? I don’t care if you’re bigger and stronger than me and know how get blood out of white carpeting. If you don’t shut up for a minute, I’ll kick your ass.”
He rolls on top of me and laughs into my neck. When he comes up for air, he kisses me deeply, pressing me into the mattress and making a soft sound of pleasure in his throat.
“Shay?”
“What?”
“Tell me you’re mine.”
Gazing up into the depths of his beautiful blue eyes, I know that whatever strange forces brought us together are the same ones that make resistance useless. The connection we shared that first night hasn’t diminished with time, it’s only grown stronger.
So I give up any lingering hesitations and surrender in full.
“I’m yours. I belong to you, Cole McCord, come what may.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they burn with a new—darker—fire.
“Good, baby. Because you offered this monster a home, and he’s taking you up on the invitation.”
