and sleep better than I probably have in years. But if she woke up and found me in her bed, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.
Instead, I make myself comfortable on the big gray lounge chair she uses to read. It smells like her, and so does the throw blanket I toss over myself. It only covers about half of my body, but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.
My mind drifts as I stare up at the ceiling, contemplating all the ways my chance at normalcy has backfired. It feels like I’m juggling a fuckton of fragile plates, and sooner or later, they’re bound to come crashing down. Suzy is going to ruin this for me. I already know it in my gut. Keeping her away this long was a miracle, but it was only a matter of time before she clawed her way out of hell and grabbed me by the foot. There is no such thing as normal in my world. This is as normal as it’s ever going to get.
Inevitably, my eyes drift back to Kailani. She’s restless, rolling around, her leg falling out of the sheet. I’m trying to imagine what else is beneath that sheet. Does she sleep naked? Am I in her dreams? Her nightmares?
My chest heaves, and as if she can sense me, she sits upright in her bed, searching for monsters in the shadows. It takes a minute for her eyes to adjust, but when she notices me on the lounge chair, she makes a tiny noise of protest. The bedside lamp comes on as she shifts her legs over the side of the mattress and shoves the covers away. To my disappointment, she’s not as naked as I’d hoped. Apparently, she wears a tiny white tank top and shorts to sleep in.
“Um, hello, psycho stalker.” She snaps her fingers at me to get my attention. “Mind telling me what you’re doing here in the middle of the night?”
I shrug the elbows tucked behind my head. “Thought I’d catch some zzz’s.”
“Are you drunk?” she asks slowly, as though my comprehension isn’t up to speed.
“I don’t drink anymore.”
She snorts like it’s impossible to believe. “Just the blood of undeserving souls, right, Killian?”
“Don’t call me that.”
The tension in my voice gives her pause, and she grabs a remote from her nightstand, using it to turn on the overhead lights too. When she looks at me again, her eyebrows pinch together, and I know she can see the red imprint from my mother’s hand across my face.
“Are you okay?” She blurts the question before she can help herself and then immediately shakes her head like she regrets it.
“I knew you were still in there somewhere.” I offer her a lazy smile. “Should I call the priest? Maybe it’s time to perform an exorcism.”
She sighs. “Why are you here, Landon?”
“I needed a place to crash. Just for the next few hours. No biggie.”
“You know that’s not going to happen.” She crosses her arms, retreating into her uncertainty.
My eyes do a slow, leisurely perusal of her face, her skin, her hair. It would be a hell of a lot easier to hate her if she didn’t look like everything I ever needed. Even now, I can’t tell if she’s playing a game or if she really is nervous around me. At times, the truth seems so obvious, and with most people, it is. But Kail isn’t so easy to figure out. She’s either the most deceptive liar I’ve ever met, or she truly is delusional enough to believe I’m the bad guy.
“Has it ever occurred to you that if I were really such a threat, something would have happened by now?”
She blinks, and her gaze grows distant, and I know what she’s thinking. Something already did happen. If either of us was brave enough to hash that shit out, maybe we’d find some sort of understanding.
“Why aren’t you at your own house?” She fiddles with the edge of her blanket, buying herself time to decide how to handle this.
“Because I don’t want to be.”
“Well, you can’t stay here,” she murmurs, but the hard edge in her voice has disappeared.
Her face is a battlefield of emotions, and I’d bet all the money in my bank account her thoughts are impossibly loud. She can’t deny the tension between us is laced with something dark and hungry. We can hate each other until the day we die, but that doesn’t change the fact that