Chapter 9
9
“You’re definitely hungry,” Kieran sighs after a few moments of us listening to a car engine start and seconds later get fainter and fainter as the two of them leave. “Remote’s on the table beside you if you want to watch something.” With that, he pushes off the wall and heads for the kitchen, feet scuffing on the wooden floor before he yanks open the fridge to stare inside.
“I could run away. One-on-one is better odds than two-on-one?” I offer, looking around until I find the remote and pick it up.
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he stays silent as he does whatever it is he’s doing, and I flip on the television while giving the front door, which I know is unlocked, yearning glances. Eventually I settle on some documentary about America’s most haunted places, though I’m barely paying attention. I don’t know how I can pay attention considering everything that’s going on.
When Kieran sits down beside me on the couch, not giving me much personal space, I glance up at him in surprise. But he just hands me a small plate with a piece of pecan pie on it, and a glass bottle of coffee. Specifically, a white chocolate latte. “Thanks,” I can’t help murmuring, though I glance up at him with narrowed eyes when his thigh brushes my knee. “You know there’s a whole couch on the other side of you, right?”
“Yeah, I do.” He glances up at the TV, snorts, and looks back to me as another rumble of thunder sounds outside. “And to answer your other question, just because Val isn’t here doesn’t mean you have any better chance of getting away from here. Actually, he’d be better for you in that way. You might be able to beg and plead and promise with him. Maybe he’d even believe you.”
“And you won’t? To be clear, I wasn’t offering to give you a private PowerPoint presentation, Kieran.” My words are flat and brittle, though when he just gives me the look , I feel my bravado wilt.
“I know what you were suggesting, little girl. Eat your breakfast before you start planning escape attempts.” I can’t really argue with that. Not when he’s given me two of my favorite things for breakfast. Instead, I focus on eating, happy as hell with the cold pecan pie and bottled coffee. And I’m hungrier than I expected, given the fact he handed me a piece of pie that normally would be a bit too big for me to comfortably finish in one sitting. Much less in under five minutes. But soon enough it’s gone, leaving me to daydream about what other kinds of pies they have on the premises.
Not that I’ll let myself be won over by pie and shitty documentaries.
Minutes later Kieran finishes his as well, and he wordlessly plucks my plate from my hands and carries both them and his now-empty coffee back to the kitchen. “He’ll be gone for a while,” Kieran tells me, his voice drifting from the other side of the cabin.
“So I have all day to stab you, steal your keys, and make my getaway? By the way, since I don’t have my phone, could you tell me the weather forecast for the rest of the day?” Turning, I rest my chin on my arm that’s looped over the back of the sofa to watch him move around the kitchen.
“Sure you do. And it’ll be storming all day and tonight. Why? Are you afraid of lightning?” Finally, he’s done washing off the plates and forks, and he puts them back where they belong before turning to prowl back to my side of the cabin.
“One of my cats is,” I say, my heart twisting at the idea of completely leaving them alone. I know they’ll be fine, as long as what Val told me is true, but I still can’t help but aggressively worry about them. “But I’m not. I like storms.” My eyes follow him as he comes back to sit down on the sofa, and yet again, he invades my personal bubble without a word. This time he’s facing me more fully, and he reaches out to tuck my hair behind my ear.
“You’re a mess,” he murmurs softly, looking me over. “Nero’s right about that. You do look like the poster child for domestic abuse right now.”
“Thanks. That’s so flattering—” I break off when he gets to his feet, confused while he wordlessly disappears into the bedroom.
When he returns, he’s carrying a brush in one hand, and he sits down on the other end of the couch this time. “Come here.” Kieran gestures to me with his fingers as he drops one leg to the floor invitingly.
But I just sit there, my eyebrows climbing toward my bangs in surprise and bemusement. “Oh yeah? You’re going to brush my hair ? I didn’t take you for Mr. Domesticity.”
“You only take me for a murderer. And you don’t know anything about me. So…” He gestures for me to move closer to him again.
Yet again, I open my mouth to refuse. I have no reason to trust him anymore after everything that’s happened. But then he tilts his head to the side and gives me a new kind of look. One that’s actually sweet and a little pleading. His hand reaches for me, still held out into the air between us, and God, it’s hard to ignore him when he looks like that.
“I trusted you yesterday morning, you know,” I murmur without moving. If anything, I tense, dragging my knees more tightly to my chest. “I trusted both of you.” My voice breaks, and I hate the sudden pressure of tears behind my eyes that I have to fight to blink away. “And now you want to unalive me in the woods.”
“I do not want to unalive you in the woods,” Kieran disagrees. “Neither of us do. If we wanted that, you wouldn’t have woken up yesterday morning. That wasn’t just some kind of weird victory lap for us to taunt you. But I cannot place your safety above ours. All I’m asking is for you to give me a little bit of time to figure this out, all right? To make sure we can trust you won’t go to the cops about us.”
“I wasn’t going to.” The words come out soft, and I unbend my knees from my awkward and uncomfortable position. “I really wasn’t.”
“But things change. Your infatuation with us wouldn’t have kept your lips sealed forever. Eventually guilt would’ve won out, and you’d tell the police about us. All of us.” His smile turns a little regretful, though he’s still holding his hand out to me. “I need you to have a real reason not to go to the cops. I need it to affect you too, darling.”
I can’t trust him. I know I can’t trust either of them. But God, I sort of want to. “If you find a reason, you really won’t kill me or keep me here? Or kidnap me again?” I ask finally, hating how soft my voice is.
“I swear on my life.” It’s so honest that it shocks me. His tone isn’t what I’ve come to expect from Kieran, nor is the look on his face.
I can’t trust him.
“I don’t trust you,” I whisper, though my words are uncertain and hesitant.
A wry smile curls across his lips, and he scoffs lightly. “Of course you don’t,” he agrees. “Because you’re not stupid. But you don’t have to trust me to let me brush your hair, Noa.”
I could snap back at him and tell him that’s not true. I could find some comeback that will make me feel better about myself. But I can’t seem to find the words, and it hits me that I’m so tired of being afraid.
Besides, it’s not like this can get much worse.
“If you secretly have drugs in that brush to knock me out again, or if you drugged the pie, I will scoop out your insides with a spoon ,” I say flatly, maneuvering my body until I’m on my knees near him and hovering awkwardly. “How do you want to do this?”
“Turn around and sit closer to me. I don’t bite.” Kieran chuckles, a hint of wicked humor in his dark eyes. He tugs gently on my hip when I move until I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch and half-leaning against his thigh that’s pressed to the back of the couch. Finally, I rest my head in my hands, elbows braced on my knees, with my skin prickling in anticipation.
No one has brushed my hair for me except my mom, back when she was alive. I expect Kieran to be rough and hurried, to drag the brush through my hair and rip out as many tangles as he gets undone. But yet again, he surprises me. Using his other hand to make sure he isn’t hurting me, he starts with the left side of my head, starting at the bottom and gently working his way up.
I quickly start feeling awkward at the affectionate way he does it, and I can’t help but appreciate the warmth radiating off of him. “So…” I tap my fingers against my face when the silence broken only by the TV becomes too much. “You said I don’t know anything about you. You’re right, since I unfortunately cannot read minds. Maybe you want to, uh, tell me something about yourself?”
He’s quiet for a few moments, and I can’t see his face to tell what he’s thinking. Finally Kieran says, “I like storms too. Val isn’t as much of a fan, though. He doesn’t like being caught out in the rain.”
“Oh yeah? I wouldn’t have expected that with how much he liked being in the dirt last night.” I can’t help but wonder how often in the past Kieran brushed someone’s hair. While I know it isn’t exactly a difficult task, he just seems…practiced.
“His adoptive parents used to lock him outside when it was storming if he pissed them off.”
This time I can’t help but jerk around to face Kieran, my lips parted in surprise as he pulls his hands away from me. “ What ?!” I ask, disbelieving.
The dark-haired man shrugs his shoulders, lifting a brow at my reaction. “This isn’t a secret, not really. So you don’t need to treat it like one or anything.” He gestures for me to turn back around, and I do so with a soft sigh, resuming my position.
“He was adopted from Russia as a child. Val was…six, I believe? He’s unfortunately representative of the not-so-great side of adoption. His adoptive parents were a very religious family. They renamed him, taught him fluent English, and wouldn’t let him speak Russian, use his old name, or talk about his birth family. They thought he should be grateful to them and their punishments were…severe.”
I’m horrified and glad Kieran can’t see my expression as he explains. “What about you?” I ask after a few moments of comfortable silence. “Do you also have a really sad, heart wrenching past? Because if so, I’m not sure you can top that one.”
I hear his soft chuckle, and he turns my head slightly to be able to get the rest of my hair. “Nah, I don’t. I’m pretty boring. Grew up in the suburbs, went to boarding school. And Kieran was the name I was born with.”
“Will you tell me about the Haunt?” I ask, surprising myself with the words. “Will you tell me why you guys did that to those people?”
For a few moments, he doesn’t speak. Moments turn into a minute, and he’s nearly done brushing out the tangles in my hair by the time he gives a slight exhale. “Because fair’s fair, Noa. No one in there was innocent. They all hurt one of us in one way or another. And I don’t just mean name calling or stealing someone’s parking spot.” He pulls away, and I hear him set the brush down on the table by the couch. Before I can move, however, Kieran wraps his arms around me to tug me back until I’m draped against him, my back against his chest.
Once I’m comfortably between his thighs, he drops his arm around my waist, his legs bracketing mine on the deep couch. Unexpectedly, he buries his face against my neck, inhaling deeply before brushing his lips against my skin. I shudder, surprised by the action, but I’m definitely not complaining about this sudden rush of affection from him.
“I didn’t take you for, umm, warm?” I admit finally, trying to keep my anxiety out of my voice. After all, I certainly don’t want to piss him off.
“And cuddly?” he finishes with a scoff, and nips at my throat. “Val would disagree with you. And before it really crosses your mind, I’m not just touching you so I can fuck you, darling. You’re tired and so am I.” He tugs the soft blanket off of the back of the sofa and drapes it over both of us. “So do me the supreme favor of not trying to run away today, all right? It’ll really ruin the mood, and all the work I put into untangling your hair.”
“I’ll consider it.” I sniff, unable to help relaxing against him even just a little bit. “And I’ll get back to you at a later date on my decision.” My words make him scoff, and I turn my head to watch the TV, not really sure what’s even happening as a woman stutters and stammers and gestures toward the camera.
I don’t actually care, as it turns out. And my ambivalence reminds me how much I need to catch up on real sleep, given the past few days of physical exhaustion and emotional trauma I’ll probably never quite recover from if they don’t kill me here.
“I’ll be really disappointed if you kill me,” I remark, my voice betraying my drowsiness. But if Kieran answers, I don’t hear it. While I promise myself that I’m only resting my eyes and not sleeping, once they’re closed, I find it impossible to reopen them again.