Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
We danced.
He asked me about my childhood. I asked him about his. Easy, simpler questions. Did you ever lay out on the lawn at night? Did you ever get in trouble for something absolutely ridiculous?
“At least I know the answer to one question,” I said. The mood had lightened, worries forgotten. I tipped my head back to look at him. What a concept—that I would be here, dancing in the middle of the living room at night. It felt good.
His mouth curved in a grin, still pointed angles. I stifled a shiver. “Enlighten me, Miss Frederick.” He gave me a spin. Tendrils of hair fanned around me. I came dangerously close to hitting the coffee table.
I laughed, the sound chest-deep. “You don’t know how to drive a car and I do.”
He yanked me back in. Our bodies collided, his grip playful, fervent. Both his hands on my waist now. My fingers tangled around his neck.
“Of all the things you hold over me, you choose this? At least I have no obsession with tiny screens, like you do.” He pressed his face into the crook of my throat and swung me into a dip. There, at the bottom, he pressed a kiss to my skin. I shrieked with laughter.
“I have to hold something over you, don’t I? Here you are, all handsome with good social standing. Besides—what are you going to do about it?” I giggled, breathy. His touch tickled. I tried to pinch my shoulder and chin together.
“Kiss you,” he said, mouth moving to the soft place beneath my ear. “If you would let me.”
Fluttering wings erupted throughout my ribcage. Moments like this didn’t feel real. Like any second, the room would dissolve around us, and I’d wake up.
“You’re asking.” My eyebrows pinched in. I didn’t mean to say that. Not really. It was more of a thought that came to the surface without my consent.
Right then, our gazes snagged. Like a hangnail between the teeth, ready to pull it away. To expose the sensitive, raw skin around it and below with one swift tug. That’s what he was doing to me. Peeling that layer. Letting air hit it.
The thought made my blood burn—in gratitude.
“I would never not ask you,” he murmured. A bated breath hung between us.
I tried to smile. To muster up that teasing thread that had somehow vanished. I couldn’t find it. Instead, I answered honestly.
My breath brushed his cheek. The hollow place just before his ear. His hair fluttered with it. “For you,” I said, swallowed, “always.”
I felt the smile before he pulled back, before he kissed me. Warm, inviting, happy.
Happy.
I took his face in my hands and deepened the kiss.
His tongue touched mine, until he drew my bottom lip between his teeth.
The music came to a murmur in the background, crickets chirped from an open window, and in that breadth of a moment, I lived in an infinity.
An infinity where everything was okay, where each gasp was perfect, and I couldn’t get enough.
Because his hands didn’t move with force. They were languid and urgent all at once, nearly floating over my arms and around my low back, like I might drift away if he weren’t careful. I was the last clothespin holding a shirt on the line, ready to whip away in the breeze.
And I couldn’t help but wonder if this could grow into something else if it were given the chance.
The thought made me falter. I shoved it away, far down into the barrel of my chest. I needed to stay in the now. But deep down, I loved that he’d grown not just into a nail that kept me pinned to the earth, but an anchor.
And the last thing I wanted was to let him go.
He walked me back. I let him. The air tasted crisper, the house grew closer, the night pressing inside toward us, urging us, farther, farther, faster. My calf scraped the coffee table.
Hadrian’s mouth gravitated to my neck again. “Should I have met you,” he said against my skin, “I would have run into you on accident.” He said it like a lie. An accident. “I would have asked who your family was.”
His hands gripped both sides of my waist. His voice turned rich, painting a picture with each breath.
His hair smelled of smoke, soil, and musk. Arms encircled me. Chest to chest, breath to breath. His shoes whispered over the rug.
“I would have come to your front door and knocked. Brought something I thought you might like. I would have spoken to your father and searched for you in the other room when he turned his back to me. I would have asked to take you for dinner or a walk.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Why was he telling me this? And why did it hurt so badly?
I backed into the arm of the sofa. He stepped between my legs, bent down, right there, the bridge of his nose lined up against mine, and suddenly the world felt smaller than it ever had before.
“I would have known before the night was over that I would be back within a fortnight, and I would have returned every night after until you grew tired of me,” he whispered.
“I wouldn’t have gotten tired of you,” I said against his lips.
“You lie.”
The irony in his words made me smile, just a little. My hands drifted from around his neck, into his hair. A fluttering against my breastbone caught my attention. I glanced down.
His button shirt had grown damp—a maroon, nearly black spot the size of a fist—right where his heart should have been. It was like he heard my thoughts.
“Do you wish to see it?”
I met his gaze. He spoke as if it had changed, so I nodded.
He pulled his shirt out of his trousers and made quick work of the buttons.
I expected it to be opened and oozing like before, but instead found raw skin—purpled, raised scars around the edges, nearly an inch or so in width, while the center remained split open.
I started to pull back, worried that I had hurt the wound, but he held me fast.
He took my hand and flattened it against his chest. Quick, persistent flutters. Like a flag snapping in the wind. His breath brushed my cheekbone when he said, “It’s never looked like that before.”
“Oh.” The word was broken. Like a part of me had chipped.
Because of course it had changed, too. It wasn’t just him anymore, it was parts of him, the gnarled edges that smoothed. Clotted and healed, as if they would all collectively vanish soon.
I frowned. “But that’s good, right?” Tried to keep my voice light.
His eyes softened, thoughtful. “Perhaps.”
The palm of his hand pressed against my cheek. “Don’t do that. Please.”
“Do what?”
“Look like I’m breaking your heart.”
I didn’t push against his palm, didn’t blink, just stared at that point on his neck. Could he see it? Did he know, without me having to say anything? Did he think I was delusional for catching feelings?
He licked his bottom teeth, tongue briefly running along the empty sockets—then his body locked. Joint by joint. Even his hand twitched.
“My teeth.” The two words were no more than a whisper. “When I killed him, I found them in the family safe inside a box.” His nostrils flared. “I kept them.”
My heart fluttered like a wet fish at the base of my throat.
I knew without meeting his gaze what he meant: remains.
“Where?”
“I hid them in”—his throat bobbed—“the floors.”
At first, I didn’t speak. He could be right.
Teeth didn’t decay like tissue and flesh. If they’d been in the box Aunt Cadence found—
“Okay.” I gave a tight, single nod. That was that, then. Problem solved. His hand dropped, leaving a print of fire on my cheek in its wake.
“That look,” he said. He leaned back in, his nose close to mine. I leaned away. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“There’s your answer,” I whispered. I blinked, hard, and met his gaze. “We should find your teeth. Then you can—you can—”
“Landry, if you—”
“Don’t argue with me, Hadrian,” I cut in, but my voice was too high, too thin.
“I’m not. I’m trying to discuss this with you because I care.”
“But this is what you wanted,” I said, persistent. “This is what we agreed to. Now you can just—”
“—you know little of what I want—”
“—leave, just like everyone else.”
There. I’d said it. The words hung between us like a dead corpse on a hook, bleeding and fresh and rank. It felt like I’d stripped open two halves of my chest and let him look. Like I should have been the one with the bleeding heart and not him.
“Don’t say that,” he murmured. “I’m not leaving.”
“Aren’t you? That’s what we agreed on. We fix this for you—we break whatever is holding you here, and that’s it.”
“That’s not it, we don’t even know if my teeth are the answer,” he urged. “Why are you putting me in the same box as everyone else? Why haven’t you asked me what I want?”
I stood from the couch, but our faces were already so close, and I couldn’t help it, I grabbed his face in my hands and I wanted to scream. “Because.”
“Because why,” he snarled, that gritty, earthy hint seeping into his words.
A cold sweat bloomed along my brow. A sick sense of dread enveloped me, hugged me, squeezed. If I didn’t say it now, I didn’t think I ever would.
“Because I care what you think,” I said. “And I want to help you.” Tell me how we need to do it. Tell me you don’t feel this.
Tell me you want to leave.
Gray. All I saw was gray. Wilted, rainy, storming gray, with a flash of yellow lightening.
“You think that’s it? All of this, done? Is that how you feel about it?” His voice turned to a growl.
“It’s all you’ve wanted.”
“It’s all you think I’ve wanted.”
“Then tell me what you want, Hadrian,” I blurted.
He straightened, but he looked down at me, our bodies so close, his skin near feverish. Every part of me wanted to slip around, to walk away first, to settle it. To let him go. But my heels remained locked in place, the pressure in the room lapping higher, higher until it hit my elbows.
“I—you are not selling the house.”
“That’s not what I asked—”
“I want—this.”
I flinched like he’d hit me.
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “For a little while. Here, with you. Just … don’t search for them. Wait.” He raked his fingers through his hair, sending streaks of blond in all directions. He didn’t look nervous or unkempt. Somehow, even his uncertainty looked steady.
My question came out reedy. “Why?”
His eyes shuttered. This time, when he leaned in, I didn’t sit back on the couch arm.
His open shirt waved, the muscle in his chest flickered like he was straining or unsure.
He captured my mouth with a certainty, an urgency, both hands grabbing either side of my face and holding me there.
A groan slipped from his chest, and he was everywhere. We were everywhere.
He pulled back just enough for his lips to whisper against mine, and said, “Because I don’t want to let you go ye—”
The front door opened. “Landry!”
It happened so quick the room spun.
Hadrian and I shot upright at the same time. He grabbed both of my shoulders and dragged me in front of him so my head blocked the opened part of his chest. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, tight, steady, as if we did this every day. As if this were normal.
His chin rested on the crown of my head.
Emma rounded the corner to the living room and looked up. “Hey! You’re—”
Everyone froze. Stared at each other. Embarrassment surged in a red heat over my skin.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, wide eyed. The TV, dreadfully and embarrassingly, still hummed in the background. Like we were two frantic teenagers before a parent got home.
I could only imagine how we looked right then. Hadrian, shirt open. Me, eyes wide, face hot. And then there was Emma: mouth agape, purse dangling at her side and the front door still open.
“I will … step …” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Out … side.”
I nodded, mute.
Hadrian cleared his throat. When the front door clicked shut, I turned. Not an ounce of blush heated his cheeks.
“She saw you,” I murmured, stepping close. His shoulder brushed my cheek. “She saw you, Hadrian.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed when he nodded. I couldn’t help the sense of dread that filled my stomach when he said, “That she did, dearest. That she did.”