2. Claire
Chapter two
Claire
I'm a killer.
Some days, that thought circles through my mind on an endless loop… when I’m lying in bed at night, or staring aimlessly into the fridge, when my professors’ lackluster ramblings cause my mind to wander. Even when the most beautiful man on campus asks me on a date.
Moose catches my eye from across the room, always watching, and I blink, realizing that Austin has stopped talking. For a minute, I forgot where I was. Some days, I’m still lying in the dark waiting for the monsters to come. Other days, I am the monster.
And some days, I actually pay attention in class as if my degree means a damn thing to the world. It’s a piece of paper, which I know can be erased as easily as the text message I keep typing but have never sent. And yet, some days, I pull myself together enough to play the part of a collegiate looking to make plans for the future as if humanity isn’t bleeding.
“I’m sorry,” I shake my head as if that will pull me out of the funk, “what?”
Austin laughs, rubbing the back of his neck and causing his shirt to lift up to reveal a little of his six-pack. “I mean if you're interested, we can go together. I wasn’t sure if you were with… him .” Austin turns, tipping his head toward the musclehead staring daggers at us.
And just like that, I’m pulled completely back to reality. And what a weird fucking reality it is .
I laugh. “Moose?” Just saying his name makes me laugh again. As if I would be dating a man called Moose, for fuck’s sake. “No. He’s Just...” I hesitate because, really, what am I supposed to say? I consider him to be my stalker, but I can't very well go around telling that to other people who’ll be alarmed by those words. The acceptable response would be ‘friend’, but I’m not sure anyone can ever use the word friend in the same sentence as Moose.
“It's complicated.” I wave a hand to try and dismiss any further conversation about my unfortunately, sexy shadow. “But we are not together.”
“Okay.” Austin’s eyes dart from the menace in question back to me, sounding just a little less hesitant than before. “So, what do you say? I'll pick you up at four. We can tailgate a couple of hours before the game starts.”
Oh. That's what we were talking about. The basketball game.
Truth be told, I don’t understand sports. There are too many random rules and all of the yelling that people do definitely doesn't help matters. But the last few months have driven me insane, and now the idea of being anywhere other than my apartment sounds like heaven. Nearly a month of winter break with Moose on my ass made me so stir-crazy that I thought getting back to class would help. It didn’t help, of course, because every day the weather warms, I’m just reminded of last summer. Sometimes it feels like a fever dream, and while I know I can’t go back to what I had then, I don’t know if I’ll ever find anything—or anyone—that makes me feel so alive again.
Austin clears his throat a little, drawing my attention back to his brilliant blue eyes as he patiently waits for an answer.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to shake Moose long enough to get away, but I’m certainly willing to try. If nothing else, at least dragging him along to a social event will be a great form of torture. The thought of him sitting all sullen and dark like a little rain cloud while frat boys drink and sorority girls vie for his attention amuses me enough to laugh again. “Yeah.” I say finally, watching Austin’s grin widen further to reveal perfect white teeth.
Everything about Austin Lennon is perfect. I had a crush on him my sophomore year when we took humanities together, and he had never even seemed to notice me. But he notices me now, and even though I’m not hung up on him like I once was, it feels good to be noticed. “All right. I know where the apartment is, but do you wanna give me your number just in case?”
I appraise his face, looking for any underlying threat. “How do you know where I live?”
“Rhea's birthday party last year.” He shrugs, looking slightly put off by the suspicion in my tone. “Remember? I did karaoke.”
“Oh.” I laugh as the heat washes across my skin.
I probably sound like a paranoid psychopath, but he either doesn't notice or doesn't really care. I’m sure he’s not looking to marry me, and after last summer, I’m fairly certain that psychopaths are fun in bed. I’m not sure I’d consider Remy a psychopath, but I think I may be, and I had a damn good time in the sheets with him.
I feel the lust curl in my stomach at the memories of all the filthy things we did, but I stave them off quickly. “I remember that, actually. Your rendition of Journey was moving. You actually had me convinced you were just a small-town girl.”
I bite my lip, wishing I could take the stupid joke back as soon as it’s said, but Austin laughs. “Well, you know what they say… don't stop believing.” He shifts and grabs his phone out of his back pocket.
“Oh, right. My number.”
I recite the numbers while Moose glares at me with his arms crossed over his black tee, and Austin punches the numbers in. He calls me before walking away, either so he can ensure I gave him the right number or so I can save his contact, too.
For a moment, he stands there, like he’s waiting for something more, and my head spins with implications. The silence is awkward until he manages a grin. “I’ll see you Saturday, then.”
I only nod in response, my head too busy trying to figure out what just happened to come up with an appropriate response.
A date? Did I really just agree to a fucking date ?
I know I’m supposed to try to be normal now. And I guess this is even what normal people do. But this feels, somehow, like a betrayal. Whether it’s a betrayal of myself or Remy, I don’t know, and I don’t care to contemplate it.
When he turns to walk away, he nearly steps right into Moose’s broad chest.
“Sorry, man.” Austin says sincerely, clapping Moose on the shoulder. When Moose only continues to glare at him, Austin sidesteps him and turns around to smile at me.
As soon as he clears the room, one of Moose’s perfect, dark eyebrows lifts. “What's Saturday?”
I roll my eyes and don't bother trying to walk around him, clipping his shoulder instead as I pass him. His long strides follow right behind me. I can't outpace him… the only time I get away from him is when I’m in my apartment with the door locked. And even then, I know he isn't far… just next door, watching, waiting, and generally creeping me out.
Moose has made no show of interest in me in the six months since he’s been here. He’s made no show of interest in any woman since he’s been here. Maybe men do it for him, or maybe he’s asexual. Either way, he doesn’t creep me out because he looks like he wants to fuck me or peel my skin off. He creeps me out because he’s so intense. Any time he’s near, I can feel the energy shift. He unsettles me, and while I’m confident he wouldn’t hurt me since Remy is paying him to do the exact opposite, I can just tell that he’s more than capable of it.
Moose looks like the man you call when you need a problem solved. He looks like the man who can make a goddess fall from Mount Olympus to offer herself up at her own temple. And he looks like the kind of man who can ruin your life in a million dark, and beautiful, and terrifying ways.
He may not have shown any interest in me, but I know he won’t be thrilled when I tell him what I’m doing Saturday. “I have a date.”
The displeasure is obvious in his dark eyes, which flicker with something like anger. I don’t bother facing him head-on. Just a glance from the corner of my eye shows me all that I need to see. It seeps into his voice, too, making his words tense when he asks, “Where are we going?”
I stop so abruptly that he runs into the back of me, and if it weren't for his quick reflexes, reaching out and grabbing me, I'd have fallen straight to the ground. That only makes my irritation all the more obvious. “Not we , Moose. Me . I’m going on a date. You can stay home and torture puppies or whatever you do when you're not breathing down my neck.”
“I don't torture puppies,” he chuckles. “Just humans.”
“I know.” I snap. “You’ve tortured me every day for the last six months.”
“Anybody ever told you you're melodramatic?”
“Has anybody ever told you that you're an asshole?”
“Oh, come on, Claire.” He chides. “You can do better than that.”
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering if he’s referring to my insult, or to the man I’m going out with. Obviously, I know I can do better than Austin. I already did.
It isn’t that there’s even anything wrong with Austin. He just isn’t Remy. I’m unsure what his kiss tastes like, how he likes his coffee, or even if he likes coffee at all. I’ve never been in his arms, so I’m not sure if it will feel like I’m meant to nestle there, or if our bodies will fit together like they were made for one another. But at one point in time, I was drawn to him. And Remy isn’t an option, so what’s the harm?
“Take a night off,” I suggest. “And maybe use it to get laid. ”
Moose’s eyes are unamused as they wash over me. “Worry about your own love life, princess.”
A shrill chirp confirms that he unlocked the car door, so I pull the handle open and slide into the passenger seat. “What's love got to do with it?”
I’m not looking for love from Austin Lennon. I’m looking for someone to make me feel alive again, no matter how quickly it passes.
Moose has been following me around for months on Remy’s demand. In all that time, I've never seen anything to indicate that he’s capable of understanding something as complex as love.
“Touché.”
I reach for the radio dial, but Moose’s hand shoots out at the same time, landing on the button before me. He doesn’t have to grin for me to see how smug he is.
God, I hate him. And I hate Remy for forcing him to follow me around like a brooding, mopey puppy. Except Moose is neither cute nor cuddly. That’s not to say he’s bad-looking, obviously. Rhea has been lusting after him since the moment he showed up on our doorstep.
Where Remy is refined, Moose is rough. Where Remy is sophisticated, Moose is low-brow. I suppose it’s easy to look like Remy does when respect is already given to him. A man like Moose probably had to earn it, and though I don’t like him, I figure he probably thought if he looked more intimidating, people would treat him like he was.
He’s lean but dangerous with more muscles than brains. Everything below his chiseled jaw is covered in tattoos. They’re the kind that you expect to see on middle-aged men who’ve had time to acquire them, but by all accounts, he seems to be about the same age as Rhea and me. He raises a lot of eyebrows on campus thanks to his take-no-prisoners attitude and body art, but no one ever seems to question his age. He also has no interest in getting to know me, so I can’t exactly ask him how long he’s known Remy. I mean, I could, but he wouldn’t answer. He doesn’t tell me anything about himself, including whether his name is really Moose, or if maybe he’s Canadian, or if maybe that was just a fond nickname from a certain king of hell.
I also can’t ask Remy. We haven’t talked since the day I flew home… the day he fucked me like a whore, threw me over the side of his boat, and told me there was no future for us. And then he drove me to the airport, walked me all the way to my gate, and watched me board the plane. That was the end of ‘us’. We were never a couple, so there was technically never an ‘us’, but whatever had been between us just ended in that instant.
Except, it hasn’t. He still owns more of me than I think even I do. He occupies my thoughts, infiltrates my dreams. The scars on my body that weren’t even left by him are claimed by him, and when I need release, my freaking orgasms are his, too. It’s maddening, particularly because he made me feel like he didn’t care about me that last day we were together. But then he went and hired a bodyguard to shadow me, so he either cares about me in some stupid way, or he wants to know he’s torturing me. Either way, it’s not exactly like I’m in a good position to reach out to him… especially because I’m trying to get him out of my head.
On that plane ride home, when Senator Massarini blocked me into my seat, I’d thought it was all over. I was certain he’d stab me with whatever they used when Jovich abandoned me to Wes’ men, that he’d drag me off the plane to some sort of underground dungeon where I’d never see the light of day again. Instead, he did a lot of talking and asked me a lot of random questions, and when we parted ways, he shook my hand like that entire interaction hadn’t been weird… like we really were just two strangers on a plane.
When there was a knock on my door hours after I got back to my apartment, I thought maybe he’d just waited for me to let my guard down, that he was coming to snatch me from a less crowded place than an airport. But it was Dimitri, who the Boudreaux’s had sent to keep an eye on me. Rhea was, predictably, upset when I flew home without her. But she stayed with her brother long enough to wrap up some business with the family assets and whatever rich people do.
It was a shock, but it was nice to see him, especially because he confirmed that when I’d been with Wes and Remy, he and Rhea had gone to have my birth control tested. Unsurprisingly, that was the culprit. Only some of the pills had been replaced, likely so that it would be harder to detect when I died if someone started poking around. Also unsurprisingly, I haven’t been poisoned since getting back home. Dimitri said there were no prints other than mine and his from when I gave it to him, which was a step I hadn’t expected him to take, but clearly, someone had. I’m still fairly certain that despite how everything unraveled between us, Remy didn’t mean it quite so literally when he told me he had been poisoning me.
My money is still on Elaine.
It was awkward at first, and then it was comforting, having Dimitri around. But when Rhea came home, it went right back to being awkward until Remy called him back to Costa Rica and sent Moose and Eli as his replacements. We didn’t realize they were anything more than our new neighbors—until they started following us everywhere. When Rhea first found out, she called her brother. I could hear her yelling from across the apartment. But whatever excuse he gave her, it must have satisfied her at least a little bit, because she reluctantly came to accept it.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Eli, whom Remy had ordered to keep watch over her, is attractive and far better tempered than Moose. A small part of me wonders if that was by design and if he’s trying to keep me from developing an attachment to someone who spends so much time with me. More likely than not, he just didn't want Rhea to get attached to a man like Moose. But still, I have to wonder why he’s going to such great lengths. If someone were coming for me, surely, they would have done so by now. I was sold to some anonymous bidder almost a year ago, and we were warned many times that someone would come for me. And yet, no one ever has.
What no one knows is that I’m not sitting around waiting for someone to come for me.
I’m going to come for them. Because I’m not a fucking doe.