26. Esperr
ESPERR
Iwas sixteen the first time I made the mistake of trusting someone with the truth.
Not naively—I was never naive; I couldn’t afford to be, not with cleaning up murders for people since I was six.
But there’s something that exists in you during your teenage years that hasn’t been fully trained out yet.
Some small stubborn belief that if you choose carefully enough, if you read someone well enough, if you wait long enough before you open your mouth—you’ll find the person who will hold it and guard your secret with their life.
Daniel felt like that person. I mean, he used to bring me coffee before school, and he remembered that even in the dead of winter, I preferred cold coffee with too much sugar.
He had a habit of always listening, to the point where he would stand completely still, no phone in sight, no distractions, just present.
I thought that kind of attention meant safety.
I didn’t understand yet that attention isn’t the same thing as trustworthiness.
It had been drilled into my head that I couldn’t trust anyone, not even our elderly neighbor that brought over cookies every sunday.
But I swore Daniel was different, and so I told him pieces at first. Just like the way you do when you’re testing the water—small things, slightly strange odd things. I waited to see if they changed how he looked at me, and it didn’t.
So I told him more, and then a little more. By the time I’d made it clear about what I’d said, I’d convinced myself that we’d passed the point at which he would run.
God, was I freaking wrong.
I’ve replayed that Friday so many times I’ve worn the memory thin in places. The way he didn’t meet my eyes in the hallway at school or the way he answered my texts in single words when he’d always written paragraphs before.
I knew before my mother sat me down on my bed that evening. It was as if my stomach dropped before my brain caught up: sick, certain, and already grieving over something that was still technically happening.
Who did you tell?
She wasn’t angry, and I think that was the worst part. My mother was never angry when something needed to be handled; she just removed her emotions from sight and handled it. She would always get quiet and precise, looking at me like the problem already had a solution that she was calculating.
Three days.
It had been four years, the longest we’d ever stayed anywhere. Four years of making friends, attending the same school, and falling in love with a boy with a gap in his teeth—all of it vanished in three days because I needed someone to know me and I chose the wrong person.
I learned something in that car with my one bag and city disappearing behind me.
Something you carry alone and not because no one can handle it, but because the cost of finding out they can’t is too high.
I’ve kept that rule for seven years.
Seven years of pleasant and present and just close enough that nobody noticed the door was locked. Seven years of houses with nothing on the walls and a bag I could pack in under an hour and towns I always planned to leave even when I didn’t want to.
And then Zyran happened.
I’m not even sure when it did, like it was already in motion before I knew to pay attention to it.
A presence at the edges of my life that I felt before I could put a name to it.
It began with a prickle on the back of my neck in the cereal aisle, followed by the weight of eyes that I couldn’t find when I looked.
I’d spent enough of my life knowing what it felt like to be watched that I recognized it.
In some sick way I wanted it to be him, and now that I know it was, I’m not sure how to feel about it.
Or I do, and I hate that I liked it.
Because acknowledging that I liked it and acknowledging that it meant doing something about it and doing something about it meant opening a door I had kept very deliberately shut for years.
And I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
Zyran, he’s different; he’s not what people think danger looks like. That’s the thing about danger—I’ve looked it in its eye before, and that’s not Zyran.
I’ve spent so long waiting for people to decide the opposite.
Waiting for the moment they get close enough to see it all—the mental health issues, my past, the blood I know how to clean off carpet, the girl who got her parents killed because she needed someone to know her—and watching their faces change because of it.
Zyran doesn’t look at me like that.
He looks at me like I’m something he’s been waiting for, like every difficult, complicated, sharp-edged piece of me is something he’s already examined and found that he likes.
And the worst part, the most terrifying, inconvenient, completely unwelcome part—I believe him.
Not because I’m naive; I stopped being naive at sixteen in the back of my parents’ car watching my whole life disappear through the rear window.
I believe Zyran because I’ve spent my entire life reading people the way my parents taught me to—quickly, without sentiment, and every single thing about this man reads true.
He’s dangerous, I know that.
But he’s not dangerous to me.
Itwirl the pasta around my fork and shove a bite into my mouth.
The moment the flavor hits my mouth, a small groan slips through.
One might have been embarrassed, but honestly at this point I couldn't care less. Between something that I could just pop into the microwave or throw into a pot of water, aka ramen noodles, I haven’t had a cooked meal since my parents were alive.
“This is really good,” I sloppily say and then swallow.
He smiles, already watching me. “Yeah?”
I frown, shoving another bite into my mouth. “Don’t sound surprised.”
“I’m not surprised,” he mumbles, shrugging. “Just didn’t know if you’d actually eat it.”
I pause chewing, my head falling to the side. “Why wouldn’t I eat it?”
Zyran raises a brow. “Well, you’ve spent the better part of the afternoon in your room.”
“I was resting.”
“You were hiding.”
I roll my eyes, swallow my food, and point my fork at him. “I was resting,” I repeat, trying to sound convincing even though there’s a smile playing on my lips. Which ruins the whole thing entirely.
“Can I ask you a question?” I blurt out.
Zyran frowns quickly, “sure.”
“What do you do when you’re not home, like on a normal day, I guess when you’re not stalking me? What does that look like?”
Something shifts in his expression, almost like he’s surprised by my question. “That’s a loaded question.”
“You said open book.”
“You’re right,” he nods, sets his fork down, and leans forward, giving me his full attention. “Lately I haven’t done much. Sometimes I run, work out, but honestly I don’t do much anymore.”
“Oh man, couldn’t be me,” I laugh.
“Why do you say that?”
I blow out a breath and reach for my water, taking a drink. “I’m terrible at doing nothing; doing nothing makes me crazy. I always have to be doing something, thinking something, or planning something, or I start—” I stop.
“Start what?”
“Staying busy is just easier.”
Zyran looks at me for a moment across the table, something shifting quietly behind his eyes, and then he sets his fork down again, leaning back in his chair.
“Alright, that’s enough of this.”
I blink, my brows pulling together. “Enough?”
“Yeah, today's been—” he pauses, tilting his head slightly. “A lot.”
Out of everything I could have guessed he was going to say, it definitely wasn’t that, and I can’t help the breath that slips through, almost like a laugh. “That’s one word for it.”
“Great, so we’re done with the heaviness for tonight.”
“We are?” I know I shouldn’t be asking that; Zyran doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean.
“We are,” he says, picking up his fork. “So, tell me something stupid.”
I stare at him like he’s grown a second head. “Something stupid?”
“Something that has nothing to do with anything we talked about today, something completely useless.”
I open my mouth and then close it. The fact that he’s asking for this, something but also nothing, does a little tick to my heart that I’m choosing to ignore right now.
“I once convinced myself for an entire week that I had a rare blood disorder. I wasn't feeling well, really bad actually, and based entirely on a WebMD spiral at two in the morning, I was dying.”
His fork pauses midway to his bite. “Do you?”
I ignore his question and continue on. “I made a doctor’s appointment and everything.”
“And?”
“Oh, iron deficiency.” I smirk and then point my fork at him when his jaw drops just a bit. “Don’t. I already beat myself up for it.”
Zyran smiles, and it’s not one where he’s pretending or thinking about anything other than what I just told him—and it’s possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve seen since he walked through my door.
“Your turn,” I say quickly before I can do anything stupid—because I’m seconds away from begging this man to kiss me, and possibly so much more.
Zyran takes a few seconds to think about my question before he bites his bottom lip. And then he says, “I can’t parallel park.”
I stare at him, words vanishing from my head.
“Yeah, don’t worry, I know,” he laughs, holding up his hands.
“You have—I’ve seen you, you’re incredibly precise about everything, you notice things other people don’t even—” I gesture at him generally. “And, you can’t what? Parallel park.”
“Yup.”
I frown. “How?”
“I don’t know, I just can’t. Never could. I tried and practiced a shit ton when I was learning to drive. I just couldn’t, so I go around the block until a pull-in spot opens up.”
I press my lips together; it takes everything in me not to bust out laughing.
“You can’t do that; you can’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing,” I say, shaking my head.
“You’re about to.”
“I’m absolutely not—” and then, like a freaking liar that I am, a laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
It’s real and completely at his expense, and while he sits there at my small table, he lets me.
He watches me with something warm in his expression that makes the laughing worse somehow, it makes me want the things I told myself I wasn’t going to want tonight.
I press the back of my hand against my mouth, trying to stop the laughter.
“Feel better?” He grunts but has a smile plastered to his face.
“Marginally,” I manage to say.
“Good. Your turn,” he smirks, grabbing his fork once more.
I think about it for a second when I remember one of the most embarrassing moments. “Okay, you cannot laugh.”
He raises a brow.
“I mean it, you have to promise me.”
“Oh, I’m not promising anything,” he smirks.
“Zyran.”
“Tell me.”
I take a breath. “I once walked into the wrong car at the grocery store parking lot. Got all the way in, sat down, put my bag in my lap, and then looked up and there was a woman in the passenger seat staring at me.”
His jaw drops just an inch.
“She hadn’t said anything, just kept staring at me. And well, I just stared back for probably three full seconds before my brain caught up with what was happening.”
A small ‘ha’ slips through his mouth before he says, “What did you do?”
“I said ‘sorry, have a nice day’, got out, and walked away like I had somewhere very important to be.” I shake my head. “I found my actual car two spaces over, same color, but everything else was different.”
The sound that leaves him is low, and it takes me a second to realize he’s trying to hold back his laughter. I raise a brow, my lips thinning, though I’m not mad, not even close.
“Alright, your turn,” I say, pointing at him. “And it has to be at least as embarrassing as that.”
He thinks about it for a long moment, and I can see the moment a story comes forward.
“I screamed at a spider,” he says, sighing.
I stop, and my tongue darts out, licking my bottom lip. “I’m sorry?”
“A spider,” he says again, like repeating it makes it better.
“You—” I gesture towards him, eyes dropping from his head down to the table and then back up. “You screamed.”
Zyran leans forward on his elbows, pointing a finger at me. “It was large.”
“How large?” I smirk.
“Large enough.”
“Zyran.”
“It came out of nowhere,” he says with complete seriousness, which makes it infinitely worse. “I was reaching for something under the sink, and it was just… there. We made eye contact.”
“You made eye contact with a spider?”
“For a significant amount of time.”
My head falls to the side, and I blink at him, waiting for him to say ‘gotcha’, or that he’s joking. But the longer I sit there, staring at him, he’s serious.
“So you screamed?”
“I screamed.”
My face falls in my hands; the sound that comes out of me isn’t even a laugh exactly—it’s something bigger than that, something that basically takes over my entire body. I can feel him watching me across the table, not even trying to defend himself anymore, just letting me lose it.
“Did…did anyone hear you?” I manage to ask.
He pauses, eyes flickering to his food, and it’s just long enough to be damning. “Raiden still brings it up.”
I press both hands over my face and stay like that for a second, breathing and trying to collect myself. But the image of it won’t leave—this man, this steady and immoveable man, who takes up every room he walks into, screaming at a spider under a sink.
“Guess I know who not to call when there’s a spider in my shower,” I finally say, dropping my hands and looking at him.
His expression is as composed as ever except for the very edges of it, where something warm and almost sheepish sits.
But I can see the strain in his eyes, almost like darkness, but it’s gone before I can figure it out.
Grabbing both our empty dishes, I set them on the counter near the sink and turned towards him.
Zyran scoots back from the table and turns to look at me. “Alright, how about you get comfy, and I’ll clean up the kitchen and then we’ll play.”
My brows pull together. “Why?”
“Because a girl deserves better than doing dishes after she’s had a rough day.”
I open my mouth and then close it again, because how does one argue that? And it’s not the words themselves, but the way he says it.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
“I know you are.” He gets out of the chair and comes towards me. “And I’m also perfectly capable of doing it, so go get comfy.”
I stand there for another second, watching him move into my kitchen like he belongs there. It makes me think about my entire life, nobody doing my dishes, nobody telling me to get rest, years of handling everything myself because there was nobody else to handle it with.
And then I smile up at him and push off the counter, ready to get my plan together.