14. Maren
Maren
T he blood never comes off completely, no matter how hard I scrub.
Not real blood but the metaphorical kind that seeps into your skin cells and changes you from the inside out.
I stare at my hands under the bathroom light, turning them over to examine my palms. Clean. Pink. Ordinary. But I know better.
It's been a month since Rhodes showed up at my door that first night, after he fucking lost it on the ice. A month of him taking up space on my couch, drinking my beer, breathing my air. A month of his eyes tracking me when he thinks I'm not looking.
I haven't killed anyone in that time. That's…unusual. Not that I haven’t killed anyone, but I haven’t thought about it until now. Not a single stray thought of feeling a knife slipping into flesh and nicking bone.
The realization hits me as I'm standing in my kitchen at almost ten on a Thursday night, waiting for my store-bought butter chicken to finish its sad rotation. The hockey team played at home tonight. Won four-two. Rhodes scored twice. He'll be here soon, like he is after every home game.
I should be annoyed by the interruption to my routine. I should be climbing the walls from the absence of that familiar itch under my skin—the one that only blood can scratch. But I'm not.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I whisper to the empty apartment.
Normal people don't want to kill other people. Normal people don't get high off watching the light fade from someone's eyes.
But I've never been normal, and I'm not sure I want to start now.
The microwave beeps. I ignore it, wandering to the window instead. The parking lot below is half-empty, streetlights casting orange pools on wet asphalt. It rained earlier. The kind of cold December rain that makes everything smell like decay.
My fingertips trace invisible patterns on the windowpane. I should be out there, prowling the edges of campus, looking for someone walking alone. Someone who won't be missed right away. The night is perfect for it—dark enough to hide what needs hiding, wet enough to wash away what needs washing.
Instead, I'm here. Waiting. For him.
My phone buzzes on the counter. I don't need to look to know it's Riggs.
Showering now. Be there in 20. Want me to grab food on the way?
I walk back to the microwave and pull out the steaming plastic tray, the artificial butter-yellow sauce already congealing at the edges.
No. Just pulled some gourmet shit out of the microwave.
I don't wait for his response before tossing the phone back onto the counter. It slides across the laminate, stopping just short of the edge. Like everything in my life lately—right on the precipice of disaster, but somehow not quite falling.
He doesn't even ask if it's okay anymore.
The first few times after that initial night, he'd text with a hesitant tone I could practically feel through the screen.
You around tonight? or Mind if I stop by?
Like he was afraid I'd suddenly realize what I was letting into my space and slam the door shut.
Now he just shows up. Like it's a given. Like he belongs here.
The weirdest part? I don't hate it.
I dump the food onto a chipped blue plate that doesn't match anything else I own. The rice is somehow both undercooked and mushy. Culinary fucking masterpiece. I eat standing up at the counter, shoveling food into my mouth without tasting it, eyes fixed on nothing.
Rhodes always comments on my “sad single-person meals,” as he calls them. Last week he actually brought me homemade lasagna, still warm in a glass dish, like he's some kind of Italian grandmother.
“It's not poisoned,” he'd said when I stared at it suspiciously. “My mom taught me how to make it. Thought you might appreciate something that didn't come from a box or a drive-thru for once.”
I'd eaten it. All of it. And then spent twenty minutes interrogating him about the recipe while he laughed at my sudden interest in cooking.
The memory makes my mouth twitch, almost a smile. I catch myself and force my face back to neutral, even though there's no one here to see.
Riggs is the closest thing I have to a friend.
Which is so pathetic it almost makes me laugh.
My only friend is a guy who watched me lick his blood off my fingers and didn't run screaming.
A guy who looks at me like he knows exactly what kind of monster lurks beneath my skin and wants to pet it, anyway.
I finish eating and rinse the plate, leaving it in the sink with the other dishes I'll get to eventually. Maybe.
The apartment is a mess, as usual. Books and papers scattered across every surface, empty Dr. Pepper cans creating an aluminum graveyard on the coffee table. My clothes from yesterday are still on the bathroom floor. I don't bother picking anything up.
There are signs of him everywhere now. A hoodie from last week draped over the back of a chair. A half-empty bottle of that fancy protein shake shit in my fridge.
I'm sprawled on the couch, one leg dangling over the armrest, flipping through channels without really seeing what's on.
My mind keeps circling back to that weird empty feeling where the itch for violence used to be.
Like a phantom limb. You know it's gone, but your brain keeps sending signals to something that isn't there anymore.
A single knock on the door, then the sound of the doorknob jingling. I don't look up as the door swings open. I don't need to. I know exactly who it is, down to the pattern of his breathing.
“Hey,” Riggs calls out, kicking the door shut behind him.
The smell hits me immediately—salt and grease and everything wonderful about late-night fast food. My stomach growls, betraying me even though I just ate that sad excuse for butter chicken twenty minutes ago.
Riggs stands before me, his hair still darker and damp from his post-game shower, that stupid grin spreading across his face. He's holding up a paper bag that's already developing translucent spots where the grease is seeping through.
“I got you fries, and a Dr. Pepper anyway, you damn nightmare,” he says, tossing the bag onto my lap.
Something twinges in my gut, and it's not hunger. First the homemade lasagna, and now this—food I didn't ask for but secretly wanted. Like he's reading my fucking mind or something.
I open the bag, trying to look bored even as saliva floods my mouth. “I already ate,” I say, shoving a fry between my lips and immediately reaching for another.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Riggs says, eyeing the dirty plate in the sink as he walks to the refrigerator. “Let me guess; it tasted depressing?”
“Whatever,” I mumble through a mouthful of fries.
He snorts, grabbing himself a beer before dropping onto the couch beside me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body. He always runs hot, like he's got a furnace inside him instead of organs.
“That game was brutal,” Riggs says, stretching his long legs out and propping his feet on my coffee table. There's a bruise forming on his forearm, a deep purple bloom against his tan skin.
I crack open the soda, the carbonation hissing into the air between us. “I saw you got two goals,” I say, trying to sound casual, like I hadn't been obsessively checking the score updates throughout the night.
His eyebrows shoot up. “I knew you liked watching me.”
“Don't flatter yourself. I check the scores sometimes. Purely for research purposes.” I take a long sip of Dr. Pepper, the sweetness coating my tongue, the carbonation a small explosion of bubbles. “Gotta have material to talk shit about your game.”
Riggs stares at me for a beat too long, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. He's reading between my lines again, peeling back layers I didn't invite him to touch.
“Research purposes,” he repeats, popping the cap off his beer with the edge of my coffee table. I should be annoyed at the tiny nick it leaves in the wood, but I'm not. “Right. Like how you just happened to text me 'don't fuck up the power play' right before the second period?”
I shrug, focusing intently on selecting the perfect french fry from the cardboard container. “Coincidence.”
“And the 'nice goal, asshole' text thirty seconds after I scored?”
“ESPN app notifications.”
“Bullshit,” he laughs, the sound filling up the small space of my apartment like it belongs there. “You were watching. Admit it, Marino. You're becoming a hockey fan.”
I roll my eyes so hard I'm surprised they don't get stuck looking at my brain. “I'm becoming a fan of watching grown men beat the shit out of each other on ice. There's a difference.”
“That's the gateway drug,” Riggs says, reaching over to snag a fry from my container. His fingers brush mine, calloused and warm. “First it's the fights, then you're suddenly caring about penalty kills and zone entries.”
I pull the fries away, clutching them to my chest like they're precious cargo. “Get your own food, Rhodes. I thought there was more in that bag.”
He leans closer, and I catch a whiff of his soap—something clean and vaguely woodsy that shouldn't work with the lingering scent of arena sweat but somehow does.
“There is,” he says, voice dropping lower. “But yours always taste better.”
I hand him the grease-stained bag, ignoring the flutter in my stomach that has nothing to do with hunger. “Take your fucking chicken sandwich before I change my mind.”
He digs into the bag, pulling out a wrapped bundle that's almost comically small in his hands. The way his face lights up at the sight of food is almost childlike.
The smell of meat and cheese fills the apartment, making my stomach growl again despite myself.
“Want a bite?” he asks, catching my stare.
“I'm fine with my fries,” I say, clutching the red cardboard container like it's a shield.
He takes an enormous bite, a drop of sauce catching at the corner of his mouth. I watch as he licks it away, then quickly avert my eyes when he catches me looking.
“You're turning into one of those girls who wears a jersey to bed,” he teases, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
The mental image of me in nothing but Riggs' oversized jersey hits us both at the same time. His chewing slows. My heartbeat doesn't.
“In your dreams,” I mutter, but it comes out weaker than I intended.
Riggs recovers first, clearing his throat. “So what were you doing while deliberately not watching my game?”
I gesture vaguely around the disaster zone of my apartment. “Living my best life, obviously.”
We lapse into silence after that, nothing but the drone of the TV filling the space between us.
Some crime show rerun with actors who are too pretty to be real detectives, their guns never getting jammed, their vests never smelling like stale sweat.
I could tell them a thing or two about what real blood looks like under different lighting conditions.
How it dries brown, not red. How it flakes under your fingernails for days.
Riggs polishes off his sandwich in about four bites, like he's afraid someone might take it from him. Hockey players and their metabolisms. He crumples the wrapper and tosses it into the bag with surprising accuracy for someone who's probably running on fumes after playing a full game.
“Showoff,” I mutter, and he grins, all teeth and boyish charm.
“You love it,” he says, wiping his hands on his sweatpants like the animal he is.
I don't dignify that with a response, just stretch my legs out along the couch until my feet are practically in his lap. It's a small couch, I tell myself. Where else am I supposed to put them?
Without comment—without even breaking his focus on whatever bullshit is happening on the TV—Riggs lifts my feet and places them firmly on his thighs. His hands wrap around my left ankle, thumb pressing into the arch in a way that makes my breath catch.
I should pull away. Should make some cutting remark about personal space or how I'm not a pet that needs petting. But then his thumb digs into a knot I didn't even know was there, and holy fuck, the sensation shoots straight up my leg like an electric current.
Riggs doesn't look at me, just keeps his eyes on the TV. “Your ankles were twitching. You always bounce your feet when you're tense.”
I hadn't realized he'd noticed that about me. I hadn't even realized I was doing it at all.
“I'm not tense,” I lie, even as he finds another pressure point that makes me want to melt into a puddle of goo.
“Sure you're not,” he says, his voice soft, almost gentle. His thumbs trace slow, deliberate circles around my ankle bones, dipping occasionally to press into the arch of my foot.
I pretend to watch it, but all my senses are focused on the points where Riggs' skin meets mine. The calluses on his palms. The surprising gentleness of his touch. The circles he's drawing, wider now, moving up to my calf muscle.
I sink deeper into the couch cushions, letting my body go slack under his touch.
His hands are so large they wrap almost completely around my calf, thumbs pressing into muscle while his fingers curl against the back of my leg.
The contrast of his skin against mine—his tanned and marked with tiny scars from hockey, mine pale and smooth—is weirdly fascinating.
Ten minutes later, the circles stop. The pressure of his thumbs against my skin fades, replaced by the dead weight of his hands just resting on my legs. I glance over, ready with some smartass comment about his stamina, and that's when I see it.
Riggs Rhodes, hockey star and self-appointed disruptor of my solitude, is completely fucking passed out.
His head has tipped back against the couch, exposing the tanned column of his throat.
His mouth is slightly open, lips parted just enough that I can hear the soft, rhythmic sound of his breathing.
Not quite a snore, but close. His chest rises and falls in that deep, unguarded way that only happens when someone is truly out.
I should wake him up and tell him to go home.
His face is different in sleep. Younger, somehow.
The perpetual tension in his jaw is gone, that cocky half-smile wiped clean.
There's a vulnerability to him like this that I never see when he's awake.
The shadow of stubble is already forming along his jaw, even though I know he shaved this morning.
His eyelashes are ridiculous—long and dark against his cheekbones. The kind of eyelashes girls pay money to fake. One of his eyes is slightly swollen from whatever happened during the game.
He’s so fucking pretty, and he should not be here with me.