Chapter 29
Jiya
My keys clatter into the ceramic dish by the door. I kick my shoes off, and they tumble across the entryway floor. My feet, free after ten hours trapped in black boots behind a bar, sink into the plush fibers of the rug. I wiggle my toes, a small, private luxury.
“Home sweet murder den,” I mutter to the empty apartment.
A week. A whole goddamn week of this. Go to work. Come home. Watch TV. Pretend. Pretend I’m not a walking ghost, haunting the edges of my life.
The apartment, once my sanctuary, now just seems…empty. It smells like me, but it’s wrong. It should smell like him.
Tonight’s shift was a special kind of hell, a blur of fake smiles and shouted drink orders.
My shoulders ache, but it’s a dull, distant pain compared to the hollow ache in my chest. I bypass the water and pour a heavy measure of bourbon.
The first sip is a clean, welcome fire, but it doesn’t touch the cold spot inside me.
I sink onto the couch, and the silence presses in. This is what Thorne ordered. Normalcy. A life scrubbed clean of Calloway Frost and murders. And it is unbearable.
My mind, a traitor, escapes the crushing boredom by replaying the highlights.
The real moments. Our date. And then…the creak of the leather straps of the swing.
The absolute, terrifying surrender of letting him bind me, of giving him complete and total control.
The trust. My trust. Something I’ve never given to anyone.
This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to kill him, not…this. Not to miss him so much that it feels like a physical wound.
I drain the glass and set it on the coaster with a sharp clink. Standing, I stretch my arms toward the ceiling, my spine cracking in a series of satisfying pops. I need to wash this night off me.
In the bathroom, I stare at my reflection. Pink-streaked hair, smudged mascara, the faint lines of fatigue around my eyes. I look the same. I’m the same woman who left for work this afternoon. But the woman staring back is a stranger, her eyes wide with a truth she can no longer outrun.
I like him.
There’s no denying it anymore. I like Calloway Frost. The Gallery Killer. The man I’ve tried to murder multiple times.
No, that’s a lie.
It’s not just that I like him. Liking him was a manageable complication, a weakness I could exploit or suppress. This is something else. Something ruinous.
“You’re in love with him,” I whisper, and the words hang in the air, obscene and terrifying. I grip the edge of the sink, my knuckles white, as if I could hold the feelings back.
“You’re in love with Calloway Frost.”
My chest constricts. It’s not attraction. It’s not fascination. It’s not the twisted kinship of two predators. It’s love. The real, stupid, inconvenient, world-destroying kind.
I splash cold water on my face, hoping it might wash away this inconvenient revelation. It doesn’t. The droplets cling to my eyelashes, run down my cheeks like tears I’m too stubborn to shed.
“He kills people,” I reason with my reflection.
So do you.
“He’s broken.”
Look in the mirror.
“He’s a monster.”
And what does that make you?
I dry my face with a towel, but the truth remains, etched into my skin like an invisible tattoo. I press my forehead against the cool mirror.
I love the whole, catastrophic masterpiece. The artist whose hands create beauty, and the killer who bowled a spare with a human head. The man who told me his deepest secret in a moonlit park. The one I trusted enough to put me in that swing, who held all my power in his hands and was…careful.
A wet, choked sound escapes my throat. It might be a laugh, or a sob.
I close my eyes, remembering how gentle his hands were when he helped me shower after the drugging. How fierce he looked standing over Marcel with that letter opener. How vulnerable when he told me about his past.
I’ve spent years believing I was incapable of this. That whatever part of me might have loved died with my roommate. That I was nothing but hollow spaces filled with vengeance.
A laugh bubbles up, half-hysterical. “I’m so fucking hopelessly in love.” I shake my head at my reflection. “With a man I tried to kill three times.”
I need sleep. That’s what normal people tell themselves, isn’t it? Sleep will fix it.
I push open my bedroom door and freeze. The air is wrong. Thick. Occupied. And beneath the lingering scent of my bourbon, a ghost of something else. Dark sandalwood.
My hand moves on instinct, sliding under the bedside table, my fingers closing around the familiar, cool hilt of the knife I keep strapped there.
A shadow detaches itself from the deeper shadows by the window.
My breath hitches, a scream building in my throat, but before it can find my voice, a hand clamps over my mouth. An arm like a steel band wraps around my waist, yanking me back against a solid, unyielding body.
I don’t fight. I don’t struggle. I pivot on my heel in a fluid motion and press the tip of my knife against the intruder’s crotch.
“It’s me,” a voice murmurs into my ear, a low, familiar rumble. He removes his hand from my mouth. “Please don’t cut my dick off. I prefer it attached.”
I turn in his arms, but the knife stays where it is, the point a dimple in the fabric of his jeans. Even in the near-total darkness, his eyes seem to gather what little light there is, pale and intense.
“You can move the knife now, Jiya,” Calloway says, his voice calm for a man in his position.
“I don’t think so.” My voice is a low, dangerous tremor. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Calloway takes a step forward, causing the knife to press more firmly against his cock. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even look down. Instead, his eyes remain locked on mine, challenging me.
“Is it true?” he asks. “What you said in there. About loving me?”
The knife trembles in my hand. My mouth goes dry. The moment stretches between us like pulled taffy, sweet and painful.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” I manage, my voice barely above a whisper. “That was private.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Heat crawls up my neck, spreads across my cheeks.
“Fuck you,” I breathe, the only defense I have left.
“Fine,” he says, and his face transforms in the gloom, the hard lines softening. “Then I’ll go first.”
He takes a step closer, forcing the tip of the blade deeper against him.
“I’ve killed seventeen men, Jiya. I’ve watched the light fade from their eyes.
I’ve composed their bodies into art. I’ve washed their blood from under my fingernails and gone to bed.
” He lets out a short, sharp breath. “But nothing—nothing—in my entire life has terrified me as much as the thought of losing you. I couldn’t stay away. I’m here because I had to see you.”
My breath catches.
“I love you, Jiya Kline,” he says, the words tumbling out like he can’t contain them anymore. “I love you so much it physically hurts. Like someone’s replaced my heart with a fucking blender set to puree.”
A startled laugh escapes me.
“I love that you’ve tried to kill me three times,” he continues, eyes wild. “I love that you failed spectacularly each time. I love that you stabbed Lazlo to protect us. I love how you handle a bone saw. I love the way you mix poisons like other people mix cocktails.”
He cups my face in his hands, his thumbs brushing against my cheekbones.
“I want to plan murders with you over breakfast, Jiya. I want to argue about the best lye-to-water ratio and then fuck you on the kitchen table. I want to photograph you, covered in someone else’s blood, and hang the portrait on my wall.”
His voice drops, becoming a raw, possessive growl. “I love you with the same obsessive, meticulous detail that I bring to a kill. I have mapped you. I know the scar behind your left ear and the freckle on your right hip. I know the sound you make in the back of your throat right before you come.”
A wild, dangerous joy sparks to life in my chest, a feeling so fierce it threatens to consume me.
“I want to make you coffee every morning and help you clean blood spatter every night. I want to find the most effective poisons and make love in places we definitely shouldn’t. I want everything with you, Jiya. The beautiful and the brutal. The tender and the terrible.”
His eyes darken as he leans in closer. The knife between us doesn’t seem to concern him at all.
“What do you say, Jiya?”
He leans in, his forehead pressing against mine, his breath warm against my lips. The knife is still pinned between us, a cold, hard fact. I feel him, thick and hard, swelling against the blade.
“The tip of that knife is touching my cock, Jiya,” he whispers, his voice a dark, ragged promise. “What happens next is up to you.”