Chapter 13 #2
I finish dragging him into the bathroom, and he helpfully sits down hard on the toilet seat with a groan. “Your teeth weren’t like that,” I point out quietly. When I turn on the light, he squints, looking away from it. “And you weren’t sensitive to light back at Bluebone Ridge.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Because I was starving, Fern.” He rolls his eyes like it’s obvious, but I certainly don’t understand what he’s saying.
“You just told me you are starving.”
“I was exaggerating. I’m just a little hungry right now, compared to what I was when we met.” He shifts on the porcelain, grimacing, and tugs off his long-sleeved shirt without my prompting. “And when I’m starving, things are different.”
I’m barely listening. I can’t look away from his chest that’s marred by claw marks, with dried blood crusting his olive-toned skin. “Fuck,” I breathe, one hand raised like I’m going to touch. “What happened to you?”
Cairo grimaces and stands up, having to support himself on the counter to turn and examine himself in the mirror. “It’s not that bad,” he muses, twisting to look at his back as well as he can. But he winces and adds, “I would heal faster if I ate.”
“I can fix you something?” I ask, only to have him meet my gaze in the mirror and give me an unfriendly smile.
“You can’t fix me what I need. And you don’t want me to eat in front of you, I promise you that, Fern,” Cairo assures me in his drawl.
“God, you’re being annoying.” Turning away from him and his annoying charm and sharply gorgeous features, I move to the shower, where I twist the knobs using muscle memory for what I would want in terms of heat. When I turn around, I see Cairo looking at me with raised brows and a surprised look.
“You want me to shower? With you in here? Are you going to wash my back for me, Fern?” he asks tauntingly.
I give him a very enthusiastic, thorough roll of my eyes. “I liked you better when you were trying to be charming and a little mysterious. It’s like you’re just hoping I’m scared enough of you not to talk back.”
“Are you?”
“Clearly not.” But I watch as he touches the scratches on his chest, wincing every time. The ones on his back look gnarlier, and there’s blood and dirt caked on them, where his shirt was torn and he hit the ground. “I could help you, though. I could at least help clean you up.”
“I’ve been in worse shape.” His hissing reply is oddly flat, his voice changing in a way I can’t comprehend. He sees me looking at him in the mirror and sighs, baring his teeth that are sharp, but not fangs like the things at Bluebone Ridge.
“Were you one of the ones in the dorm? Who killed Sam or Esther?” I ask. My words are barely audible over the shower, and I can’t stop staring at him. The silence between us stretches until all I can hear is the shower and Moro’s panting from the bed in the other room.
Finally, Cairo turns to look at me, surveying my face.
He reaches out and reluctantly flips off the lights, immediately closing his eyes in relief as his shoulders fall.
“No,” he tells me, tilting his head back against the mirror over my sink.
The action bares his throat and all of his upper body to me, but I remind myself it is definitely not polite to stare.
Not that it stops me.
At all.
Without the blood and the painful wounds, he would be gorgeous.
Hell, even with them he’s terrifyingly feral and beautiful.
I know he isn’t human. That thought runs over and over in my head.
But for some reason, I can’t liken him to the monsters from the dorm or the one that slammed me into the asphalt and bit my shoulder.
“But that shouldn’t make you feel better.
” His eyes open, shining in the light from the small window.
They reflect like moons in his face, shiny white like Moro’s when she’s outside and looking at me with the deck light reflecting in her gaze.
“Because while I didn’t kill them, I’ve killed others.
I do what I have to in order to survive, Fern.
” He shows me his teeth when he says it, prompting me to bite my lip so I don’t make the fearful noise he’s looking for.
With just the bedroom light instead of the bathroom light, he looks different, somehow. Like he blends in with the shadows when he’s still, and every time his eyes move, I catch a sliver of light reflected from them. “Why do your eyes do that?”
He blinks in the low light, and touches his chest, running his fingers over the wounds there. “Same reason Moro’s do,” he murmurs. “I’m not a biologist, Fern. I can’t tell you the specifics. But I can see much better than you in the dark.”
I swear I see him run his tongue over his teeth as he turns and surveys himself in the mirror, but I can’t be sure.
“Pretty sure a biologist would have a field day with you. Don’t you need, like, a cryptozoologist to study whatever it is you are?
” I notice him turn to glance at me, and feel suddenly self-conscious. “What?”
“I just wasn’t expecting such a rational answer.” He glances at the running shower, then at me. “I really don’t need to shower, you know. The others in the woods and on the mountain don’t care if I’m dirty or bloody or anything else. And I’ll heal in a few days.”
Biting my lip, I look over his chest at the gouged claw marks. I have no idea how he’ll heal in a few days, but I say nothing. “Well, you’re in my house, and I’m offended by you,” I say. “So you’re showering.”
“Are you going to get my back for me?” I can practically hear him roll his eyes with the words, and I know he’s expecting me to back out. To walk away and leave him here with Moro as his watchdog to make sure he doesn’t drown.
And I almost do.
But I stop, because there’s something about him, beneath the arrogance and the monstrous teeth and eyes.
Cairo saved my life.
“Yeah. So get in.” I gesture at my shower, which is arguably my favorite part of the house and probably why I chose to go for it, apart from the seclusion and surrounding woods. “We’re losing hot water, and I’m not scrubbing off blood in the cold.”
He doesn’t move at my words, but the moment I silently celebrate my victory for catching him off guard, Cairo gives a sudden scoff. He reaches for his jeans and, still facing me, unbuttons them. Right in front of me. While I’m watching.
I turn away just as he tugs them down his thighs, staring dutifully at the corner of the bathroom as my embarrassment sends a rush of heat through my veins. “Yeah, okay, I was not expecting you to do that,” I admit, partially to myself.
“What did you think I was going to do? Get in the shower wearing denim?” I hear the glass door slide back, but he makes no noise as he steps inside. Suddenly, I’m not so sure about my bravado in offering to do his back for him.
“You can run away if you want,” Cairo says over the spray. I’m glad for the darkness, because it means I can look almost anywhere without seeing all of him.
Quickly, however, I decide I won’t run away. I may not be willing to waltz into the shower with the monster who saved my life, but that’s more about my personal hangups about strange, naked men in my bathroom rather than what he is.
Whatever he is. Since he doesn’t seem willing to give me a straight answer on that.
I sit down on the toilet lid, leaning back against the tank and looking at the ceiling. “Are you going to tell me what you are exactly?” I ask, and my voice echoes in the small space.
He hums noncommittally, still not giving me a real answer.
I hear something thicker than water hit my shower floor, and grimace.
God, I am not looking forward to cleaning that up in the morning, since it sure as hell won’t be tonight.
“Fine, okay, if you won’t tell me that, even though it seems like a weird secret to keep, I have another question. ”
“Of course you do.” Cairo sounds resigned, but not at all surprised. “You’re always so full of questions, especially when it would be better for you not to be.”
For a few moments I sit with that, running my fingers over the top of my counter just for the feel of it. While this is my favorite bathroom in the house, it’s also the one I was in when I drove a pair of scissors into my hand and got myself locked up in Bluebone Ridge in the first place.
“You know, I was here when it happened.” I don’t know why I say it.
I doubt he cares, and it’s a weird thing to bring up of my own free will, like it’s a conversation point instead of traumatic and dramatic oversharing.
“When I, you know…” Not knowing if he can see me, I still lift my other hand and make dramatic stabbing motions toward my hand on the counter, giving it a little creaky sound effect.
Cairo snorts, so I assume he’s able to appreciate the full effect. “How poetic. What’s your question, Fern?”
Part of me is sure he isn’t going to answer, but the other part of me, the buried optimist who’s normally smothered by doubt and overstimulation and whatever else I pile on myself, pokes her head up. “Back at Bluebone that night when…you know.”
“I do.”
I glare at his little quip, but if he notices, he doesn’t speak.
“When I was in my room… Actually, I have two questions. There was one of those things—creatures,” I amend.
After all, he’s the same thing, even if he doesn’t look quite like them right now.
“In my doorway. Coming inside. But it got distracted, and something else dragged it away.”
This time I notice he’s not moving, judging by the way the water spray sounds the same instead of like he’s rinsing off.
“Was that you?”
The sound of the spray changes, but he doesn’t answer for a few seconds. I’m not sure why it’s such a complicated answer, but finally, carefully, he says, “Yeah. It was me.”
“Thank you.”
“But then you fucked it up by leaving,” Cairo sighs, nearly cutting me off. “Hattie told you to stay, didn’t she? You’re lucky Moro?—”