16. Lilah
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
lilah
Three Weeks Later
"Those are mine."
Kai doesn't even look up from his plate. He cuts into his eggs and drags a piece through the yolk like he hasn't heard me.
I point my fork at the last two pieces of bacon sitting beside them. "I cooked those."
"You cooked all of it."
"Exactly."
"That's not how breakfast works."
"It is in my apartment."
His fork stops halfway to his mouth.
I realize my mistake immediately. Kai slowly lowers it back to his plate and looks around the kitchen. I follow his gaze even though I already know what he's looking at.
His coffee mug is beside the sink because apparently putting it in the dishwasher would have required too much effort last night.
His hoodie is hanging over the back of the chair beside him, there are two pairs of his boots by my front door, and when I opened the bathroom cabinet this morning, his deodorant was sitting beside mine.
There's a phone charger plugged into the socket beside my bed that definitely isn't mine. Three of his T-shirts went into my washing machine yesterday. And I'm pretty sure there are more of his clothes in my bedroom right now than there are across the hall.
He hasn't spent a single night in his own apartment since the farmhouse, he never asked if he could stay, and I’ve not asked him to leave. At some point, he just stopped going home.
Except, technically, he hasn't gone anywhere because his apartment is twenty feet away.
Still, every day something else new appears in mine.
Yesterday it was his favorite coffee. The day before, a pair of jeans ended up folded in the bottom of my wardrobe, this morning I found his razor beside the sink.
Kai's gaze eventually comes back to me. "Your apartment?"
I narrow my eyes. "Don't."
His eyebrow lifts. "Didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to."
"I was just looking around."
"Smugly."
"Didn't know you could look around smugly."
"You manage it."
His mouth pulls into a grin as he picks up one of the pieces of bacon.
I hold out my hand but he eats it. "Kai."
"What?"
"That was mine."
"You took too long."
I reach across the table for the other one, but he gets there first and lifts it out of reach. "Give it to me."
"Ask nicely."
I stare at him. "Give me the fucking bacon."
"Close enough."
He holds it out, and I take it from his fingers before he changes his mind. My shoulder pulls when I sit back, and I wince before I can hide it. Kai catches it immediately. His grin disappears. "Shoulder?"
"It's fine."
"Lilah."
"It's stiff."
"You do the exercises?"
I reach for my coffee with my other hand. "Some of them."
"How many?"
"Why does it matter?"
"How many?"
I take a very deliberate sip of coffee and his eyes narrow. "Four."
"There are six."
"Four is more than half."
"That's not how physio works."
"Are you a physiotherapist now?"
"No, but I was sitting beside you when she told you to do all six."
Of course he was. He sat through the entire appointment with his hand wrapped around mine, asked more questions than I did, and then made the doctor repeat what signs he needed to watch for when we got home.
He's been vigilant and attentive ever since; he’s never far away, always watching without making it obvious that he's watching. I know he's waiting for something to go wrong, honestly, so am I sometimes.
"Fine," I say. "I'll do them after breakfast."
"All six."
"I've already done four."
"Then you've only got two left."
I glare at him and he goes back to his eggs. "Bossy bastard."
"Eat your bacon."
I do, mostly because he's right and I hate when he's right.
The bruising on my face is almost gone now. There's still a faint yellow shadow beneath my left eye and my wrists are tender if I catch them the wrong way, but my shoulder is taking the longest to heal.
The rest isn't as easy to measure. Some nights I sleep straight through, but some nights, I wake up with Lucy's name in my throat and my heart racing before I even know where I am.
Kai never asks me to explain. The night before last, he woke the second I did, pulled me against him and stayed awake until I fell asleep again.
This morning, I checked the front door twice before I came into the kitchen and he checked it once after me. Neither of us said anything.
I look across the table at him. His hair is still damp from the shower and there's more stubble along his jaw than usual.
He's wearing an old gray T-shirt that stretches across his shoulders, and there's a tiny smear of egg yolk at the corner of his mouth that he clearly hasn't noticed. For some reason, that makes me smile.
"You're staring." He doesn't look up when he says it, just scoops more egg onto his fork.
"Yeah."
That gets his attention. His eyes lift to mine and one eyebrow rises slowly, while the corner of his mouth starts to pull upward. I know that look. I've just handed him something he's going to be insufferable about.
"I like looking at you," I tell him anyway.
His lips fully curve into a smile. Smug bastard.
"Yeah?"
I immediately regret everything. "Don't make it weird."
He leans back in his chair, fork still in his hand, and gives me a slow once-over that makes heat creep into my face. "I'm not making it weird."
"Your face is making it weird."
"My face?"
"That."
"What?"
I circle my finger at him. "Whatever that smug shit is you're doing."
His grin breaks fully and he laughs, dropping his gaze back to his plate.
I love that laugh. I love him. And apparently, I love having his shit all over my apartment too, because when I look at the hoodie hanging over my chair, I don't want him to take it home. I want him to bring the rest.
I’ve changed since the day Evan took me again. Coming back to the apartment was harder than I expected.
Rogue finds a listening device behind the smoke detector in the hallway in under an hour, then spends another two going through the rest of the apartment finding another three throughout the apartment.
Sniper comes over when he's finished and does the whole thing again, checking every room, every vent, every smoke detector, and anything else Marcus could have gotten into.
Then Kai does his own sweep.
Rogue finds this hilarious. "You know we've already checked it, right?"
Kai opens the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. "I'm checking it again."
"For what?"
"Anything you missed."
Rogue looks at me. "It's cute that he thinks he knows what he's looking for."
"Fuck off."
He doesn't find anything. He still checks again before we go to bed, I don't make fun of him for it because I understand. I'm not much better. I make it as far as the kitchen before I stop and Kai stops beside me.
I look around at the table where we played cards, the counter where we made hot chocolate, the sofa where we've spent hours talking about everything and nothing. Even the hallway feels different now that I know something has been sitting above our heads listening to us.
Evan heard Kai make me laugh, he heard us argue over cards and food, heard the things I told Kai because I thought nobody else was listening, he heard Kai give me his name, and he heard us that morning—that one is harder to think about.
I stand there for so long my shoulder starts aching from the bag I'm carrying, but I can't make myself put it down. Kai takes it from me eventually. He doesn't tell me the apartment is safe now or remind me Evan is dead. He doesn't tell me none of it matters anymore because the device is gone.
He puts my bag down and stays beside me. Eventually, I walk to the table and sit.
The next morning, I made coffee in my kitchen and then we played cards at the table. Two nights later, I made hot chocolate. For the first few days, I looked up every time I walked beneath the smoke detector, even though it's brand new and I watched Kai take it out of the box.
Then one day, I didn't. I'm not sure when that happened; I just know I don't look up anymore.
Six days after the farmhouse, I’m sitting on the edge of my bed when my phone rings.
The number is from Connecticut.
I know before I answer that it has something to do with Lucy.
"Hello?"
"Ms. Allen?"
"Yes."
The detective introduces herself and asks if it's a good time to talk. I almost laugh. There will never be a good time to have this conversation.
"Yeah. Go ahead."
She's careful with her words as she explains that Marcus' cooperation, along with everything recovered from the farmhouse and the storage unit, and my original testimony, gives them enough to formally name Evan as the person responsible for Lucy's murder.
I sit there with the phone pressed to my ear and listen.
When she finishes, I don't know what I'm supposed to say.
"Okay."
"I'm very sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
She tells me they'll send everything through once the paperwork is complete, and after another minute or two, the call ends.
I lower the phone to my lap.
Kai is in the living room. I can hear the television, while I sit here trying to understand why hearing something I've known for three years hurts this fucking much.
Lucy was murdered by Evan Calloway.
It's official now. Written down somewhere with his name attached to hers and the truth beside it.
No more missing woman. No more questions about what happened to her or whether she simply disappeared.
I know what happened.
I watched it happen.
But now everyone else knows too.
My phone slips from my hand onto the bed and the first sob comes before I can stop it.
Kai appears in the doorway a few seconds later.
He doesn't ask what's wrong.
He takes one look at me, crosses the room, and sits beside me.
I lean into him and cry until my head hurts.
He stays where he is with one arm around me, his thumb moving slowly against my side.
Eventually, when there isn't much left in me, I wipe my face against his T-shirt.
"She would've hated being called a victim."
Kai looks down at me. "Yeah?"
"Absolutely hated it."
"What would she have preferred?"
I think about that.
"Inconvenient."
His eyebrow lifts.
"Lucy would've wanted to be remembered as inconvenient."
"That's specific."