Chapter 10 Chloe
CHLOE
There’s a man in my room. A tall, hulking man with huge shoulders and big, muscular arms. That’s all I can see of him in the dark. This enormous, dark silhouette towering over my bed.
A million thoughts slam through my head, one right after another.
I’m dreaming. I’m hallucinating. I hung a towel over the back of the closet door, and that’s what this is.
Someone broke in. I’m being robbed. I’m being killed?
Maybe it’s one of my relatives, angry that I got the house and they didn’t. Maybe it’s Oliver.
All this cascades through me in the span of a second. Then my vision solidifies, and it’s definitely not a towel or a pile of clothes or a relative.
It’s a huge, terrifying man.
I scream, the sound splitting the night in two.
Then I heave myself out of the bed, the sheets tangling up around my bare legs.
I’m in my fucking underwear, just a pair of plain black cotton undies and a flimsy little spaghetti strap top, and I can’t believe I’m even thinking something as asinine as I need to cover up because there’s a fucking man in my bedroom.
I shriek as I try to untangle my legs and wind up landing hard on my hands and knees on the floor. Then I scramble myself up to standing and bolt toward the door. “Help!” I scream. “Someone’s he—”
A hand slaps around my mouth, a warm, rough palm sealing my nose shut. For a second, I smell pine trees.
Then he drags me backward until I slam up against his broad, solid chest. His arm wraps around me, holding me in place. His breath is ragged in my ear.
“Please!” I shriek into his palm. He doesn’t let go. If anything, he squeezes me tighter. I squirm against him, flailing my arms around, but I can’t get any leverage. His strength is like a metal vise holding me in place.
He pulls me backward. At first, I think he’s taking me to the bed, and a sick, horrifying panic surges in my belly, and I try to fight him again, more desperately this time.
But then he keeps going, past the bed. There’s a whir of dizzying movement, and the next thing I know, he’s spun me around and shoved me against the wall, his hand still tight across my mouth to hold me in place.
The difference is, this time, I can see him. He stares down at me through a tangle of straggly, dirty-blond hair, his pale eyes gleaming with a coldness that reminds me of moonlight. His mouth is set in a firm line, and I breathe against his hand, squirming against the wall.
He lifts his other hand. His forearm is enormous, corded with muscle, and his fingers are thick and rough-looking.
And then he signs at me.
O, he spells out. L. I. V. E. R.
I go slack, my gaze crawling over his face. His long, unwashed hair. His bright eyes. I shake my head against his hand.
I was so fucking stupid. Oliver doesn’t have an imaginary friend. There really is a man living on the peninsula.
And what if he really is a Hunter?
The man makes a low grunting noise in the back of his throat and flicks his free hand at me. It takes me a second to realize he’s saying, “Don’t scream.”
I stare at him, my breath tight and constricting in my lungs. His eyes bore into mine. For a moment, I think they’re silver, but then he shifts his head a little, and I realize that they’re actually a very pale blue, the same color as ice.
Why the fuck am I noticing his eyes?
“Don’t scream,” he signs again, right before he takes his hand away from my mouth.
“Who are you?” I ask, my hands shaking so badly I’m not sure he’ll even understand me.
“I can hear you,” he says, forming the words slowly, his eyes boring into mine. “I just don’t speak. Like Oliver.”
Like Oliver. “You’re him,” I whisper, slumping against the wall.
The man doesn’t move, just keeps staring at me.
The intensity in his gaze sends an overwhelming heat to the center of my chest. It’s not exactly fear.
It’s more like he has me trapped without even touching me.
“The friend,” I say, signing the word as I speak.
The man’s eyes don’t leave my face. “He has a name for you,” I speak, trying to approximate it with my fingers. “I don’t exactly remember—”
He makes the sign, and my heart thuds around. “My name,” he signs. Then, he spells it out: T. H. E. O.
Blood pounds in my ears. I think of the gravestone, the name carved on the stone.
“Who are you?” I ask, speaking and signing at the same time. “Really?”
Theo tilts his head a little, still staring at me. His hands stay at his side.
“Why are you here?”
That gets a reaction. A small one. His expression flickers a little, and for the first time, his eyes dart away from me. That dread coils more tightly around in my belly.
“Is it about Oliver?” The question comes out strangled, and I don’t bother signing it.
My fear has my thoughts so clouded that I can’t even remember half the words anyway.
“Are you—you’ve been meeting with him, haven’t you?
Why? Do you live out there? On the peninsula?
” It feels like a dam’s been unlocked, and the questions spill out of me, one after another.
Theo just watches me through the tangle of his hair, not moving. “Is your name really Theo?”
That question, out of all of them, gets a response. He nods his head once, a sharp jerk of his chin.
“Theo Shorn?” I whisper, staring up at him.
He doesn’t move. Terror spikes through my blood.
“Are you going to hurt me?”
This gets a response, too. He shakes his head with that same sharp, jerky motion, his hair falling into his eyes. He reaches up, distractedly, and pushes it away, sweeping it back so I can see his face clearly for the first time.
I nearly throw up.
It is him. Theo Shorn. I recognize him from that grainy, black-and-white photograph I saw on my phone.
He has the same heavy-browed eyes, the same full mouth and high cheekbones.
His hair’s different, obviously. And he’s bigger and fully grown.
But I can see the impression of that boy in his features.
I plaster my spine to the wall, my heart hammering. Theo’s brow furrows, and he studies me with that same dark intensity.
Then he says, “Don’t be afraid.”
“You broke into my house!” I shriek, even though that’s not why I’m afraid. If he’s a Hunter, then he’s a killer. And I don’t want to die tonight.
“I wanted to see you,” he signs.
“Why?”
It comes out as a shout, and he jolts a little and lunges toward me, which makes my fear spike again.
But he just puts his hand on the wall beside my head and leans in close.
I smell pine needles again, and something steely, like petrichor.
His hair may be lank, but he doesn’t smell dirty.
He smells like the lake. Like something wild.
He leans closer to me. I don’t move. I’m afraid that if I move, he’ll kill me.
His lips part. His eyes gleam. His tongue flashes, a brief spark of pink.
Then his rough fingers brush my cheek, and my breath explodes out of me in a soft, pathetic little whimper. His jaw tightens when he hears it, but all he does is brush my hair behind my ear. Then he trails his fingers down the side of my neck. It feels—
Good, honestly. It feels fucking good as he traces his hand over my collarbone. There’s something tentative and exploratory in his touch, like he can’t quite believe I’m real.
His hand stops on my upper arm, and I force myself to look up at him.
He’s staring at me with an expression I’ve never seen on a man. Hunger. Restraint. Fire. I don’t know what to make of it, except—
Except it sends heat flushing between my thighs.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please don’t kil—”
I don’t get the plea out, though. Because Theo Shorn kisses me.
Well, he presses his mouth against my mouth. I freeze, not knowing what to do. It’s not forceful, the way he does it. It’s just his mouth on mine, soft and gentle.
I can’t remember the last time a man kissed me. A year. Two years? Men never have what I need. I learned that quickly enough, how fucked up my fantasies are. It’s easier to be alone.
But he’ll have it. A Hunter will have it.
The thought is sudden and treacherous. But it’s also why I part my lips. Or maybe it’s because he smells like pine sap, like mountain air. Maybe it’s the slightly forceful grip he has on my forearm. Maybe I’ve lost my mind.
But I open my mouth to him.
It’s just a small movement, but he makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat, and then a kind of low growl that rumbles through my belly. Then he tilts his head and slides his tongue over mine and pushes one hand up in my hair, his fingers tight against my scalp.
The way he kisses is slow, almost tentative, but I can feel a power pulsing behind it. When he shifts his body against mine, pinning me to the wall, a hard ridge digs into my thigh, and my clit flares to life. A soft moan hums in my throat.
I don’t want him to stop kissing me. Which is crazy. I know it’s crazy. But I can feel myself melting into him. His warm, exploratory mouth. His rough hands on my arm and in my hair. The strong heat of his body sandwiching me against the wall.
When the kiss ends, he’s the one to end it. He pulls away, staring down at me with those icy-blue eyes, and I see it again. The boy in the photograph, all grown up.
“Are you really the Theo Shorn from the ghost story?” I whisper. “The one who died when he was seventeen?”
The man nods.
Fear tears through me again, evaporating any lingering heat from his kiss. I jerk away, squirming out of his grip. He lets me go, I’ll give him that, although his icy gaze follows me as I stumble away from him.
“You don’t look dead,” I say, trying to keep my voice light.
“I’m not.” He turns his body toward me, and I’m struck again by how huge he is. Tall and broad-shouldered beneath his dark shirt.
“So you’re eighty years old?” I whisper, my voice shaking. He doesn’t look it, of course. He looks to be in his mid-thirties at most. But the Hunters don’t age. Penelope told me that, even though she wasn’t supposed to.
Theo frowns. “What I am is complicated.” His eyes flash. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
I tremble, my chest too tight for me to speak. I’m able to sign, though, even though my hands shake. “What do you want with Oliver?”
Theo tilts his head, and I swear, just for a second, that his expression softens. “I don’t want to harm him.” A pause, and then, with a simple flick of his hands. “Or you.”
My heart pounds. My room spins around. “But you do harm people.”
Theo’s eyes burn straight through me. I take another couple of stumbling steps back and hit the side of my bed. “You kill people,” I sign.
Theo nods his head yes.
I whimper and slump down on the bed.
“But I’m not going to kill you,” he says quickly. “Or Oliver. Truly.”
We stare at each other, the moonlight flooding around us. “I know what you are,” I finally whisper, my heart racing. “I know you aren’t human.”
Something flickers across Theo’s face. I think it might be surprise.
Then he makes a sign I’ve never seen before. He presses his fists together, then swipes his palm out like a blade. There’s something about it, about the harsh, curving shape of his fingers, that makes me shudder.
“I don’t know what that means,” I breathe out.
“A killer,” he signs, and my heart constricts, “whose only purpose is to kill.”
I whimper, jerking away from him. Tears blur my vision.
“But not you,” he says, signing quickly. “Not Oliver.”
“Why not?” I manage to sign it, even though my entire body is shaking. “What makes us different?”
Theo stares at me for a long, long time.
“Oliver is like me before I knew what I am,” he finally says. “Lonely and different. And you—”
His expression changes, darkening into that expression from earlier, the one that made me relent to his kiss. Heat. Hunger. Lust.
Through the cloud of my fear, I feel my own bloom of arousal, and I hate myself for it.
“You are very beautiful,” he says.
It’s the last thing I expect. For a minute, I think I’ve misunderstood him. But I don’t get a chance to ask any more questions, because he whips around and bolts out of the bedroom.