Chapter 34 Chloe
CHLOE
Igasp awake, my dreams condensing in the air in front of me. I was dreaming about Theo again. I had been in the dark, shivery lake, and he was swimming toward me, as sleek and dangerous as a shark.
I pull the blankets tighter around my shoulders, blinking my surroundings back into focus. There’s the crackle and pop of the fire off to my left—I dozed off on the couch. At least the fire is still contained in the fireplace, the flames low and licking at its brick walls.
Outside, the wind howls wildly, louder even than it did when the storm first blew in. Snow plinks against the glass of the windows with an arrhythmic chiming.
“Fuck,” I whisper, shivering inside my blanket. I force myself to stand up, to move around. The fire’s heat beats back some of the cold, although not much; I move closer to it and breathe in the scent of smoke.
Something thumps outside.
My heart jolts, and I whip my head over to the windows, still covered by the heavy curtains. I listen. The wind screams around the house. The snow batters the glass. I don’t hear anything else.
“Probably just a tree branch,” I murmur, finding some comfort in the sound of my own voice. But the thought invokes a new fear: this wind is fierce, and what if it’s strong enough that a tree branch falls through my window? It’s a possibility I hadn’t even considered.
Anxiety tightens in a knot in my stomach. I stumble toward the window, my steps shaky from my constant shivering. “Just a tree branch,” I whisper, and the wind answers with a long, mournful howl.
I push the curtain back.
The sight outside is astonishing. The forecast wasn’t lying about the blizzard conditions—this is a true white-out, the sort of thing I experienced a couple of times up in Boston, although always from the comfort of a cozy apartment with a working radiator.
There are no radiators in North Carolina, not that it even matters without power.
I drag the curtain further aside and stare out at the whipping frenzy of snow. My porch is only barely visible through the static, and every now and then, I see a flash of the lake. But nothing else, and already snow is piling up in a drift against the window.
I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. It’s colder here, the wind seeping through the glass. I need to get back to the fire. I need to—
Something moves in the white-out.
I freeze, staring out at the blizzard. Nothing.
It must have been my imagination. Or maybe the lake, surging through the snow.
But then I see it again: another faint flicker of movement. A dark shadow, like a bird flapping its way through the storm.
There can’t possibly be any birds out here.
I squeeze my blanket tight. Fear prickles in my belly.
The shadow shambles closer. And I realize, no, it’s not a bird at all.
It’s a man.
It’s him.
I jerk back from the window, my heart pounding furiously.
But I don’t close the curtain, and I can still see him, standing there on the edge of my yard, the wind whipping his frost-coated hair into his eyes.
He’s wearing the same shirt he wore the night I killed him, although it’s turned to rags now, revealing the smooth, unbroken skin of his chest. There’s no sign of the terrible, gaping hole where his heart should be.
He lifts his face, and I think he sees me.
I shriek again and stumble back toward the fire, never taking my eyes off the window. Outside, he moves closer, each step slow and heavy. My breath comes out in short, frantic breaths. My phone. Where’s my phone?
And what am I going to do with it? What does it matter if I call someone in the middle of a blizzard? Theo Shorn is here now.
He steps up onto my porch, his footsteps heavy and loud even over the wailing wind. He moves like a zombie, slow and shambling, and it occurs to me that’s what he is. Because I killed him.
I knew he would come back eventually. Maybe I’ve even been waiting for him, a truth Penelope saw that I didn’t want to admit. But now, seeing him—
Confusion wars in my thoughts. Anger, fear.
Relief.
He steps up to the door and peers through the glass. I don’t know if he sees me. All he does is stare inside, his snow-covered hair hanging in his eyes.
I watch him, my whole body shaking. From fear or cold, I don’t know.
He put his hand on the window, his body heat melting the ice crawling across the glass. And something inside me snaps. The last string of my willpower. All I can think about is how warm he was when he had his big arms wrapped around me.
The cold has made me stupid. Or desperate. Or both.
I let the blanket fall to the floor. The adrenaline has warmed me up enough that it almost feels uncomfortable, and there’s a thin layer of clammy sweat on my skin that I know, distantly, is dangerous.
Just like he is.
I cross the room again, aware of Theo’s eyes following my movement. When I get to the door, I stop, staring at him through the glass. He doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t say anything. His eyes just bore into me, as bright as stars.
I turn the deadbolt with shaking hands. He pushes the door open.
The gust of wind that slams inside is shocking. It blows my hair back and brings a swirl of glittering white snow that scatters across the floor like spilled sugar. When Theo steps inside, it melts beneath his boots.
He slams the door shut and stares at me. I don’t know what to say to him. All the speeches I planned over the past six months—excoriating him for what he did to Oliver, for what he did to me—fly out of my thoughts. There’s only cold and dark and silence.
Theo lifts his hand, the skin red and chapped from the cold. “Are you real?” he signs.
“Of course I’m real.” The words fly out of my mouth, harsher than I intend. “Are you?”
He blinks. Pushes his hair out of his eyes. There’s dirt all over his shredded, rotting clothes, dirt and old blood, and as the snow melts around him, it turns to sludge on the floor.
“I thought you’d be gone.”
I suck in a breath, my body shaking.
“Everyone else is gone,” he continues, his hands moving slowly. “That’s what always happens after a kill-moon.”
I blink, uncertain if I saw that correctly.
He said the same thing that night: the sign for kill, the sign for moon, melded together in a way that suggests they’re meant to connect.
It makes my head vibrate, and I think of the moonlight that night, bright and silver as I ran across the yards.
The moon had been full. I’ll never forget it.
Theo stares at me, waiting for an answer.
“I didn’t have a choice.” The words come out hard and flinty. “I can’t afford to leave.”
Theo’s shoulders slump a little, and I don’t know how to read his face. He almost looks disappointed. Anger surges up in me.
“You thought I was waiting for you?” I snap. Never mind that part of me was. “After what you did?” My voice trembles. “To me? To Oliver?”
“I didn’t do anything to Oliver.”
“You killed his fucking family!” This erupts out of me in a scream, and I wrap my arms around myself, even though my anger is keeping me warm.
“He’s in foster care! They won’t even let me speak to him, so I don’t even know how he’s—” Tears brim on my eyelashes. “How badly you fucked him up,” I snarl.
Theo blanches like I slapped him. “He didn’t see anything,” he signs. “I made sure of that.”
“It doesn’t matter! He was there!” My voice bounces off the cold, shivering air of the living room.
“How could you do that?” I scream, and then I launch myself at him, rage burning like a fire through my body.
I want to slam my fist into his big chest, to pummel the place where I shot him, but Theo grabs me by the waist and whips me around and throws me onto the couch.
“His family hurt him,” Theo signs, anger darkening his own features. “They didn’t care about him.” His eyes blaze in the darkness, and the crackling firelight wraps him in an eerie orange glow. “He wanted me to protect him! Why do you think he came looking for me?”
“Not like that!” I jump to my feet, and Theo pushes me down again. Only this time, he straddles me, wedging me against the couch with his thick body.
I was right. He is warm.
Theo leans in close, his face inches from mine. I can smell him, the earthy scent of juniper and pine and cold soil, and I hate my body for flushing with a sudden warmth.
I take a shuddering breath. “He didn’t want you to kill—”
“What if he did?” Theo signs the question simply. “What if he wanted to come live with—” His fingers twist us to me, so quickly I’m not sure if I really saw it.
I breathe heavily, staring up at him. He’s dripping cold snowmelt all over me, all over my couch, and I want to scream at him for that, too.
“You’re lying,” I whisper. “Oliver didn’t want that.”
“Oliver wanted a protector,” Theo says, “And that’s what I was.”
I slap him, my arm springing up on its own accord. The sound it makes is like the blast of the shotgun I used to kill him, and my hand burns from the impact.
Theo doesn’t move.
“Is that what you want?” he asks. “Hurt me, if it makes you feel better.”
I screech out my anger and slap him again, harder. He growls softly, and the sound bores into my chest. A traitorous heat floods through my core.
Then I start hitting him in earnest, slamming my fists into his strong, unscarred chest, raining down six months’ worth of sorrow and despair upon his hot, bracing body. And he lets me. He even drags me up by the waist until we’re standing in front of the couch, like he wants me to hit him harder.
And I do. I slap and punch at him, screeching through my hot, desperate tears. He doesn’t try to stop me. He certainly doesn’t try to fight back.
I know I’m not hurting him. I can’t hurt him, not like this. He isn’t human. But god, it feels good, all that pent-up anger pouring out of me.
“Why did you do it?” I scream, the word turning to steam in the frozen air. “Why couldn’t things stay how they were?”
That question is what finally makes Theo act. His hand lashes out and catches my wrist before I can strike his face again, and his eyes burn as he drinks me. I breathe, staring at him, tears streaming hotly down my face.
“You think I didn’t want that too?” he signs.
I let out a single, choking sob. And then I collapse into him, pressing my face into his cold, wet, filthy shirt, weeping out into his chest. He wraps his arms around me and holds me up against him, and I don’t want him to let me go.
I wanted so badly to hate him these past six months.
And I did, sometimes. But right now, I’m cold and hungry and lonely, and he’s so much warmer than the fire.
Theo’s hand smooths over my hair and then wraps, tentatively, around my throat. I jerk back, meet his gaze. My pulse flutters, and I know he feels it, the way he presses his palm harder against the side of my neck.
“I didn’t want to kill you,” I whisper through my tears.
With his free hand, he signs, “I didn’t want to die.”
And then he pulls me up to him by my throat, his mouth crashing into mine in a fury of tongue and teeth.
I scream into the kiss, and it feels like all my anger and sorrow have transmuted suddenly into a hot, baking lust. I tear at the filthy rags of his clothes until they disintegrate in my hands to reveal the hot planes of his flesh underneath.
Then I claw at his skin, too, like I’m trying to dig out his new heart.
He growls and hurls me down onto the sofa. Then he pulls at my clothes, all those layers that were supposed to keep me warm. And I help him. I claw them away, throw them across the room, until we’re both naked, the firelight staining our bodies red while the cold air frosts over our skin.
Theo gazes down at me, drinking me in with bright, burning eyes. And I can’t take my gaze off him, either: his strong, muscular chest, the taper of his soft belly.
His cock, swollen and straining and already gleaming at the tip. My pussy aches, seeing it.
Theo reaches down and wrenches my legs apart, exposing my dripping pussy to the cold air. I buck against him, but he pushes his weight down on my thighs, pinning me in place. Even though his hands are currently occupied, the message is clear:
He’s going to fuck me.
I lift my chin, baring my throat to him. He growls and falls on me, catching my neck between his teeth right before she slams his cock into my cunt.
I scream at the painful, violating stretch of him, and then I scream again as he jackhammers against my hips, his teeth sinking even deeper into my neck.
I fuck him back like I’m trying to buck him off, like I’m trying to fight him.
Maybe I am. I honestly can’t tell the difference, not right now.
It hurts, how rough he is, but it sends hot pulsing pleasure up my spine, too.
Because here’s the real truth of things:
Every time I hated him in the past six months, it wasn’t because of the five people he killed. It was because he killed five people and then abandoned me to drown in the blood he left behind.
Theo releases my throat and kisses me, his thrusts melting into a slow, agonizing roll of his hips. It feels good. But it’s not what I need.
Especially when I taste my blood on his lips.
So I wrench my head away from him, breaking the kiss, and snarl, “More” in a voice that I hardly recognize as my own.
Theo makes an animalistic sound in the back of his throat and then bites me again, this time in the shoulder, his teeth tearing down into my skin. I scream at the pain, but I also know it’s an acknowledgement.
“Harder,” I rasp, grinding my hips up against him. His slow, teasing thrusts aren’t good enough. “And don’t you dare fucking stop.”
And to his credit, he listens, slamming his cock up against my cervix until it almost feels like I’m dying.