3. Chloe #2
I murder obsessive men. Men who target and stalk women.
Who desire to possess every ounce of a woman until all she sees and smells and feels is him.
Those men end up on the wrong side of an accidental murder scheme.
Trips and falls. Maulings. Staged suicides and intentionally unintentional overdoses. Just like I was taught.
But Colin Mills is no regular man obsessed. He’s obsessed with me, which I kind of love him for.
Most of the media moved on eventually, but some of them still stalked me through town. Took pictures of me in my most vulnerable state. Hounded me for a statement with their grimy recorders pushed in my direction.
Colin is the only one brave enough to cross real boundaries.
To put hands on me. To break his own moral code of righteousness.
So blinded by what his gut was telling him he knew about me, that he was almost willing to give up his badge just to bring me down.
To sacrifice his career in his passionate hunt for punishment.
And my God, did I want him to punish me.
I probably shouldn’t want to kiss the man who put my mother in prison, but I’m just dying to find out if that sweet blend of poison I see in his eyes lingers on his tongue, as well.
Fuck me, I bet it’s lovely and wicked in all the best ways.
Colin isn’t a bad man. He’s simultaneously righteous and corrupt—just like me.
I twist in my spot as Maeve makes it back to us.
“Oh my God, did you see—” Her smile falters when she walks into the tense bubble surrounding me and Stella.
Tense because Stella can read me like a fucking book, and right now I’d rather rip my pages out and set them aflame than admit what I heard today. “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s wrong with her,” Stella says, responding to Maeve like I’m not even in the room while her eyes remain glued to the side of my face.
“Nothing is wrong with me,” I huff, reaching for my drink again. But Stella grabs it before I can, holding it in the air behind her.
“No more for you until you tell us.”
“It’s not Gavin, right? Are you, like, having second thoughts?”
“Ew, no.” My face scrunches in disgust. I would never have second thoughts about taking the life of someone who deserved it. And even if I were, it’s a bit too late for that.
I lean back into the leather couch, taking the edge of my lip between my teeth.
I’ve been thinking that maybe if I run into Colin first, I can set the tone for our ongoing relationship.
I’ll tell him I’m sorry I gave him a flat tire that one time, and he can tell me sorry for all the times he stood in the parking lot and watched me run like I was going to murder anyone who tried to join me.
And then he can apologize for the time he pushed me up against that brick wall that had been recently painted, totally ruining the new Lindsey LaRue dress I’d worn to visit my mom in jail.
You see? He has so much more to apologize for than I do.
Regardless, I am the bigger person. So, I will apologize, and then we can go our separate ways. And by go our separate ways, I mean maybe I can get on his good side long enough to get a taste of that twilight flavored toxin he hides in the depths of his mouth.
I mean—soul.
“Oh, fuck. It’s Mills,” Maeve says above me, and I’m instantly curious how she could have possibly come to that conclusion. I look up at her, but her gaze is focused across the room. When I turn to see what stole her attention, her statement plays on repeat in my head.
It’s Mills.
Well, shit. The clock is officially ticking on that whole running-into-him-first thing.
I haven’t seen him in a year. A whole year I’ve had to wonder why he left. Where he went. How he’s changed. If he was thinking about me like I thought about him.
He looks exactly the same as when I saw him last. That hair that’s perfectly tousled like he wakes up every day, styles it, and then fucks his girlfriend to make it look messy in the most perfect way.
The ink on his body is still dangerously alluring, the mostly monochrome designs swirling up his forearms, inviting me to trace them with my tongue.
That same scowl graces his features, his eyebrows drawn together in frustration, his soft-looking lips just a couple degrees off from a full on frown.
He’s the ultimate brooding cop. The scowl and the frown don’t even begin to take away from the fact that those lips just look perpetually kissable to me.
I want to brush my thumb across his eyebrows and ease the crease between them.
I can already imagine his features morphing from pissed off to pleasure, the flex of his shoulders and biceps beneath his white button-up shifting as he holds me against his body, his inked arms snaking around my thighs, those full lips trailing up my neck.
He's the only person in this whole damn place who looks like he’s unhappy about being here, and I can’t help myself from thinking about what type of feelings will rush through him when he realizes I’m here, too.
I turn my back on the doors and reach out to drag Maeve down to sit. “Quit staring, Maeve.”
She jolts forward as I pull her down between me and Stella, and I push a breath out.
“Barry told me he was back,” I tell them, swiping my martini glass from Stella’s hand, still frozen mid-air.
“Damn. We’ve had a good year of slipping under the radar without him around.” Stella falls into the back of the couch with a huff of annoyance, as I’d expected.
“I know…” I start, “but…”
“You’re happy he’s back.” Maeve’s gaze is soft on mine, her green eyes shimmering in understanding. Stella’s words shatter the sympathy dancing across Maeve’s features.
“You’re playing with fire.”
“Would you give her a break?” Maeve shifts between us to face Stella. “It’s hard for people like us to find love.”
I twist the stem of my glass as it rests on my knee, readying myself to listen to the same argument I’ve heard between the two of them a hundred times before.
Stella leans forward so she can look me in the eyes while she delivers my first scolding.
“Love?” She raises her arm to point in what I’m assuming is the direction of Colin, and I can only hope he hasn’t spotted us yet.
“That man put your mother in prison, Chloe. He wants to put you in prison, too, if you forgot. And he’s going to if you let him get too close.
He’s just like the men we’re desperate to destroy. ”
“No, he’s not, Stella.” I crunch an espresso bean between my teeth.
It’s hard to explain if you’ve only been on the outside looking in, but I can see it in Colin’s eyes—he’s not afraid of me at all.
Hell, he might not even entirely believe that I’m dangerous.
But some part of him knows I am, and he still wants me.
I bet that’s what really scares the shit out of him.
It’s not easy to come to terms with the fact that you’re a good person with a little bad blood flowing through your veins, but I’ve had years to do just that.
I can imagine for someone like him, the supposed-to-be upstanding detective, it’s even more difficult.
But, I will show him it’s possible. You can be a little good and a little bad. It doesn’t make you rotten.
On the outside, he may look as bad as the men we relieve the Earth of. But something else is driving his obsession with me.
It’s not pride, or ego, or anything that any of these men are so desperate to prove when they harm women and children. It’s intuition; a desire to do right.
And his intuition is not wrong, he just doesn’t know it. Or rather, he just hasn’t found any evidence to prove it. And he won’t, because the three of us and our sympathizers have a trusty little system worked out between us.
“I don’t even understand why you want anything that man has to offer. He’s a pig.”
Maeve and I both snort at her unintentional pun, and Stella eyes us pointedly.
As harsh as her words are, I am not offended or hurt by them. Stella is the mother of the three of us, desperate to ensure we take every step and make every decision with the utmost caution.
Being a kidnapping survivor can do that to you.
And she’s not entirely wrong. How could anyone love someone like us?
Someone who kills and claims, even with good intentions.
Let alone someone like Colin Mills, whose commitment to justice and law overshadows any chance of him seeing that sometimes two wrongs do make a right.
He’s too caught up in his duty to be a public servant to even busy himself with trying to build a normal life and have some fun.
He’s married to the job, with what appears to be no room for relationships or recreation.
I don’t know that he even devotes time to friendships, outside of the seemingly simple ones he maintains with the people who work in his department.
What ever happened to his family? And where has he been for the past year?
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I tell the girls, collecting our empty glasses from the table and carrying them toward the bar. I resist the urge to glance around, to see where Colin and his group have settled.
As I lean against the bar and wait for Mickey to finish with a customer down the countertop so I can order some food, a man slides up beside me, his cheek dimpling as he gives me a lopsided smile.
I can’t tell if he knows who I am and doesn’t care, or wants an invite back to my place so he can offer The Peak some prime footage from inside the murder house.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
I side-eye him. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
I make eye contact with Mickey down the way, urging her with my eyes to hurry, but she’s urging me with her eyes of something else—and it doesn’t take me long to realize what it is.
I’d know the feel of those eyes on me anywhere.
“Get the fuck away from her.”
I swallow the newly formed lump in my throat, leaning my elbow on the bar and turning back to Colin as he stands alone, five feet behind me. I force my lips into a smile.
“Detective,” I sing sweetly. “Welcome back.”