Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
SHILOH
I lie on my bed with a plastic card held between my fingers, catching the light that filters in from outside.
Artificial. Streetlights. A glare on a pretty face. The tiny picture of Donovan William Myers on his driver’s license doesn’t do justice to how perfect he is.
It does tell me his full name, his age, his height.
The freshly printed plastic tells me his address, and that he only moved here five months ago.
He had a few other cards in there, a little piece of paper to redeem for free sandwiches, and a little string that I left tucked in the pocket.
I was only interested in the driver’s license… or really, his address.
With his wallet and keys missing, there’s every chance that he’s already called his super to come change the locks for him… but if I know anything about cheap apartment buildings, it’s that they’ll probably give him a spare key and take a few days to follow up with the changes.
I left him standing in the alley and told myself it was because that was a terrible place to kill him.
It would be much easier to do in his apartment.
I could probably frame someone else, or make it look like an accident or a tragedy.
Pretty boy, moved from Canada and all alone… I could get away with it.
Wanting to kill him is the only reason I have for getting up and skipping my first class so I can catch a bus and make my way to his apartment building. I’ll be smart and wait until I see him leave—if I see him leave—before I do anything. If I’m not careful, I could really fuck up.
Again.
There’s every chance a lot of things could go wrong. I’m not an impulsive person. I’m methodical and careful. Except for when I’m not.
But Donovan’s freckles are apparently a road map to disaster and bad decisions, because after I see him leave the apartment, I pull out his keys and jog inside. There’s only three keys and a plastic penguin on the ring. Apartment… car… I wonder what the third is for.
He had to know I was the one who took his wallet and keys, unless he thinks he left it back at his little fishbowl where he practices?
I don’t know, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth when it’s offered so… cleanly.
Offered… stolen. Semantics.
I only get a few sidelong glances as I make my way to the room number marked on Donovan’s license. I don’t know anything about hockey, but I thought the players made more than… whatever these apartments cost. There isn’t even a guard at the front desk.
If I didn’t have clients around the world who were purchasing my art, I’d probably be living somewhere this cheap too. Or in the dorms. Just that thought makes me shudder.
If I had to live in one of those cramped spaces with a roommate, I’d end up painting my walls with their blood in under a week, and it wouldn’t even be for the love of art.
I don’t like being examined. I don’t like being touched. I don’t like people.
I don’t like people, but I do like the cool hush of silence when I unlock the door and step into Donovan’s apartment, quietly shutting it behind me. The small worry that he might have a roommate dissipates when I realize there’s only one bedroom and the apartment is empty.
It’s a pretty plain space, with white walls and gray carpet. To the left of the front door is the kitchen, open to the rest of the apartment. It gives a modern look, design-wise, but the appliances are all older, pristine white slowly going yellow with age.
His living room isn’t much better. It’s just a large gray sofa, a coffee table, and a TV on a stand.
Tucked on one of the shelves below the TV is a PlayStation and a handful of games stacked in a neat little tower.
Standing starkly against his white walls—and the only splash of color in the room—is a set of three frames, perfectly aligned, with Japanese posters for some Godzilla movies.
How… odd.
As much as I want to rifle through his living room and kitchen, I’m too tempted by the plain white door to my left.
It has to be his bedroom.
I push it open, pausing to see if he has a girlfriend or something waiting for him.
Empty.
Perfectly empty.
No one is here to see me as I walk across the room and carelessly flop back onto his bed. It’s small, but the scent of him instantly filters up and into my nose. Soft citrus with an earthy undertone. It’s…
Ridiculously nice, really.
My head lolls to the side almost lazily, and I take in the room around me. When I thought hockey player, I imagined he’d be messy—typical jock behavior that existed in every school I’d been in while I was hopping from foster family to foster family growing up.
But everything here is neat—orderly, really. The bed I’m lying on is perfectly made, the dark blue comforter tucked in neatly under his pillows. His desk has a wooden caddy to organize his pens and paper clips. There isn’t a scrap of trash on the floor.
Is Donovan more of a psychopath than I am? I push myself reluctantly from his bed, not bothering to smooth out the sheets, and move to his desk.
I’m careful when I snoop through the papers, taking a picture of the practice schedule he has printed out with a small smirk. He’s making this too easy.
I really should just kill him and be done with it… but instead, I reach out and pick up a picture he has on his desk. He stands out in stark contrast to the man he has his arm around—all red hair and freckles compared to the man’s dark eyes and dark hair—and his smile looks real.
Genuine.
I haven’t seen him smile like that.
Frowning, I pocket the picture frame and turn to his closet. When I open the door, I’m blasted by a rainbow of colors… all perfectly organized from light to dark.
Other than the Godzilla posters on his living room wall, Donovan’s place could be a showroom to convince the locals that these apartments are actually nice.
It’s… ridiculous. I should leave. I picked a boring man with a boring home, and the crimson fire of his red hair and his ridiculous freckles were just there to throw me off.
But I don’t leave. I turn back to the closet in front of me.
Maybe it’s a bad idea, but I can’t help myself when I step forward and start carefully rifling through his clothes.
I want his attention, and if I know anything about big, pretty boys like Donovan Myers, I know seeing me in his clothes is either going to piss him off and give me an excuse to finish what I started…
Or he’s going to like it.
I’m not sure which reaction I want more.
The hoodie I’m wearing nearly hits the top of my knees.
I knew Donovan was big, but wearing his clothes is something else.
If he wrapped me in his arms, he’d swallow me up the same way the fabric is, only he’d probably smell even better.
I don’t try to hide it when I lift soft blue and green to my nose and inhale as I make my way toward the practice arena.
I had to ask four different people to figure out where it was, and then take a stop-off at the local hardware store to make a copy of his keys. As long as I get his set back to him before he reports that they’re missing, maybe he won’t try to change his locks. Then I’ll have all the access I need.
The thought shouldn’t excite me as much as it does. That doesn’t stop me from seeing it in my mind’s eye—sneaking into his room while he’s sleeping at night, crawling up to straddle him with a knife.
He’d bleed so pretty… and fuck, that blood on canvas would look so good.
Or…
I could sketch his features in the moonlight and tempt him awake with quiet little scratches of pencil on paper. Then I could see the way his eyes widened when he realized I was there—I could see how he’d react.
I’m not sure what I want yet.
The only thing I do know is that I want to see him now.
It takes me a while to figure out which gear-clad man on the ice he is. They all look basically the same out there, all tall and broad shouldered. I only realize who he is when one of the players does some fancy maneuver, and the man at the end of the ice raises one arm with a loud whoop.
He turns his back to the rest of the players to face the net in front of him, but there’s no mistaking that crimson hair.
It’s him for sure, wearing bulky pads that make his body look bigger than it did in the alley, bigger than I know he is.
His head tilts back and he squirts water from a bottle into his mouth.
His other hand holds a stick that’s way bigger than what everyone else has.
I wonder why?
Donovan finishes drinking and grabs a full face mask off the top of the goal, slipping it onto his head as he slides a glove onto one hand and turns to face the rest of the team.
I can’t stop myself from leaning forward, my eyes fixated on his body as he moves, fascinated with the way he’s still lithe in all the padding that should weigh him down.
He crouches low, his feet moving side to side like he’s scuffing up the ice beneath his skates.
Finally, he stops moving and stays there.
Still.
Like a statue.
One of the men wearing a white jersey takes off from the middle of the ice, another following behind.
It takes me a moment to realize they have a small puck they’re passing between them, stick to stick, but it’s there.
They’re fucking fast with their hands, but when I look at Donovan, he’s swaying side to side in a perfect mirror of the movement.
It’s mesmerizing, like a snake carefully tracking its prey.
Fascinating.
I have no idea what’s happening when the men zooming toward him move, their sticks slapping against the puck and sending it shooting in Donovan’s direction.
I have images in my head of the way something moving that fast could split skin, break teeth…
but Donovan doesn’t seem worried about it.
His swaying stops, and he slides to the left, raising one gloved hand and snatching the puck out of the air like it wasn’t moving like a bullet.
He’s… fast.
Faster than I thought.
Fast enough that he probably could have stopped me if I’d managed to sneak up on him with my knife.
Good to know.
“It’s a rebound drill, Donny,” the man who shot the puck comments with a laugh as he skates past Donovan, the other man trailing behind him.
“Then shoot a fucking rebound,” Donovan calls back, tossing the puck up into the air and letting it fall onto the ice at his feet.
I have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s like a fucking foreign language to me… but the next time they move toward Donovan, the puck bounces off his stomach and another player scoops it up to shoot it at him again.
None of it makes sense, even though they do it a few more times… though I have to admit that I’m too fascinated by the way Donovan holds himself, the sway of his body, the tension in his shoulders, to really try to figure it out.
Finally a whistle blows, making my entire body jump. I was too caught up in watching to realize that practice was already ending, but apparently it is because they all head off the ice, shoving each other and laughing as they yank off their helmets and shake out their sweaty hair.
My eyes are all for the crimson locks that stick to pale skin. Donovan stands out like fire amongst a sea of blond and brown and black.
Red hair on white ice.
Of course.
As everyone shuffles off the ice, I make my way down to the glass that separates the seats from the players.
I’m glad I took his hoodie now, because there’s no way I’d be able to stop shivering with how damn cold it is in here.
I like how it smells, though… cool, clean, faintly of snacks.
And I like it even more when Donovan’s head twists toward me, and I watch his eyes widen when he catches what I’m wearing.
I tick up a brow, wondering if he can see me from the net he’s standing in front of, and fish his wallet and keys out of my pocket. My painted nails dig into the worn leather as I flick it back and forth to catch his attention before jerking my head to lure him in my direction.
I need to give it back so he doesn’t change the locks. The fact that I could have left it in his room plays like a taunt in the back of my head, but I ignore it.
If I hadn’t come, I would never have seen the way his body moves on the ice—if I hadn’t come, he would have been a dead man walking, because I would have convinced myself to finish what I’d started.
But now…
Now I just want him to get closer so I can see if the flush on his cheeks is from exertion or because he’s looking at me.
He breaks away from the rest of the group and skates to the glass, his brows knitted together as his coach yells at him that he needs to cool down.
Cool down?
Whatever.
“You’re a thief,” he says, staring at his wallet. Even with the accusation, he doesn’t sound angry.
“No, I found these and wanted to bring them back to you.” I’m careful when I counter the words, tilting my head.
If I were on the other side of the glass, close enough to touch him, would his skin be warm from exertion or cool from being on the ice?
Would he smell as good as his sheets did, even when he was sweaty?
“Oh.” He’s still staring at me like he’s not sure if he believes me. “Okay… I…” He trails off slowly when his gaze drifts down. “That’s… my… hoodie.”
Of course it is. It has his name stitched on the sleeve. But…
“Myers! Stop talking and get over here.” A loud voice makes us both jump, and I narrow my eyes as I glare at his coach.
I could slit his throat for interrupting us, maybe snag one of the skates the players are wearing and see how sharp it is. I could—
“Can I have my stuff back?” Donovan’s soft voice interrupts my thoughts, and I turn back to him.
“I’m hungry.” It’s not an answer to his question. “I’ll be waiting out here with your wallet and keys—”
“And my hoodie,” he interrupts, but I keep talking.
“For that food you promised me.”
“I didn’t…” he starts, but he did and we both know it.
He frowns again, but I don’t miss how his eyes rake over me, noticing the way the clothing I’m wearing is swallowing me up.
His gaze bounces from my chest to my fingers clutching his wallet, down to my boots and back up to my face, each glance apparently playing counterpoint to whatever he was going to say.
“Wait for me in the stands, California.” I grin, satisfaction purring through my chest as he adds. “And don’t run off this time.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” The clack of his skates as he turns and heads off to follow the rest of his team drowns out the sharp edge that might have given away exactly how much I’m looking forward to having him alone.