30. Esperr
ESPERR
For a long moment I didn't move. I don’t even blink.
‘I kill people for a living’.
I consider the way he moves through a room—quiet, deliberate, the kind that isn’t just learned but carved and drilled into one’s brain.
The way his eyes sweep every space before the rest of him settles into it, clocking exits, distances, faces, and all of it in the span of a single breath, like it’s as automatic as blinking.
I noticed it the first time he walked into the coffee shop, but I never let myself think too hard about it.
And then I think about the body—Dean.
How he just showed up and didn’t ask a single question that didn’t need answering.
He didn’t panic; there was no hesitation, no wide eyes scanning the block trying to process what he was looking at.
Just calm and capable and completely unbothered, moving through it like he’s done it before—many times before.
The signs were always there.
And now he’s confirmed it.
He just blurted it out on my bed after he made me cum, twice.
I lose it.
Not a quick exhale, not a polite disbelieving laugh—I mean, I lose it.
It’s the kind that takes everything over, stealing all the air, and I’m completely helpless.
So much so that I fall to my back and press both hands over my face while my entire body shakes.
Tears prick the corners of my eyes, and I can’t stop.
“Esperr?” Zyran calls my name. But it just falls on deaf ears because I can’t control the laughter taking over me.
“I’m sorry—” I barely manage, but it just bubbles up inside me. “I just—you… you picked right now to tell me that? Right now?”
I turn my head and look at him through watering eyes, seeing him frown with amusement written all over his face, and he’s trying very hard to keep neutral. Though he’s failing miserably.
That’s somehow the funniest thing I’ve seen.
I roll over, flopping my head next to his. By the time it finally starts to thin out, I feel wrung and breathless, and my head has started to throb again.
Rolling onto my back again, I stare at the ceiling.
“Okay…” I sigh, my voice coming out wrecked. “I’m done now.”
“You sure?”
I smile, feeling his eyes on me.
“Don’t,” I warn, pointing my finger at him. “Don’t do that.”
From the corner of my eye, I watch his lips start to tip up just slightly, but it’s enough to make me smile as well.
Pressing the palms of my hands over my eyes, I try to collect whatever dignity I have left, which at this point might not be much. A small chuckle escapes me, not because of anything other than the fact that this can’t be anything but comical.
“I knew,” I finally whispered. “I want you to know that.”
He’s quiet for a second before he shifts, head turning towards me. “How?”
I turn my head and look at him, at the genuine confusion sitting on his face, and something about that is almost as funny as the rest of it.
This man who moves through the world like a ghost, who helped me in more ways than one, getting rid of Dean without blinking, who has never once in my presence been caught off guard—completely thrown by the fact that I knew his secret.
“My family,” I mumble. “They were cleaners.”
His eyes widened.
“We cleaned up after people like you,” I smile. “My whole childhood, since I was six. I, uh, grew up knowing what a person looks like when ending a life is just part of their week.” I pause, debating for a moment if I wanted to say it. “You uh…you have that look.”
Zyran opens his mouth and then closes it before he’s finally muttering, “You knew the whole time.”
“I had a feeling,” I say, looking back at the ceiling. “The way you move, the way you helped me with the body without asking anything that didn’t need answering. People don’t do that unless they already know what they’re looking at.”
He’s quiet for a second before he sighs and looks at the ceiling. “Most don’t notice.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No,” he says, looking at me again. “You’re not.”
I smile and then a shiver moves through me before I can stop it. Suddenly I become aware all at once of several things—the fact that the laughter has worn off completely, that my bedroom is cold, and that I am lying on top of the covers without a lick of clothing on.
I reach for the blanket, but Zyran is already ahead of me. He grabs the edge of it and pulls it up over both of us in one easy motion, setting it around my shoulders. Lying beside him, I find myself tucking myself against him and resting my chin on his chest.
“Better?” He asks, moving his arm around me.
“Much,” I whispered against his rib.
My eyes begin to drift closed, and for a moment I feel myself starting to go under before I’m whispering, “Zyran?”
He must have also begun to fall asleep because when he hums in acknowledgement, it’s filled with sleepiness.
I press my cheek a little further into his side and close my eyes. “Thank you,” I mumble. “For telling me the truth… it means more than you’ll ever know.”
He’s still for a moment, and then his arm tightens around me, it’s not a ton, but just enough that I know he heard me and that he feels the same way without having to say another word.
I close my eyes again, letting the sound of his heartbeat be the thing that I fall asleep to.
Daniel and I sit next to each other, our backs against his bed as I start to tell him things I’ve never said out loud to anyone.
Things about my parents, about what they do—what I do.
The reason we travel so much and what I’ve been trained to do since I was old enough to hold a bottle of bleach in one hand and a knife in the other.
I watch his face while I talk, doing what I’ve been trained to pick up on, seeing his face change, warmth draining out of it slowly. And then it’s replaced by something I can’t quite figure out. I can see the fear underneath it.
But I believe him when he tells me it’s okay and that he understands.
And then the dream shifts just as Daniel is about to speak, and now I’m standing in the kitchen with my mother at the counter; her back is to me.
“Mom?”
She turns and smiles, just like she always did in the evenings when the work was done and it was just us.
Suddenly I see his shadow on the wall behind her.
“Mom—”
She’s turning before I can finish, and the knife catches the light on the way down.
The sound she makes isn’t a scream; it’s smaller than that, more surprised than anything, and I think that’s the part that breaks me.
That she was surprised. That even after a lifetime of knowing what the world was capable of, it still managed to catch her off guard.
Her knees go weak, and her hands find the counter, keeping herself from falling. She looks at me, her eyes clear and steady even now, while a hand presses to her side, and she says the only word that matters.
“Run.”
My legs move before my brain does, like I was already moving before she said anything. The hallway stretches out in front of me, the main door at the end of it close enough that I can see the deadbolt, my fingers just within reach… Im almost there?—
Suddenly the floor comes up, and the world goes black.
The smell reaches me before anything else does.
Copper… and cold concrete and piss coat the back of my throat and won’t leave.
The bulb overhead swings on its cord in the middle of the basement.
I always told them it was weird and creepy and begged them to remove it, but they ignored me.
And then I see him; my father, in the center of the room, his eyes find mine immediately, like he’s been waiting for me to wake up, like the first thing he wanted was to make sure I was still breathing.
He’s looking at me the same way my mother did.
“I’m sorry ...I'm so sorry you’re here for this,” he whispers, choking on air.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
Suddenly he appears, the man of every single nightmare, and steps torward to my father with a knife raised.
My father doesn’t make a sound, not even when I know the pain becomes unbearable.
It’s the bravest and most terrible thing I’ve ever witnessed—him refusing to give anything away while I’m watching, refusing to fall apart in front of me.
Until he can’t anymore.
And the sound he makes is quiet, and that’s the worst part. It’s not loud or dramatic, just a final sound. I feel it cutting through me all the way to my bones, and I’m the one left screaming with everything I have, but none of it coming out?—
I wake up gasping, and it’s not the slow kind; it’s the one that yanks me out of the nightmare, leaving me blinking at the ceiling, trying to catch my breath.
Pressing the back of my hand against my mouth and breathing in through my nose, trying to get ahead of it, but my heart is slamming against my ribs and my eyes are wet.
I can still smell the basement, the copper… I can still hear the noises my father made?—
“Esperr.” His voice is low and immediate, with no sleep in it, like he’d been awake for a while. I nod, not having the words just yet, but I feel his hand on my back, warm and steady between my shoulder blades.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I hold my breath for five seconds and then slowly let it out.
“I’m right here,” he whispers, slowly rubbing circles into my lower back.
I know he’s here, but my body doesn’t seem to care, still running, still back in that basement with the light swinging and the screams of my father.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “Take your time.”
And I do just that; I let myself slowly calm down, and I don’t know how long we sit there like that.
But it’s long enough that my breathing eventually evens out, each inhale feeling a little steadier than the one before. The entire time Zyran has kept a hand on my back, switching between rubbing circles and massaging my shoulder blade.
“Sorry,” I mumble, the word coming out rough.
“Don’t,” he grunts.