4. Killian #2
My childhood. The first thing I think of is the smell of whiskey and Old Spice.
That combination still turns my stomach.
My father didn't need a reason. Some nights, it was dinner going cold.
Some nights it was just the wrong look from across the room.
When I was eight, my mother left. She packed what she could reach and walked out while I was sleeping.
I waited three days in case she was coming back.
Ate crackers from the back of the cupboard and told myself she'd just forgotten something.
She hadn't forgotten anything.
When my father came home from a bender three days after she left and found me under my bed, he decided her leaving was my fault too. I made it back to school six weeks later. My teacher asked if I'd been sick. I said yes. My jaw still tightens at the memory of it.
Or maybe I should tell her about the moment everything truly went wrong?
I'm fifteen. Ninety-three days of sleeping in doorways. Of stealing food from corner stores. Of learning which dumpsters get the freshest trash.
My stomach stops growling somewhere around the forty-eighth-hour mark, settling into a hollow ache that turns sharp if I move wrong. I’m shivering outside Mickey’s Pawn Shop, rain soaking through everything. Jacket, shirt, skin. Straight to the bone. A man in a two-thousand-dollar coat shows up.
“You look hungry, son.”
Understatement of the fucking century. My jaw is too locked to give him the 'fuck you' he deserves.
Twenty bucks to deliver a package. No questions. When your own body is cannibalizing itself, you don’t ask questions. He doesn’t look like what I pictured when I think of danger, just a well-dressed man offering easy money to a kid with nowhere to go.
I drop the box where he tells me to. I don't dare to look inside.
“Smart boy,” he says. His voice is smooth, like the leather of his shoes. “I could use someone with your discretion.”
Then it's more jobs. Fifty here, a hundred there.
Deliver an envelope, watch a building, tell him who comes and goes.
Ross feeds me, clothes me, and gives me a place to crash.
In return, I learn not to ask about the blood on certain envelopes or why people vanish after I report their routines.
By the time I understand what I've become, it's too late.
Julian Ross has photos, videos, recordings of phone calls where I'm dumb enough to use my real voice.
Every piece of evidence stored and backed up to three different locations.
A fifteen-year-old kid delivering packages, now an accessory to murder, extortion, and trafficking. Crimes that carry life without parole.
The choice is simple: work for the Order, or die in maximum security for crimes I commit when I am desperate enough to sell my soul for a warm meal.
“Family takes care of family,” Ross says, his hand heavy on my shoulder. “And you’re family now, Killian. Forever.”
Forever turned into twenty years of blood and violence before I traded it in for prison bars and an ankle monitor.
“Perhaps we could start with something more manageable,” I say, pulling myself back to the room. “What do you want to know about my adjustment to civilian life?”
Her pen hovers over the notepad. Those hazel eyes search my face, looking for the cracks I spent twenty years sealing.
"Of course," she replies softly. "We'll work up to the more difficult topics. That's perfectly normal."
Normal. If only she knew what I’ve done to stay close to her, to get this far.
She makes a note, her pen moving with the same care she brings to everything. The line between her brows tightens in concentration as a strand of auburn hair falls across her cheek, catching the light like copper wire.
I fight the urge to reach across the desk and tuck it behind her ear, just to watch her breath catch.
I want to see if she freezes or leans into the touch without thinking, to test exactly how long I can keep my fingers pressed to her skin before she pulls away.
I've spent seven years watching from a distance, and now she’s within arm’s reach.
I can see the gold in her eyes, the steady rise and fall of her chest, and I think about how I’m going to crawl so far under her skin that she won’t even know where she ends and I begin.
“We’ll explore that more in future sessions,” she says, setting down her pen. “For now, let’s focus on establishing routine and socialization. One part of that will be time spent on shared tasks.”
Socialization. What I hear is time in her space, pulling apart the rhythms of her nights and getting close enough to feel the heat coming off her when she bends to reach for something in the kitchen. I want to stand behind her and see exactly how she reacts when I get too close.
"I'd like that," I say, meaning it in ways she has no hope of understanding.
When she rises and moves toward the door, I follow, letting my eyes trace the lines of her back, the way her shoulders stay tight even as she tries to look relaxed.
The security system’s blind spots, how sound carries through the open floor plan, the fact that her bedroom is directly above mine, separated by nothing but a few inches of hardwood.
I’ve spent seven years watching her through a lens; now I’ll be able to hear her moving through the ceiling.
“I’ll leave you to settle in,” she says, lingering at my door.
The shift in her stance tells me she feels me there, even if she’s trying not to show it.
I wonder if she’s picturing the same thing I am, what it would feel like if I closed the gap and backed her into the frame.
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen at six thirty. ”
“Dr. Hart?” I call as she turns to leave. She pauses, looking back at me, her focus holding on me a beat longer than necessary. “Thank you. For giving me this chance.”
Her shoulders ease, just a fraction. The look she gives me is probably the same one she uses on every patient who plays along. But I take it anyway, pretending it’s just for me.
"Everyone deserves a second chance, Mr. Blackthorn."
Mr. Blackthorn. So formal. I wonder how my name would sound when she has no breath left, when her voice breaks on it. I want to know how it sounds when her skin is slick and she’s shaking under me, when she finally understands what it means to belong to someone like me.
Soon, I promise myself. Dr. Eleanor Hart will learn that some redemptions are paid for in skin and sweat. And I’ll be the one collecting.
I stand at my window later, watching her move through the garden.
She pauses at a rose bush, her fingers brushing the petals with the same unconscious care she gives the jasmine.
She treats everything like it might break if she's not careful. She has no idea her biggest challenge won’t be my redemption. It will be surviving me.
But she’ll learn. Very fucking soon.