Chapter 21
Quill
Present Day
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I’m sitting on the bed beside her, frozen in shock at hearing the absurd words coming out of her mouth.
“You killed my parents.” She pauses, licks her lips, starts again. “You killed my parents. You did, Quill. You killed my parents.”
Each time, she repeats the accusation more forcefully, as if daring me to deny it. But I merely stare at her.
“Didn’t you, Quill?” she asks, her voice taking on a begging quality. Begging me to prove that I didn’t, I guess.
But I’m not about to start trying to prove myself to the insect now.
I shrug then stand up and walk toward the door.
“Quill!” Her voice comes out loud and shrilly. “You didn’t, did you? Tell me you didn’t!”
Goddamnit, this girl is grating on my nerves. She doesn’t need me to tell her anything. She’s filling in the blanks of my silence for me. She’s so fucking talkative, I wouldn’t even need to be in the room for her to carry out a full conversation between the two of us.
I don’t know what it is that makes me want to pour a vat of bleach on myself everytime she opens her mouth. Or to stuff my cock in her throat and shut her up that way.
The latter option sounds a lot more appealing, but I’ve been around her far too much lately. I need to get away, because my addiction is spiraling out of control.
I managed to survive the worst time of my life with a single rule.
Don’t let her see you.
My days were organized around her. Whenever I didn’t have Devil duty, I was on a plane to California.
When I was stuck around Astley due to training or a contract, I kept my eyes glued to my phone screen, to the camera feeds I’d set up in her dorm and around her campus.
It allowed me to feed my obsession without letting it eat me up. As long as she didn’t see me.
But that all changed when she woke up to me watching her at the hotel.
She’s such a heavy sleeper, a snorer at that, that over the years, I’d stopped taking precautions.
I could’ve literally had a three-course dinner in the same room as her, she wouldn’t have been any the wiser.
But I guess her parents’ death bothered her enough that she wasn’t asleep quite as deeply as usual, and she saw me.
And then, I didn’t have a choice with the rest, did I? I couldn’t exactly let her wander around Devil Tower and get herself killed. Maybe I didn’t have to fuck her while threatening her, but I’m only human.
The worst, most monstrous kind of human.
Anyway, what’s done is done, but right now, I need to get the hell out, or all my work keeping my obsession under control will have been for nothing.
Yet instead of doing the sane thing and leaving without another word, I turn back and say, “Why do you think I killed your parents?”
God fucking damnit. Out of all the things I could have said, an open-ended question was really the worst option. Give the insect an open-ended question, she’ll answer you with a fucking dissertation.
Sure enough, she takes a deep breath and opens her mouth.
Once more biting down on the urge to stuff it with my cock, I open the door determinedly. “Never mind,” I say gruffly. “Stay here. I’ll be back… in a bit.”
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this very bothersome ex I’ve accidentally kidnapped, but grabbing a roll of duct tape from the kitchen seems like a good first step.
“Wait, Quill!”
I clench my jaw, wondering what the hell is wrong with her for being so clingy with the guy she apparently has been thinking killed her parents, and who in any case has definitely done the kinds of things to her that no normal guy would do.
“If it’s not you,” she says, the words coming out in a jumble as I face away from her to grab the doorknob, “that means someone else killed my parents. Maybe I’m next on his list. I guess that doesn’t mean anything to you, though.
Right? I mean, he killed my parents while I was in the freaking shower… ”
Those last words cleave through my brain, which had been busy planning on gagging and binding her with the roll of duct tape and sticking her in the closet to deal with later. I’ve always been a bit of a procrastinator.
But now, the significance of her words crashes into me. I knew from what Liam and Dane had told me that the murderer and her had been in the same house. But while she was in the shower?
I swallow hard, still resolutely turned away from her as the blood boils in my veins.
“You’re not going to let the murderer kill me next, are you?” she asks, misinterpreting my reaction.
I try and fail a number of times to force my words out past the layers of rage lying thickly in my throat. But at last I manage, “What do you mean, he killed your parents while you were in the shower?”
She raises an eyebrow in surprise. “Huh?”
I turn around slowly, glaring at her so viciously that she shrinks back against the wall. “What do you mean, Piper, you were in the shower?”
She gulps a few times before stammering, “I mean, he killed my parents when… when…”
“Did he see you in the shower?”
“Of course not!” Suddenly appearing to understand my reaction, she straightens her back, throwing my glare right back at me.
“Officer Jones told me that’s when it happened.
My parents were probably still alive when I came home.
It happened while I was in the shower. That’s all.
Do you seriously care more about whether he saw me naked than whether he intends to kill me? What the hell is wrong with you?”
So much. So much is wrong with me.
I let myself breathe out in relief, but I’m still furious that a man was in the same house as her when she was naked. Even if he didn’t see her.
Too bad I never got around to putting cameras there. I’d really like to slowly skin and dismember the asshole.
The insect has her eyes glued to mine, carefully studying my reaction.
I guess she can tell my anger has shifted, because she walks up to me and lays a hand on my arm.
The sudden contact makes me want to jump back, the same way I did the first time I visited her at night at the beginning of senior year, but I’ve gotten a little better at controlling my reactions.
I steel myself, not allowing any part of me to show how the nerve endings where she touches me are going haywire.
“Are you going to allow another man to kill me, Quill?” she murmurs. “Or are you going to protect me?”
That word again. Protect.
She used to tell me about that silent protector shit. Back when I thought she loved me, and we spent every second of our free time in her bed or mine, our limbs entwined, as I listened to her talk.
The sound of her chirpy voice soothed me, then. For one year, I loved it, and even found myself missing it when she wasn’t around. I was perfectly happy to lie still beside her, listening to her blather on for hours about things I had no interest in.
Except I did, because they were her things. And everything she said, everything she did, everything she thought, mattered.
They were the only thing that mattered.
She spent a lot of time harping on the silent protector thing. How she’d known I was her silent protector from the moment she laid eyes on me when we were in elementary school. How no amount of bullying in high school had really changed that deep conviction of hers.
I let her believe I was her protector. It made her so happy.
She never realized the only one she had ever really needed protection from was me.
Now, she’s looking at me with pleading eyes, as if trying to find in me the illusion of her childhood. If I had a heart, it would be melting right now.
But my heart was ripped from me the night I got the picture proving what I would never have believed if I hadn’t had the evidence in front of me.
A thousand emotions are surging through me, and I can tell she sees them all as she keeps her eyes fixed on mine, not even breaking contact in the moments that my chest compresses with fury, before it just as quickly dissolves, replaced by another, all-encompassing emotion.
It feels like I’m drowning. I wouldn’t even be able to say a word if I wanted to.
She’s standing so close to me that I can smell her citrusy shampoo, and I can’t tell if it makes me want to throw up or fuck her right then and there on the floor. Or both. Probably both.
She takes another step toward me and I just as hurriedly step back, the doorknob digging into my back as I face her.
“Please, Quill.” She swallows with difficulty.
“I’m being vulnerable right now. I shouldn’t be.
I should be closing myself off from you, but I’m letting you in.
I believe you didn’t do it. But someone did, and I don’t understand why I’m still alive.
Please. I need your help. I need you. I’m scared. ”
The space where my heart should be twists and cripples under the burning intensity of her blue-green eyes. I feel the insane pull as she lifts a hesitant hand toward my face, then thankfully, thinks better of it and brings it back down.
She’s got it all wrong. She shouldn’t be scared now. She should have been scared then. But ever since I conquered my urge to kill her, the only threat to her is gone. Nothing bad will happen to her.
I’ll make sure of that.
Doesn’t mean I can stand to be in the same room with her right now.
Opening the door, I barge out and slam it shut behind me, breathing freely at last now that I’m away from the crushing weight of her.