Chapter 15 Reed
Reed
Damn, I should’ve set an alarm.
My body aches in a strange, satisfied way, but today we have the real hunt—the Forest Siren. We’ll have to silence her lullabies for eternity, allow her to rest in damnation.
Cooper shifts beside me, his eyes slowly blinking awake.
“How’d you sleep?” I ask.
He stretches, a low groan escaping from those pink lips. “Not too bad. Glad to see I wasn’t murdered in my dreams,” he chuckles.
I grin. “You’re saying you trust me now?”
He hesitates, rubbing his eyes. “Trust is a strong word… maybe a more intimate acceptance of death.”
“That’s basically marriage, lovebird,” I say, cracking my neck. “Some people bond over brunch, we bond over spilled blood.”
Cooper laughs, the sound music to my ears. “Yeah, nothing says romance like a shared felony.”
I swing my legs over the side of the creaky Airbnb bed, the floorboards groaning beneath my feet. “Yeah, we’re redefining couple goals—sushi and kill.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to pick up another pair of chopsticks in my life,” he jokes, his crystal blue eyes catching the morning sun.
Fuck, he’s beautiful.
All five-foot-six of him—compact chaos chiseled in muscle and bad ideas. Defined pecs, casual abs that pop out when he raises his arms. And those fucking dimples, deep enough to make my brain stall every time he smiles, a reminder that even serial killers have weaknesses.
He’s a walking paradox of innocence and darkness, malleable to the influences around him. A boy built from sugar and sin, learning how to love with blood on his hands.
He shouldn’t make sense. None of this should. I should be above elementary romance, but he makes my heart beat in a way that I had long forgotten.
I watch him stretch all four limbs, his legs shaking with the effort, the morning light painting his entire body gold. “You’re staring…,” he says, with a mischievous smirk.
“Observation is a huge part of my job,” I quip back.
“Right,” he says, yawning. “Being a perv is totally a part of your job description.”
“Some doctors get carpal tunnel. In this case, I got emotionally compromised and mildly horny before noon,” I deadpan.
He snorts, running a hand through his blonde hairs. “Sorry to break it to you, but you are out of luck this morning. At least offer a guy some coffee and breakfast before trying to crawl back in the sheets with them,” he says with a grin.
“Coffee and breakfast?” I scoff, reaching for my shirt. “You’re lucky I didn’t chloroform you for an extra hour of sleep.”
He laughs, his dimples popping out. “See, this is why you have been chronically single.”
“Please,” I huff, buttoning my shirt. “I chose to be single. I could have had any ass in that hospital if I wanted.”
“Awww, so you were too good for anyone else?” he teases, offering a wicked smirk as those blue eyes see right through me.
I could kiss those pink lips and hold onto them until his face turns cyanotic.
Glue my mouth to his and steal the air straight from his lungs.
Let him embrace what it feels like to be moments from death.
Then he would know why I held back, why I resisted my primal urges for so long.
It’s too dangerous to be compromised with emotions.
And I can feel the fear slinking in. What if something happens to him? It would be my fault. I put him at risk by saving his life. By dragging him into my old life.
He tilts his head, catching the edge in my stare. “You’ve got that look again. The one that makes me wonder if you’re flirting or plotting my death,” he murmurs.
“Can’t it be both, sweetheart?” I ask, my voice laced with sweet venom.
“Maybe after some caffeine,” he grins, feral as a fox that’s learned to flirt.
“Okay… just because you’ve taken my heart hostage,” I mutter, grabbing the keys and lacing my boots.
“Glad we are both victims here,” he chuckles, making me fight the temptation to bend him over in the doorway and teach his clever mouth a filthy lesson.
We hop in the Audi, and drive through Anchorage that’s riddled with stoplights. It’s annoyingly paced. As soon as you make one green, the next one turns yellow just before you can clear the intersection. I almost slam the dash out of frustration. Who is programming these lights?
I turn into the first coffee hut we see: Café Italia. A small red building with two driveways. The line is long, with three cars at each window, exhaust frothing in the air. The engine kills as we stall, waiting for the line to move, which it does—but at a snail’s pace.
I look over to Cooper and his blonde head as he daydreams out the window. His reflection catches on the glass, which is handsomely inconvenient. “What are you thinking about getting?”
“They have quite a unique menu, maybe a Red Bull surprise?”
I blink at him, my mind disgusted at the thought of Red Bull being used as a base in any drink. “That sounds like something you are forced to drink at gunpoint.”
He grins, unbothered. “How fitting.”
I glance at the hand-painted sign on the red café, trying not to overjudge the menu, but failing spectacularly. There’s an entire section devoted to energy drink fusions. Red Bull with coconut syrup. Red Bull with cream and caramel drizzle. Mud Water?
“Who the hell drinks these concoctions?” I mutter under my breath.
Cooper shrugs his shoulders. “With all of the darkness, Alaskans must be sadists with a twisted caffeine addiction.”
I can’t help but to break out in laughter, hard enough to dislodge the mucous in my throat. “Yeah, whatever gets them through the darkness. For some people it’s murder. For others, drinks that belong in hell.”
His eyes go wide. “Oh yeah, wasn’t there a barista that got abducted from one these a while ago? I remember watching a documentary about her case.”
“Yeah, there was. That guy was a sick fuck. Chopped her up and threw her bits in a lake. He did unspeakable things to her corpse. That bastard deserves to be hanged a million times over. And burn in hell for the rest of eternity.”
“Well, that’s where you come in huh? Stopping deranged lunatics, one at a time,” Cooper says his eyes flicking to the snowbank at the edge of the parking lot. “Bet his go to drink with something stupid, like a caramel macchiato, light on the sugar.”
“That’s where we come in, Cooper.” I keep my voice even, letting the words digest. “You know that there’s no going back to your old life. No more Christmases with your family. Or birthday night outs with your friends,” I say, watching my words settle over him like falling snowflakes.
“That’s okay.” He sniffles his nose. “I don’t have much family to see. Only my parents and the ghost of my brother.”
The way he says ghost causes my eyes to narrow and my chest to ache for the tears forming in his eyes. I land my hand on his thigh, wishing that I could drain the sorrow from his mind—alleviate the pain that is burrowing through him.
“What happened to him?” I ask, pulling the Audi forward, my ears perked.
His voice comes out quiet, like he’s afraid a semi will slam into us if the words are spoken too loudly.
“We were in a bad car accident. A drunk driver T-boned us. I survived and so did my parents.” He pauses, taking a heavy breath.
“Bastard’s name was Bernard Meyer. Everybody loved him in town, he was the city architect.
And a classic drunk that thought he could drive with a BAC three times the legal limit. ”
“What happened to him?”
“He got off easy. Vehicular manslaughter. St. Croix Penitentiary. I think he’s eligible for parole since he did his ten years. I don’t keep up with him though. It brings up memories, I never want to relive.”
“That’s a shame,” I say, with the most sympathetic tone I can offer.
Because in reality, my mind is spiraling, I’m going to kill this motherfucker if it’s the last thing I do before my soul leaves this Earth.
I’ll torture him. Waterboard him with vodka, since he thinks he can get behind a wheel all shined up.
Or maybe string him up with some construction tape, watching him try to explain away the blueprint of he thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to end the life of a teenager and almost an entire family.
I’ll starve him. Watch his body decay as his flesh consumes itself.
Nobody can hurt Cooper and get away with it.
“Yeah, I’ve made my peace with it,” he says, his pupils void of emotion, his words sounding like self-administered euthanasia.
“Don’t worry, baby, you won’t have to live with that sorrow forever,” I say, pulling the car to the window.
I’ll make sure of that.
He looks at me with a small smile, a flicker of warmness returning to his eyes. God, I want to smother him with my arms and never let him go. Keep him in my bedroom, protected and moaning. Shroud him from the dangers and illnesses of the world.
People are sickening creatures. Obnoxious and repulsive in their desires and instincts. He doesn’t deserve their vile behavior.
He deserves tranquil mornings filled with a French press and fresh roses. He deserves someone who’ll shield him from the outside. I can give that to him. I can make him my better half—give him the fucking world.
A young, chirpy woman smiles at us as she slides open the window. “Good morning! What can I get for you two today?”
“Can I get a double-shot chocolate mocha with a blueberry muffin, please?” Cooper asks, his nose sniffling while his voice wobbles.
“Sure thing, honey.” She glances toward me. “Anything for you, love?”
“No, I’m okay,” I say. My stomach lurches at the thought of a sugar-coated smoothie of Red Bull and peppermint.
I hand her some cash, driving forward and Cooper sips on his steaming mocha, the cacao essence filling the cabin in tandem with the toasted blueberries.
“Okay—let’s revisit the Forest Siren,” he says, his expression hardening.