Chapter 21
chapter
twenty-one
SHAY
That kiss was…
I pressed my fingers to my lips as the Lyft took what felt like hours to get home. Taillights glittered like rubies. It had started to snow a little, the world outside wet and jewellike.
I didn’t know kisses could be like that. Graham rarely kissed me, and when he did, it was usually closemouthed. He just wasn’t very affectionate.
It was never like Calder, who’d kissed me like he was trying to steal my soul.
My lips still tingled with his kiss. My blood was fizzy and carbonated. That kiss was something electric, something that, up until this point, I thought existed only in my books.
But why did he lie? Was I some kind of game to him?
I bit my thumbnail, gnawing over the night.
Did he think I was fucking stupid?
Chew.
And what the fuck was wrong with me that I didn’t care?
Chew.
The minute Calder sensed a change with me, he stopped and called me a car. Even though I should be hating him for lying or, I don’t know, finally calling the police, something kept stopping me.
The car dropped me outside of my small apartment building. I thanked the driver and made the short walk through the snow. My sister had music blaring through her closed door, so she didn’t hear me come in.
I wasn’t ready to answer what I knew would be a barrage of questions.
I tiptoed unnecessarily past her door and shut myself in the bathroom. I turned on the water, running a hot bath, and poured some eucalyptus-scented magnesium flakes into the water.
Our rarely-if-ever used linen closet was stocked with fresh and folded towels.
Absently wondering what had gotten into my sister to make her do more laundry in one month than she’d done in thirty-plus years, I pulled out a fluffy, fresh towel that smelled like lilac and bergamot.
I pressed my face into the soft cotton, mind still reeling.
Void—rather, Calder—had said I was looking for trouble. At the time I didn’t really think too deeply on it. I thought he was being, you know, hot.
Ball of sexual chaos.
Maybe.
Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe I’d read so many romance novels and had begun to think the spark was a fantasy, if not a total lie. With Graham I hadn’t felt it. But with Calder? With Void? My body was electric.
Limerence, I reminded myself, and sat on the bath’s white porcelain edge as it filled, undoing the straps of my heels.
It had nothing to do with how thoughtful he was. How he took me to a plant-based restaurant. It was limerence.
Water sloshed against my ass, getting my sister’s dress wet.
“Shit,” I said and hopped up, quickly turning the water off. I slid the straps of Lithie’s black dress off my shoulder and shimmied it to my waist, then paused. A small purple bruise was forming above my nipple.
Calder’s bite.
I chewed my lower lip, fingers ghosting the mark.
I shook my head.
Limerence.
The bath was a lovely, delicious heat. The kind that thawed my bones and fogged away any negative feelings. I sat like that for a while. Feeling and thinking nothing but heat and water.
I read something about kinks stemming from trauma. What kind of trauma caused a desire to be stalked?
I sank deeper into the bath, hair a floating halo around my head. Thoughts and memories spread out in a formless blob.
My father left when I got sick. My ex-fiancé cheated on me. The people who were supposed to love me the most…didn’t. But this relative stranger was so obsessed with me he was breaking the law.
Was it weird to think I felt safe with someone whom I barely knew, who admitted to stalking and hacking into all my information—
The bathroom door shot open with such force it slammed against the wall.
“Jesus!” I startled.
My sister stood in the doorway, her face slathered green with a mud mask, wearing her favorite tee—a powder-blue shirt with Freud’s face on it, and the text Ur Mom Gave Me This Shirt.
“If you think you’re getting away with not telling me about your date, well, you don’t know me.” She sat on the toilet, a joint between her pointer and middle fingers. “Spill.”
“This couldn’t wait until after my bath?” I asked.
She took a long drag, exhaling musky-smelling smoke. “No.”
I rolled my eyes as she handed me the joint.
“It was…” I took a puff.
How to tell my sister Calder was the same man from the graveyard…the one who stalked me and whom I very much did not discourage from said stalking.
After a moment of silence, my sister said, “That bad, huh?”
“No.” I shook my head emphatically. “Not bad. Just…unexpected.”
“I’m assuming you didn’t fuck?” She plucked the joint from my fingers. “Unless you did and it was tragically short.”
“Lithie…” I rubbed the mark above my breast absently. “Have you ever wanted to be with someone, even if everything on paper is saying no?”
She inhaled deeply. The smoke blurred her features, and when she spoke, her voice was hoarse. “Yeah.”
My sister was notorious for avoiding attachments. It came easy to her, unlike me.
I pushed the water around, unsure what to say.
“Quick question,” she said, looking for a change of topic. “Are you well?” I arched a brow, and she continued. “You’ve been doing all the chores. The laundry, the dishes, even the litter box is clean.”
Me? I was going to thank her.
I blinked. “What? I’m not doing the chores—”
I paused.
No fucking way he broke into my house, right?
“You haven’t been doing the chores?” Lithie asked, concern etching her words. Before I could respond, an alarm sounded on my sister’s phone and she hopped up. “Shit. I’m late for the club.” She patted me on the head, telling me she was proud of my whoring, and then left.
I sat back, shoulders sliding under the cooling water. For weeks Calder had been breaking into my apartment to…clean. What else had he been doing?
As if sensing I was thinking about him, Calder sent a message from the app.
Did you get home all right?
Calder knew I got home because the motherfucker was stalking me. (And because I hadn’t, for some inexplicable reason, changed my password or told the police.)
I was going to take a page from my lord and savior Phoebe Buffay.
He doesn’t know I know.
I reached a wet hand out of the tub, grabbing my phone, but I didn’t respond to Calder. I took a photo of my legs in the tub, just barely hiding my pussy, and then posted it to my “close friends” with the text: Bath after a bad date <3
“Void” responded in less than thirty seconds.
Bad date?
I set my phone down without a response.
Game. On.