“You broke into my house?!”
“No, I used your key,” he corrected. His features narrowed, “You should never leave your key
anywhere near the front door. That’s the first place robbers will look.”
I crossed my arms defiantly. “That’s an interesting safety tip coming from the guy who already
broke into my house. Maybe next time you break in, you can leave me a list of everything else I
do wrong.”
He sighed. “Okay, I broke into your house—but I brought your things here for you. Can’t we
just call it even?” He smiled, but his face was tight. “Besides, it wouldn’t have mattered
even if you hadn’t left the key under the mat. The front door was practically falling off its
hinges. Anyone could have gotten into that house without a key.”
Strangely, this didn’t make me feel any better.
His eyes held my gaze, but his face was indecipherable. I twisted an errant hair back behind my
ear and looked away.
“What’s wrong?” he quickly asked.
I tried to glue a smile on my face before I turned my eyes back to him. “Nothing.”
He assessed my attempt. “Do I make you nervous?”
I thought about this for a moment. There were no knots in my shoulders—just in my stomach.
“No, I’m not nervous around you,” I answered truthfully.
“Then you’re still afraid of me, aren’t you?” he asked resentfully. “It probably didn’t
help that I confessed to breaking into your house.”
“That didn’t help,” I agreed.
I took a long breath, took a step away from him, and looked down at my fingers before
responding. “I’m afraid of what you could do. I mean, I’ve seen what you could do—but, to
answer your question, no, I’m not afraid of you.” This was also the truth—strange, completely
ridiculous, totally dangerous, but true.
He came closer to me and lifted my chin with his finger, forcing me to look up at him. I didn’t
flinch or recoil from him this time, but my heart rate rocketed while he judged my expression. I
kept his eyes but held my breath, which was probably a good thing, considering that I hadn’t
brushed my teeth in a few days.
After a half-second, he was content with what he saw on my face and released me.
“Then what is it?”
I forced myself to walk away from him again before I passed out. “It’s nothing.”
“Tell me,” he pleaded.
I leaned against the bedpost and swallowed hard.
“Please?” he added.
“I can’t read you. It’s … unsettling.”
His eyes questioned. “I don’t understand.”
My cheeks were getting hot. “Your face never changes. I don’t know when you’re angry, or
happy, or—”
“Or if I’m going to kill you,” he finished, his voice gloomy.
“Or have me killed,” I added. “Why didn’t you just tell me that you weren’t going to kill
me when I freaked out in the apartment?”
“Would you have believed me?” he asked bitterly.
I bit the inside of my lip and nodded.
His face darkened and I heard him draw a breath. “You had no reason to believe me. In fact, you
shouldn’t believe me. You said yourself that you’ve seen what I’m capable of.”
It took all my strength to keep the tears from escaping my eyes; it was painful to replay that
moment when I thought I had been sentenced to my death. “But wouldn’t it have been a better
than the alternative? Better that having me sit in a car for how many hours, with the guy who I
thought was going to kill me and bury the body in the middle of nowhere …”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said with sincerity. “You caught me by surprise; I didn’t know
what to do, I’m not used to that. The crying stuff I mean.”
He paused. A sheepish smile crossed his face. “Though I thought for sure you would have had
everything figured out as soon as the kid opened his mouth.”
“Well, I didn’t,” I sniffed. “It’s not like I get kidnapped every day.”
His face soured. A wall had closed the features of his face again, and he looked away.
“I’ll make some room in my dresser so that you can put your stuff away,” he said, his voice
robotic.
“Okay … Thank you.”
He pointed to a door that was at the other end of the room. “The washroom’s in there. I’m
sure you’re going to want to shower and change and all that other stuff.”
I nodded. Later I would savor the notion of having my own bathroom again, even if it was in a
prison.
“Shower up and come back downstairs when you’re done,” he said.
We stood for a minute, looking around in uncomfortable silence, not looking at each other. Then
without saying anything else, he turned around, closing the door behind him.
Chapter Six:
Cool Kids