“No, it’s okay.” It was June’s car, but I wasn’t precious enough about it to deny Poe a seat while we waited for the tow truck.
He looked around the parking lot, empty except for two cars parked at the other end. “You always work the closing shift?”
“Wasn’t that in your background?” I stood next to him, feeling nervous. The air had cooled with the setting sun, and a quiet had settled over the mall parking lot. Poe looked unfairly beautiful sitting on the hood of June’s car, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze, his blue eyes looking more gray under the streetlamps.
The situation felt intimate, like one you’d share with a date.
“Maybe,” he said. “But I only know what Bram told me.”
I debated telling him that my work schedule was none of his business, but that seemed stupid when I’d already synced my shifts with their stupid calendar app. Plus, he was just making conversation, and if it wasn’t for him I would have been sitting there all alone and paying for a car to get me back to the loft after the tow truck arrived.
“I like working the closing shift,” I said. “The store’s peaceful with no customers.”
He nodded like he understood. “Why a clothing store when you went to cooking school?”
“Are you the only one allowed to ask questions?”
“What do you want to know?”
I thought about it, searching for a good question, one that would tell me something important about the Butchers. “Why do you play in the Hunt?”
He leaned back on the hood of the car and propped himself on his elbows. I already knew he had a big dick thanks to his habit of walking around without clothes, but it was just as undeniable when it was shoved into his jeans, and I had to force myself not to stare.
“We enjoy the benefits, when we win and when we lose.”
“You like to kill people?” It felt obscene to say it out loud, like I was breaking some kind of unspoken rule, but it was better than asking why they wanted random girls living in the loft every three months.
Or maybe I just didn’t want to think of some other girl in my room, surrounded by the Butchers.
“It’s a… vice.”
“Some vice.”
He shrugged. “We all have them.”
I felt like I’d wasted my question, didn’t feel any closer to understanding him, to understanding any of them.
“My turn. Why a clothing store when you went to cooking school?” he asked again.
I considered my words carefully, tried to think of a way to explain without giving away my preoccupation with Ethan Todd that had become an obsession since June’s murder.
“Cooking is a demanding job. Baking even more so.” I didn’t want to tell him that to hold down a job at a restaurant I’d have to arrive before the sun rose to prep, that I’d be working well into the night, then cleaning up. There wouldn’t be any room for hunting Ethan Todd, hanging around his hotel, looking for a way to make him pay. “My sister’s case took up a lot of time.”
He sat up and scooted toward the edge of the hood. “Wasn’t the trial over almost a year ago?”
“Clearly you’ve never lost anyone.” It came out sharper than I’d intended. It was impossible to explain how June’s murder had turned my life upside down, how it had taken everything I thought I’d known about myself and my life until all the things I’d loved, all the things I’d taken for granted, felt like a dream.
Like they’d never been real at all.
I felt a wave of guilt as he looked away.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t.” He turned to look at me before lifting his gaze to the mountains in the distance. “I’ve had my share of loss.”
“What kind of loss?”
He shook his head. “It’s not important.”
