“Have you ever killed somebody?”
Shep nodded. “Yes.”
Elijah’s nostrils flared, his pulse skittering beneath his skin. “For fun?”
Shep frowned. “No.”
“So, like… in the military,” Elijah asked.
“Yes.”
Elijah leaned in, so close their lips were almost touching. “Would you ever hurt me?”
“Not intentionally, no.”
“Even if you were mad at me? Even if I said I hated you?”
Shep gripped Elijah’s wrists a little tighter as if to emphasize his words. “I could never hurt you.”
“Would you hurt anybody I love?” he whispered, his mother’s face coming to mind. She was a monster, but she was still his only living family.
“No. Because I’d never hurt you. I’m not a murderer, Elijah. I don’t kill for sport or for fun or some deep dark compulsion. But some people just need killing. Some people aren’t fit to walk among normal humans.”
In a million years Elijah could never have imagined having this conversation. “And you make that call?”
“Me? No. That’s above my paygrade. But if it’s decided that people should be… removed from the chessboard, sometimes I was the one who did it. It wasn’t personal.”
Elijah knew people in the military were often put into situations where they hadto kill another person. Hell, Linc saw a therapist for his PTSD, sometimes twice a week. He must have seen some major shit go down for it to mess up somebody as together as he seemed. But Shep didn’t seem messed up. He didn’t seem bothered at all. “Are you a psychopath?” he blurted.
“No.” At Shep’s definitive statement, Elijah let out the breath he’d been holding. Until he said, “I’m a high-functioning sociopath.”
“Like Sherlock Holmes?” Elijah muttered.
“What?”
Elijah flushed. “Nothing.”
Elijah wondered if he’d slipped into a coma. It seemed strange that his movie roles and his real-life mirrored each other so closely. First withDown the Middleandnow he was sitting in his bedroom with a self-proclaimed sociopath right before he left to film a movie about a serial killer. A sociopath who used to torture people for money. A sociopath with a body count. A sociopath who just blew him in his kitchen after telling him he’d do anything to make him happy.Jesus. “I don’t really know what being a sociopath means, if I’m being honest.”
“Do you want to meet my mom?”
It was so unexpected, that Elijah could only blink at him for a full minute. “What?”
“My mom. My brother thinks you should meet her. She studies people like me for a living. She could even help you with your research... and with me. If you still want me around after this.”
It was a testament to Elijah’s fucked up life that it had never even occurred to him that removing Shep from said life was even an option. Charlie had talked about red flags. There were enough red flags in this conversation to wallpaper his bedroom and yet none of it mattered. He wasn’t giving Shep up, not yet anyway.
He closed the distance between them without thought, pressing a kiss to Shep’s lips. “I guess we’re going to meet your mom.”
Shep woke to the creaking of the stairs. He didn’t turn on the light, but sat up, putting his feet on the floor. It was Elijah. He knew without looking. He could tell by the cadence of footfalls on the stair risers and by the hesitant way he pushed the door open wider. He’d been quiet since their talk, content to just sit at the island and watch Shep while he rearranged their schedules and hashed out their new travel plans. He’d spent the rest of his time alone in his room packing, only exiting to brush a kiss on Shep’s cheek before claiming he needed to sleep. When he’d gone to bed, he’d brushed a kiss on Shep’s cheek before making a quick exit.
When he saw Shep sitting at the side of the bed, he crossed the room on bare feet, stopping just out of Shep’s reach. Elijah stood, his lip caught between his teeth as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“What’s wrong?” Shep asked.
Elijah took a shuddery breath and then dragged his shirt over his head, dropping it onto the floor. The blood rushed from Shep’s brain to his dick so fast it made him dizzy. Elijah locked eyes with him as he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his pajama pants and slid them off, leaving him naked and hard. The look on the boy’s face was so vulnerable, it kicked up an instinct in Shep that was too primal to name.
Elijah seemed to make some kind of internal decision, closing the distance between them to straddle Shep’s thighs. “Tell me this is okay,” he whispered, gaze pleading.
