He sighed. “Just one ex—a very long time ago. I loved him, once. But apart from that, it’s just been sex.”
He said it so casually, as though he had no idea how that sounded. Sometimes he said things so off the wall it was as though he were an alien from another planet.
Or a creature from another time and place.
I still hadn’t brought up his lack of a pulse. His blindingly fast movement. The fact that he only seemed to breathe when he spoke.
Shockingly, those questions didn’t really roll off the tongue. And I got the strong sense from him that he didn’t want me to ask—that he was afraid of it, in fact.
And somehow, that mattered to me more than it should. I wasn’t sure I cared what he was as much as I wanted to know who he was. And even then, I couldn’t stay tense around him, as if my body understood on some irrational level that he was harmless to me, regardless of what he was.
“What did I say?” Nicolas demanded when I’d gone quiet for several long moments. He frowned, as though trying to puzzle it out—but he kept his eyes glued to the road. Perhaps because he remembered my reaction the first time I’d been in the car with him behind the wheel. With a sigh, he added, “I said something strange, didn’t I?”
“You just admitted to being emotionally unavailable and into casual sex with a string of meaningless partners,” I confirmed.
“Ah. Perhaps you can help me by saying something equally off-color?”
I snorted and shook my head. “Nope. Sorry.”
“You mentioned once before that you’ve dated a long line of ‘fuckers’ and ‘assholes,’” Nicolas said, arching an eyebrow at me.“You’ve mentioned the pill popper and the married man. Surely at least one of them has a juicy story attached?”
“You’re relentless.”
“You truly have no idea.”
“There’s one ex—the first one. He was… really bad news. I had a hard time getting away from him. And he recently found out that I moved back somehow…”
I trailed off, suddenly horrified by my own words.
What on earth was I doing? Was I about to tell Nicolas about the ominous text messages? That was completely insane. Talk about top-ten ways to scare off a guy.
And despite his obvious oddness, I didn’t want Nicolas to go anywhere.
It was just fresh in my mind because I’d gotten two more text messages last night, one right after the other:Who is the blond man, Eli?And then:You know you belong to me, not him. Don’t make me hurt anyone.
Nicolas glanced at me, concern stamped across his expression. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said, too quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“Your pulse is pounding,” he murmured. “It’s something.”
“You can hear my pulse?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
He shook his head, grimacing. “And now you’re frightened.”
“Maybe give me some credit,” I shot back, grateful for the opportunity to get annoyed. It was so much better than feeling helpless. “I don’t scare as easily as you think. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be in this car with you.”
He pursed his lips. “True.” He paused, then added, “If it helps, things didn’t end well with my ex, either. Though unlike in your case, it was my fault things… ended.”
The way he said it, so simply, was surprising. Usually, everything he said seemed to have about a million miles ofsubtext lurking beneath the surface. Or he acted like the world was there simply for his amusement. That he would baldly admit fault for anything on purpose was… well, odd.
He was trying to comfort me again, I realized—trying to make me feel less alone. Less vulnerable. And he’d done it by sharing a bit of himself.
I sighed. “I don’t miss him. He was… a jerk. And unstable.” I barely suppressed a shudder. “He was violent.”
Nicolas’s hands tightened on the wheel. “What’s his name?”
“Eric.”
