“What is it then?” he asks.
“It means that underneath everything you’re dragging around… you still have a heart.”
He doesn’t blink. Just cocks a brow.
“Ouch.”
“Just calling it like it is.”
And maybe I am being unfair. He’s clearly been here for a while. The proof is scattered everywhere: the empty coffee cups in the corner, the blanket draped over his chair, the open bookabandoned on the nightstand. The man doesn’t just have a heart; he has more than enough of one to sit vigil for three days straight.
The question is why.
Why does he still want me here?
I fucked two of his murdering friends. I’m literally Death’s courier. Nothing about anyone’s existence has improved since they dragged me into theirs. Any sane person—or rather, any person with a functioning attachment to logic, like Nathaniel—would have already cut me loose.
There are a dozen cleaner ways for them to find out who’s a killer. They don’t need me.
“You’re thinking too hard,” he says.
“You’re too observant,” I reply.
“Hazard of the profession.”
“Which part?” I tilt my head. “The pretending-not-to-care part? The ex-doctor-turned-morgue-expert part? Or the serial killer part?”
His head cants to the side.
“Why choose?” he murmurs.
Ah. The implication is murderous.
Cute.
I huff a quiet breath through my nose.
“Fair,” I say. “All those skill sets overlap beautifully when you’re elbow-deep in other people’s insides.”
He licks his lips, and something sparks in his eyes. Conversation shifts on its axis. There’s a moment where two people land on the same frequency without naming it, and you feel it humming under your skin.
That’s where we are now.
“Are you implying I want to be deep in your insides?”
“Don’t you?”
The smile that curls across his mouth is a dark, carved thing.
“I’m a man of science,” he says, leaning forward, forearms on his knees. “Purely hypothetical curiosity. A girl resurrected in a custom-built body? That’s a once-in-a-lifetime experiment.”
I let my lashes lower. “Yes,” I murmur. “I imagine both our minds would be… extensively blown.”
“And yet,” his gaze slips down, then back up, “we didn’t go there yet. I wonder why.”
I wonder why too, but my pulse doesn’t cooperate, and this ridiculous new body of mine overheats far too fast. I need distance. A breath. Something.
“You still haven’t answered why you’re looking at me like that,” I say. “Or why you’re here.”
