“Stay in the car,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Obviously.”
When he stepped out and closed the door, I sat up straighter to watch the way he moved, calm and unhurried. I could see how he could be intimidating in the right circumstances. Not just his resting bitch face or his stature, but his entire aura. He approached a man leaning against a rusted dumpster. I watched as they spoke, noting how the other man’s body language was much less confident. He was twitchy, nervous, distrustful.
Then I saw Halo reach into his jacket. The man raised his hands in protest, but it didn’t matter. It happened so fast… so fast it felt like the world fell out from under me. One second they were talking, the next Halo had him pinned against the dumpster. He used his body and left hand to hold the man up. Jesus, it wasn’t unlike the way he’d held me in the shower. He had a blade in hand, and he was stabbing without any hesitation. It was brutal, efficient, quiet. The man sputtered over Halo’s shoulder, spitting blood down his back as he stared off in a state of shock.
I couldn’t move either. I couldn’t blink or breathe or swallow. Everything blurred around me.
When it was done, Halo dropped the man, pulling the man’s coat off and using it to wipe his blade and the blood off of his shoulder. He looked around, not frantic or concerned… just checking, like this was a job site, and he was making sure it was clear.
Then he walked back toward me as though nothing had happened. Panic took hold of me, and I slumped back down into the seat, trying to quell the nausea I felt.
He opened the driver’s door and slid in, the car shifting under his weight. “Didn’t take long,” he said, breathing even and controlled.
I didn’t speak, my voice wasn’t available. I could barely hold eye contact.
He looked over at me, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
I said it too fast, voice so unsteady. Was I afraid? I wanted to look over at him, to convince myself he was still the man who’d washed my hair in the shower and whispered soft things against my throat.
“Eden—”
“I said nothing.”
I didn’t want to lie, but I also didn’t want the truth spoken aloud. I didn’t want to admit that watching him kill someone—not hearing about it, not reading the report, butseeing it—had done something irreversible to my insides.
We drove in silence.
He parked in front of a dusty little grocery store on the edge of the same town where he had killed the man at the bar. It had a cartoon pig on the sign and flyers in the windows advertising sales. It was quaint, adorable. I might have swooned over how picturesque it was, any other day.
Halo got out of the car, but I couldn’t move. I sat, staring straight ahead. He opened my door for me and offered me hishand. I thought I could still see the tiniest spatter of blood on his wrist.
“Come on,” he said.
I stayed frozen.
“Eden?”
I turned my head away from him, so he couldn’t see whatever it was that I was feeling.
“I don’t want to see more of what you do.” The words came out brittle and too quiet.
Halo didn’t move right away. I didn’t look at him, but I felt him there. His presence always arrived before his voice: heat and weight and gravity.
In my periphery, I saw him crouch down next to the open door, lowering himself to my level.
His voice was soft. “You saw.”
It wasn’t a question, just a somber statement.
I nodded once, eyes still fixed on the cartoon pig on the sign above the store. “You didn’t know?”
“I had a feeling. The way you looked when I got in the car. You were so still.”
I swallowed. My mouth felt dry, my throat thick. “What was I supposed to do?”
