Silence stretches. Dense and loaded. He doesn’t rush to fill it, which somehow makes it heavier.
I straighten a little, testing myself. My legs protest, but they hold. Barely.
“You usually leave your mark like that?” I ask lightly, eyes still on the mirror shard instead of him. “I mean—on the girls you don’t, you know… kill.”
There’s a beat.
“No,” he says. Immediate, and certain. “But then again, I usually don’tnotkill them.”
That gets my attention.
I glance down, catching his eyes in the fractured glass. There’s no apology there. No performance. Just blunt honesty, delivered like a fact he’s long since stopped flinching from.
Huh.
“Well,” I murmur, mouth tipping into something that’s almost a smile, “guess that makes me special.”
He smirks. “You good?” he asks.
This time, I can tell by his tone it’s not a check-in. It’s an assessment.
I take a breath. Slow. Measured. Like that’s going to undo the fact that my pulse is still acting like it wants to jump out of my throat and run laps.
“Okay,” I say, glancing up at him. “Tell me if this is the part where I should be concerned.”
He waits.
“Because statistically,” I continue, deadpan, “this is where a normal person would be losing their shit. Crying. Hyperventilating. Calling a fucking therapist”—I gesture vaguely between us—“Instead, I’m standing here very aware that you and your brother could absolutely ruin me. Like—end me,” Iclarify. “Erase me. Decide I’m done. And instead of being scared, I’m…” I scoff under my breath. “Annoyingly into it.”
His eyes sharpen. Focused now.
“It’s fucked up,” I add helpfully. “I know. I’m not pretending it’s healthy.”
“And yet,” he says evenly.
“And yet,” I agree. “The fact that you’re both capable of it and chose not to…does something to me.” I tilt my head, studying his reaction. “Which I assume is the opposite of reassuring.”
“You’re saying the danger turns you on,” he says.
“I’m saying,” I correct, “that the wholeyou could kill me and didn’tthing? Yeah. That’s doing more for me than I’d normally admit.” A pause. “Apparently my brain has decided red flags are fucking foreplay.”
He steps past me and turns on the faucet. Water rushes into the sink, steady and irritatingly normal.
“You’re right. Most people run from us, and not the way you run. They scream, and cry,” he says.
I snort. “So what you’re saying is I’m fucked up. Because before you two…in that alley…I don’t think I ever really felt…seen.”
The silence stretches. Heavy, and charged.
I glance at him sideways. “Relax. I’m fully aware that says more about me than you.”
Another beat.
“And that doesn’t bother you?” I ask. “That I didn’t react like the girls you’re used to?”
He exhales, slow, considering. “It did at first. Because it meant I couldn’t read you. Couldn’t predict you and steer you the way I do everyone else.”
I wait.
