That wasn’t really the kind of killing I did. It was never spur of the moment and very rarely in my hometown. It was logistical, tactical, and always confidential.
I’d only been home a few days and already my phone was ringing, and from the incessant way it was going off, I’d say whoever wanted to hire me was desperate. Desperate jobs paid very well because they were often messy. And usually, when someone was desperate, it meant they wanted the job donenow,which also added an extra fee.
I wasn’t hard up for money, though, and right now, my attention was focused elsewhere. On keeping someone instead of killing them.
The fact that I was so obsessed over someone I’d just met was not sitting well. I was too analytical, too sensible.I know better. So I went through reps of upper body exercises, muscles straining under the max weight I punished myself with, and tried to convince myself it was because I was sexually frustrated.
I’d gone over a month without sex because of my last job. Haz’s eager mouth and the enthusiastic way he deep-throated my dick was a wet dream come to life.And the way he scraped his teeth along my shaft…The weights clanked when I dropped the bar into the stand and sat up. Grabbing my towel, I wiped the sweat dripping from my nose and brow, then mopped at my hairline.
I liked it a little rough, a little bite of pain with my pleasure. And to have that come with someone who was so goddamned innocent-looking was screwing with my head.
He was screwing with your head before he got ahold of your dick.
Moving to the pull-up bar, I cranked out thirty, begrudgingly coming to terms with the fact that, yeah, I’d been far too interested in him from the moment he nearly plowed me down in the hospital.
I really thought his innocence was an act. I’d been infuriated with him for trying to manipulate me.
But it wasn’t an act. I was sure of it. One night with that blue-and-green-eyed doll and I knew without a doubt the naivety inside Haz was genuine. So rare. I’d never seen it before. Not in an adult. Most certainly not in another man.
I couldn’t understand how he retained it, especially after seeing where he lived and hearing how he grew up.
It made him an anomaly. As if there were somehow a glitch in the programming of his brain. I was so fascinated with his open looks and reactions. His pleasure was unrestrained too, so passionate that he came in his pants with just a kiss.
It was sort of like meeting a myth.
Whatever green view of the world I once believed in was tarnished long ago. The world was cruel. People weren’t much better, and my disdain for humanity grew until it was all I knew. When you live long enough in the dark, you forget about the light.
Any “light” I’d seen over the years made me suspicious, and that mistrust was always proved right. So I assumed there was none left at all.
And then Haz slid into my DMs.
Had I been wrong all this time? Was I just so blinded by my own darkness that I simply saw no light? And if so, then why him? What was it about Hazard’s light that illuminated the blackout consuming me?
These thoughts, thesefeelings,pushed me into the gray when for so long I viewed everything as black and white.
Haz had been right before. Not that I would ever admit that out loud. I was anal. And right now, my analytical, neat brain was going haywire. My usual reaction to this would be to kill whatever was causing such chaos.
And not necessarily literally.
In truth, I saved assassination for paid contracts. I didn’t just go around offing everyone and everything that pissed me off. There were ways to retaliate against those that made life difficult that didn’t require murder. It was what separated a professional hitman from a barbaric murderer on the street.
Besides that, death was too good for a lot of people. Some deserved to suffer.
I didn’t want Haz to suffer. In fact, the very idea had me heading toward the closest treadmill for a run. Being in the gray was uncomfortable. Doubting myself was even worse.
Still, I didn’t want to get away from him.
If anything, I wanted closer. Greedy for the innocence he somehow retained in a mean world, bound and determined to preserve what I considered a near-extinct quality and unscrupulously protecteverythinghe was. Because yes, his innocence was what first drew me, but the man who embodied it was the reason I refused to walk away.
It took me all day to acknowledge this, even though I fell asleep with the thoughts rattling around my brain. But knowing something and accepting it were two completely different things. Now that I had, the way we left things this morning gnawed at me like a dog with a fresh bone. Something was off, and I wanted to know what.
I wanted to know now.
I hoped my little hazard used our time apart today to also come to terms with my presence in his life because it wasn’t going to change. If anything, I was about to become even more invasive.
After finishing a two-mile run in under eighteen minutes, I dropped the speed to a leisurely pace and mopped the sweat off my brow. Draining the bottle of water I’d brought with, I headed into the locker room to shower and change. I wasn’t sure what time Haz got off work, and I couldn’t call him to ask.Completely unacceptable.So I’d just have to go back to the Neon Reef, and if he wasn’t finished, I’d wait.
The locker room was quiet. I only saw two others on my way to the shower. The space in here was cooler than out in the gym as well, the air hitting my sweat-dampened skin and making it prickle with goose bumps.
