She looks up at me with her big doe eyes, and I feel something trembling inside me. That urge that feels like the killing moon but isn’t. It’s warm, so warm that the heat of the woods is almost intolerable.
I want to kiss her again. Somehow, though, I manage to restrain myself.
Chloe lifts her hands, her brow furrowed. She shapes a single word—hurt—and then shakes her head. “Is it okay if I speak?” she signs instead.
I nod.
“Thank you.” There’s her voice again, soft and musical. The blood thrums in my veins. “I’m sorry, this is very—it’s easier for me. I’m still out of practice with ASL and—“ She hitches her shoulders. “This is a weird situation, you know?” Then she laughs nervously, shaking her head. “That’s an understatement, isn’t it?”
“I agree.”
Chloe looks up at me. Her cheeks are flushed, and I can smell the blood beneath her skin. My cock stirs.
“That this is strange,” I add. “I’ve been very isolated.”
She breathes out. “Why don’t you want to hurt me?” she asks. “You said that last night. You didn’t want to hurt me?—”
“And I told you,” I interrupt, my hands fluttering. “Because you’re beautiful.”
The blush in her cheeks deepened. “That doesn’t seem like a very good reason,” she mutters.
I wish I could explain it better. That it’s not so much that she’s beautiful but that she stirs all these feelings up inside me. That she’s like my killing moon, but instead of being cold and pale, she’s as bright as the sun. She’s the light that went missing the night I drowned in Hanging Lake.
“You are different,” I finally say instead, which isn’t much better, and it just makes her face knot up with more confusion. “I don’t like trespassers, but you’re not a trespasser. I don’t mind you being here.” No, that’s not right. I correct myself. “I like you being here. In my territory.”
Chloe sucks in her breath, presses herself against the trees. “Your territory,” she murmurs. “That’s why this place is dangerous, isn’t it? You.. Hurt people who…” Her voice trails off.
“I kill trespassers,” I say, and when the red drains out of Chloe’s face, turning it ashy and pale, I feel some guilt atenjoying it. Her fear is sweet to me, but not in the way fear usually is. “And I kill people who hurt me.”
That’s the easiest way to explain the killing moon, for now.
“I see,” Chloe says, and there’s a breathiness in her voice that’s like the tremble in her hands when she was signing last night. That same sweet fear.
“Would you like to see my cabin?” I ask. I don’t know why; the question just comes to me, and it feels right. Maybe because she’s a guest and not a trespasser. Or maybe I want her to leave a trace of her scent in my home.
Fear flickers through her eyes, but she plasters on a brave smile. I like that. “Do I have a choice?”
I frown at that. Then nod. Then sign, “Always.”
Her breath hitches, a sound like a tree branch cracking in the woods. She didn’t actually say yes to seeing my cabin, but I pretend she did, stepping past her to lead her to my home. My father would chide me, having a human at my back, but it feels the polite thing to do in this situation. Besides, I doubt she has a gun. There was no sign of it in those tight jean shorts she’s wearing.
When we get to my cabin, Chloe steps up beside me and stares at it. For a moment, I feel a shudder of embarrassment; compared to her house, it looks condemned. The roof is sagging and missing shingles. The windows are dirty. At least the porch is swept, and the inside is clean. Too clean, I realize now. Clean enough that if she had called the cops, they would have known someone lived there, despite my efforts last night to hide the traces of my presence.
But she didn’t call the cops.
“I can make you something to drink,” I sign to her, and then I step up on the porch. I half expect her to turn and run, but she doesn’t. She follows me.
I can feel her emotions wafting up behind me: more of that sweet fear, but also confusion. Surprise, when she walks through the door.
“It’s nice in here,” she says, and I hear the surprise in her voice, too. Once again, I see my cabin through her eyes: plain, with little furniture. But tidy. Mom would have hated it if I had let the inside fall into disrepair, even if I don’t tend to the exterior as I should.
I nod at her, not sure how else to acknowledge the compliment. “I can make you coffee,” I sign. There’s still enough for both of us, even though I hid it away in the back of the old pantry. “Or there’s well water.”
“Water’s fine,” she says. “It’s, um, it’s too hot for coffee.”
I nod and slip into the kitchen. I did draw water from the well this morning when the cops didn’t show up last night, and I dig out two glasses from where I hid them and fill them with it. When I carry them back into the living room, Chloe is perched on the edge of my old sofa, her hands in her lap.
It’s so strange, having her in my home, the way she seems to light up all the dusty, cobwebbed darkness. When she lifts her eyes to meet mine, I have to squeeze the glasses together to keep from dropping them. I’m not used to being seen this much.
