He blinks. Pushes his hair out of his eyes. There’s dirt all over his shredded, rotting clothes, dirt and old blood, and as the snow melts around him, it turns to sludge on the floor.
“I thought you’d be gone.”
I suck in a breath, my body shaking.
“Everyone else is gone,” he continues, his hands moving slowly. “That’s what always happens after a kill-moon.”
I blink, uncertain if I saw that correctly. He said the same thing that night: the sign forkill, the sign formoon, melded together in a way that suggests they’re meant to connect. It makes my head vibrate, and I think of the moonlight that night, bright and silver as I ran across the yards. The moon had been full. I’ll never forget it.
Theo stares at me, waiting for an answer.
“I didn’t have a choice.” The words come out hard and flinty. “I can’t afford to leave.”
Theo’s shoulders slump a little, and I don’t know how to read his face. He almost looks disappointed. Anger surges up in me.
“You thought I was waiting for you?” I snap. Never mind that part of me was. “After what you did?” My voice trembles. “To me? ToOliver?”
“I didn’t do anything to Oliver.”
“You killed his fucking family!” This erupts out of me in a scream, and I wrap my arms around myself, even though my anger is keeping me warm. “He’s in foster care! They won’t even let me speak to him, so I don’t even know how he’s—” Tears brim on my eyelashes. “How badly you fucked him up,” I snarl.
Theo blanches like I slapped him. “He didn’t see anything,” he signs. “I made sure of that.”
“It doesn’t matter! He was there!” My voice bounces off the cold, shivering air of the living room. “How could you do that?” I scream, and then I launch myself at him, rage burning like a fire through my body. I want to slam my fist into his big chest, to pummel the place where I shot him, but Theo grabs me by the waist and whips me around and throws me onto the couch.
“His family hurt him,” Theo signs, anger darkening his own features. “They didn’t care about him.” His eyes blaze in the darkness, and the crackling firelight wraps him in an eerie orange glow. “He wanted me to protect him! Why do you think he came looking for me?”
“Not like that!” I jump to my feet, and Theo pushes me down again. Only this time, he straddles me, wedging me against the couch with his thick body.
I was right. He is warm.
Theo leans in close, his face inches from mine. I can smell him, the earthy scent of juniper and pine and cold soil, and I hate my body for flushing with a sudden warmth.
I take a shuddering breath. “He didn’t want you to kill?—”
“What if he did?” Theo signs the question simply. “What if he wanted to come live with—” His fingers twistustome, so quickly I’m not sure if I really saw it.
I breathe heavily, staring up at him. He’s dripping cold snowmelt all over me, all over my couch, and I want to scream at him for that, too.
“You’re lying,” I whisper. “Oliver didn’t want that.”
“Oliver wanted a protector,” Theo says, “And that’s what I was.”
I slap him, my arm springing up on its own accord. The sound it makes is like the blast of the shotgun I used to kill him, and my hand burns from the impact.
Theo doesn’t move.
“Is that what you want?” he asks. “Hurt me, if it makes you feel better.”
I screech out my anger and slap him again, harder. He growls softly, and the sound bores into my chest. A traitorous heat floods through my core.
Then I start hitting him in earnest, slamming my fists into his strong, unscarred chest, raining down six months’ worth of sorrow and despair upon his hot, bracing body. And he lets me. He even drags me up by the waist until we’re standing in front of the couch, like he wants me to hit him harder.
And I do. I slap and punch at him, screeching through my hot, desperate tears. He doesn’t try to stop me. He certainly doesn’t try to fight back.
I know I’m not hurting him. Ican’thurt him, not like this. He isn’t human. But god, it feels good, all that pent-up anger pouring out of me.
“Why did you do it?” I scream, the word turning to steam in the frozen air. “Why couldn’t things stay how they were?”
