“Let’s get going.” I handed back the phone and started my car. “We have a long drive ahead.”
Chapter 7
Meera
Thehighwayrushedbyin quick flashes of light and long stretches of shadow as I stared out the passenger-side window, forehead pressed against the cool glass. It felt like I was watching someone else’s life rush past instead of sitting in the middle of my own, which was unraveling right before my eyes.
What did it say about me that the fact that Karim hadn’t even tried to deny that he’d been cheating on me was affecting me more than when I’d found out he was a murderer?
The whole murder thing had happened so fast, and I’d been in shock. It was like ripping the Band-Aid off really quickly. It hurt, but it was over fast. But the cheating thing? I’d already known in my heart that it was happening, so maybe that made it hurt more because I’d had time to stew about it. It was a personal betrayal. And also because I’d let it go on for so long before trying to do something about it. I was just as angry with myself as I was with him.
My reflection in the window looked pale and tired, eyes hollowed out by too many shocking reveals packed into too few hours. My shaky breath fogged the glass.
I wish I had someone to call and bitch to, but I didn’t have many friends to begin with, and over the last three years with Karim, I’d lost the ones I’d thought I’d made. The only person I had to talk to about relationships was Maa, and that was never a good idea.
She was going to be devastated that Karim and I didn’t work out, especially since I couldn’t tell her about the murder part. He was everything my father wasn’t: financially stable, successful, motivated, and had ties to a homeland she’d given up decades ago. She’d probably ask me whatIdid wrong tomakehim cheat.
Maa had escaped an arranged marriage by running away with my father, whom she’d met while in the UK for school. My father had been in college when Maa’s family told her they were bringing her back home to get married just weeks before her high school graduation. It had been her magic, however slight, that they’d been after. The family she was supposed to marry into also had magical blood, but again, very mild. They’d been hoping the union would produce stronger children.
My parents both quit school to run off together. To avoid her family, they’d moved to the States, hid in a big city where they could blend in, and gotten married young. And nine months later, I was born.
That was where their fairytale ended, and the problems started. Apparently, they couldn’t live on love alone. Love didn’t pay bills or clean the apartment. My father left when I was twelve. Like, he literally went for cigarettes and never returned.
Maybe we were both cursed to have bad taste in men.
And that led me to the giant next to me. Despite the SUV’s large size, Graham was folded into the driver’s seat like it was a tiny hatchback. His shoulders and thighs barely fit, even though the seats were much wider and deeper than any other SUV I’d been in. And the steering wheel looked tiny in his hands.
The man—or whatever he was, because I was certain he was more than just a normal human—was huge. Massive.
I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him. It was the hands at first, wrapped around the steering wheel. I’d always liked strong hands. Forearms too, and his were A+++.
He’d grumpily given me the jacket he’d been wearing earlier to use as a blanket and was now in a tight, long-sleeved shirt. He’d rolled up his sleeves, and that vein on his forearm was doing that stupid thing veins on men who were built like that did. And then there were his shoulders, which needed a zip code of their own.
Gah! See, I had horrible taste in men. I’d just broken up with a literal murderer, and here I was ogling Mr. Tall, Dark and Dangerous.
He cleared his throat, and I realized I’d been caught gawking at him.
“Like what you see?” He said it in a way that said he already knew he was God’s gift to women.
I scoffed, feigning disinterest. “I wasn’t checking you out.” Now that was a total lie. “I was just…” Come on, Meera, think! “I was just trying to figure out what type of monster you are.”
And by monster, I didn’t mean that he was a bad person. Monsters were what the paranormal creatures called themselves after the fall of The Wall. According to some sources, asking monsters what they were was considered rude. But other sources say that it wasn’t. I wondered how Graham would react.
“What do you think I am?” he asked.
I tilted my head to get a good look at him. He didn’t give off wolf shifter. I’d known a few of those, and they were much wirier. Graham was big and bulky.
“Bear shifter?”
“Nope. But I can see why you think that with my size.”
“Actually that was a stupid guess because you are clearly using glamor of some kind. And if you were a bear shifter, youwouldn’t need that.” Suddenly feeling mischievous, I said, “Oh, I know. Troll.”
He glared at me. “Haha, really funny.” He did not sound amused.
“What? Trolls are big. So are ogres.”
“I’m not a troll or an ogre, and you know it,” he grumbled.
