A man with my expertise saw a lot of really felonious and unhinged shit. I’d participated in it as well. So tell me why being asked this by a little Pip who fit seamlessly in my arms made the horrors I’d endured seem nontoxic?
My expertise?
Let’s just call me a sanctioned operative—a fancy term for a ghost. Someone the government pretends doesn’t exist as long as I do their bidding.
“I have my own place,” I replied, not willing to give up more than that. It was bad enough I was here with him. Taking him to my apartment would have been borderline lunacy. Only dead men took strangers home, and while I was a ghost, I was definitely not dead.
“I’m glad.”
The response wasn’t what I was expecting. I mean, I’d basically just told him to his face that I didn’t trust him.
“You’reglad?” How dare he not be upset that I didn’t trust him?
He looked around at me. “Of course. Being homeless is hard.”
I stared down at him, trying to find his angle. Did he want me to feel sorry for him? Break down my walls by appealing to my empathy?
Too bad for him, my empathy tank was hollow.
“If it’s so hard, why do it?” I challenged.
A faraway look passed over his features before he returned to the pillow. “Because sometimes being homeless is safer than being at home.”
The clean cruelty of those words slid between my ribs like a well-sharpened blade, puncturing a hole in a hollow space inside me. The loss of pressure caused a collapse, turning that empathy tank into something gnarled, deformed, andangry.
Grasping his chin, I forced his face up, studying him through a slitted gaze. “You’re homeless because someone hurt you at home?”
His eyes bounced between mine as I waited impatientlyfor his answer.
“I bet most everyone thinks your eyes are black, but up close, they’re actually deep brown. Two secrets right there on your face.”
If I found his observation of my eyes disconcerting, I refused to show it. “I asked you a question.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“How long?” I pressed. I wasn’t above torture to get answers.
“A couple years.” He turned away.
I couldn’t even be happy he’d answered directly because,What the fuck?I yanked his face back, drilling my stare into his. “You’ve been living on the streets fortwo years?”
He shrugged.
Shruggedas if his flirting with death for two years wasno big deal.
Jesus, how had he kept himself alive all this time? I mean, in the last week alone, I’d chased half of Buffalo’s problem children away from him. “You got a death wish?” I demanded.
I should have been here.
You can’t stay.
Listen, the words that came out of my mouth were often funny. The shit that floated around in my head? I kept it to myself for a reason.
“If I had a death wish, I would have stayed home!”
His words were basically cornstarch, thickening the plot. And not in a good way.
Pressing him down, I straddled his waist. If I wasmomentarily distracted by his bare torso and pink nipples, well, who could blame me?
