Kim steps back, and if I let her go she’ll shut me out and pretend this never happened. She’ll ignore everything. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“But you should, if not to me, to someone,” I say carefully, rising from the chair. She glares at me but doesn’t move away. “Because he’s still affecting you, dead or not.”
She tilts her chin. “He can’t hurt me anymore. I made sure of it.”
Cocking my head, I give her a few moments to stew over that. “He doesn’t have to be here to hurt you. He still controls parts of your mind because of the fear he instilled in you. So long as his memory can do that, he’s still hurting you.”
Kim picks up the mail sitting on the counter and throws it at me. It all falls short, landing in piles in the middle of the floor. “Shut up.”
“Look at you now,” I say carefully, stepping around the papers. “You don’t want to have a car because of something he did. He planted fear in your mind and stole your sense of security.”
“You don’t know anything,” she snaps, glaring at me as I get closer. If she wanted to, she could reach out and strike me, but all she does is ball up her hands and keep glaring. “Don’t push me, Rich.”
“Stop hiding,” I counter, cocking my head. “You don’t have to go buy a car tomorrow or join an AA group. I just need you to open your mind up to the idea that although he’s dead, you aren’t over him. He’s left an impression on you.”
Kimber looks away, shaking her head angrily. Her eyes drag to the windows at the back of my house and linger. “If you push, I’ll run away.”
I keep my eyes on her. “If you run, I’ll catch you.”
She snaps her head around to glare at me. “No.”
“No?”
“What if I don’t want you to?” she counters, and something flickers through her eyes. Fear? “What if I don’t want to play games?”
I shrug, stepping closer. She doesn’t push me back. “Then you have a safe word, and you can scream it to the heavens if you want to. It doesn’t mean I’ll step back and watch you self-destruct when things get hard.”
Her eyes glance past me, eyeing the kitchen. She drags her lip between her teeth, thinking.
“If you catch me,” she says carefully, moving towards the sliding glass door. She shifts her eyes back to me, moving like she expects me to jump over the counter and tackle her to thefloor. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know about Jonah. If you can’t find me in one hour, you don’t ask me anything else about him again unless I bring it up.”
I raise a brow, staring at her necklace. She’s consistently worn it since I gave it to her. “And the tracker?”
“You won’t cheat,” she says confidently. “I’ll hide and you hunt. If you find me, you can have the answers you want.”
My eyes drift across her face, and I’m not sure this is a good idea. She looks distressed, and I’m positive she’s feeling the effects of alcohol withdrawal after struggling the past week. Now her body craves it because I asked some questions and she thinks she needs it. Letting her run off in the dark while she’s emotionally compromised could cause problems.
She’s already at the sliding glass door, waiting for my answer. I eye her, wondering if she’ll back down. “This is a bad idea.”
“You keep telling me that,” she replies dryly. “Do I get a head start or are you going to tackle me off the porch?”
I frown. The Halloween feel still lingers in the air each time the snow melts, and there’s more people outside, fucking around in the dark. I don’t pay that much attention to what my neighbors are up to, but there’s a slim chance we might run into someone at this hour. People love to mess around, especially between October and December.
It is a bad idea, but I can tell it’s the choice she wants me to make. I don’t know if she needs to be left with no other option before she’ll spill details on whatever I want, or if she just needs the rush of the hunt, but her determined eyes stare back into mine waiting for an answer.
My jaw ticks as I drag a hand down my face before I can respond. “If someone runs into you, turn on the tracker. People get weird this time of year. I’ll be five minutes behind you.”
Kimber nods, the tension in her shoulders disappearing. She’s almost too comfortable slipping into the role of prey before she opens the door and bolts out, closing it before she’s gone so Brutus doesn’t wander into the night. Her cat sits on the living room table, looking at me like he just can’t believe that we’re doing this again after a little fight.
Eyeing my kitchen, I decide to use the minutes to put things back in order. “Trust me, Brutus, sometimes I don’t understand the way her mind works either.”
~~~
My thoughts have gone dark by the time I jog out to hunt her. There’s no voices around, so maybe the neighbors aren’t testing out the night on a Sunday, but I keep my ears peeled anyway and listen for signs of Kimber.
Giving her time to run gave me time to think about Jonah, and that was a mistake. I haven’t asked her too much about him, knowing it’s a touchy topic, and she has a lot going on as far as court. Not talking about him seems to give her mind a break, but he’s still got a grip on her. He’s dead and he still scares her.
How am I supposed to fight a ghost? All I can do is help her the best I can, but if there’s worse things than what she told me, I don’t know what I’m fighting against. I should’ve asked more questions, but there’s been so much happening and I didn’t push enough. Or maybe I need to not push too much. It’s definitely a weird thing to work around.
