Page 106 of Overcast

The best thingabout being invisible is that you can stare without looking like a weirdo. You can study people, their body language, and how they present themselves.

I’ve picked up more information on how to flirt over the course of years than people learn in their whole lifetime.

Emric tries to mask it, but I see the way his eyes glimmer with something other than wanting to strangle me. How he meticulously takes my bandage off and how his voice can change when he doesn’t want to scare or upset me.

So, when he was going to stomp off to do God knows what to Hollis, I faked that the wound on my side was giving me trouble.

It wasn’t.

It’s a tad achy and scratchy, but I didn’t want another death on Emric’s hands.

Not that I can somehow find a way to make him ever stop or be forgiven by a higher power, but I didn’t want Emric doing whatever it is he does when I was around.

It made me feel like an accomplice to whatever he had planned. And if Hollis was going to suffer, I’d rather it be in jail where he could think about his evil doings for the rest of his life—whatever all those were.

The beer idea was just to keep his mind off his anger. I don’t drink, seeing how Dad and his buddies reacted after too many, but it worked. He grabbed us two Coors Lights, and now we’re rocking on chairs made of unstained wood in silence.

I can’t say that I don’t mind it. Being surrounded by woods, enclosed in a nook, and trying to pretend like the last week or so didn’t happen, it keeps my nerves settled. It also passively exhibits that I can make the monster do things.

Definitely a change of events.

It makes me believe that I might be able to pull off Emric being less leery of me so I can get out of here.

Ideas have deluged through my brain since he followed me to my room and changed my dressing.

He’s a man, and I’m not that bad looking.

His eyes have roamed my body, and he’s...made innuendos towards me. I’m not sure if he was serious, but it’s one of the only things I have to play with, and I’ll take anything at this point.

If I can get him off his guard, I might have an opportunity here.

“Marty was given to me by my adoptive mother,” he blurts out through the owl that is hooting nearby and the crickets surrounding the house. “Emric is my real name.”

I don’t pacify him with a glance but keep mine at the dark woods—my escape. “Why does Reagan call you Marty then? Is it more of a nickname?”

“Her mother isn’t my birth mother,” he conveys. “And Marty is a different man than Emric. He stays separate from my family.”

He’s crazier than I thought he was.

I nod, tugging back on my beer and forcing myself to swallow it.

“Is Stormi a nickname?”

“No.” He stays silent, and I glance over at him, waiting for me to continue. I shift uncomfortably in my chair. The plan was to keep him from personal details. “My mother was high when she had me, and there was a storm outside, and...that’s my name.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dead. Overdose.”

“Sorry to hear that.” I shrug it off. I didn’t know her and didn’t care to if she left me with my dad and never came by to visit.

I’ve never felt like something was missing by not learning about her, so it didn’t affect me like other people who lost a mother at the young age of six.

“Do you still have your knife?”

What is it with him and this knife?

“Yes,” I reply, slowly shifting to feel it brush against my upper thigh in the pocket of his sweatpants.

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