Page 72 of Overcast

He sticks to the shadows where it's safe to hide his next move and any facial expressions he may display, leaving me in the unknown.

Uneasiness wraps around my frame. We’re alone again, something I never wanted to be again.

“Can you please leave?” I wrap my arms around my chest. “I’m tired.”

"Where were you going?" I open my mouth to tell him I was going to go pee, but he takes one of those menacing steps, and I quickly erase it.

This man almost killed me multiple times.

Why he thinks I’m okay when I’m within an arms’ length reach of him—he’s insane.

“I just need two minutes,” he ventures further. “I want to check your stomach and your leg.” Another step. “And your chin.”

“I’m fine,” I deadpan. “I just want to go home.”

“Don’t believe you, but—”

“Shocker,” I blurt, then quickly wish I hadn’t.

He is a ticking time bomb that can explode at any minute, and I don’t wish to be any more collateral damage.

There is nothing he can do or say, and no way he can entice me that will make me ever forgive him.

He nods, as though to understand why, and looks around the room. “I’d take you to a hospital, but I can’t.”

“Why?”

He pulls his gaze back to me. “Why do you think?”

“You can leave now.”

“Is that the first lie you’ve told me? That you’re fine?” Another step and my heart thrashes in my ribcage.

Our conversations were all so one-sided because I couldn’t get a word in, and I’m not going to try now. He was always so quick to cut me off. His insistence on finding Reagan’s attacker was so potent that nothing I said made a difference. It blinded him with resentment, and now, the only thing I can understand is why.

Because it was his sister.

It still doesn’t sway me towards giving him any atonement.

“Listen, sweetheart, you hate me, I get it. But—”

“Do you?”

God, just because he didn’t harm you the first time doesn’t mean to keep going.

“I do, believe me.” Then he steps into the light—all of him. His dark facial hair, the strong jawline and, even though I can’t see his eyes, they're pinning me to the floor. “More than you’ll ever know.”

“Sorry if I don’t...sweetheart." He chuckles at my snarky remark, and I hear it rumble in his chest. However, my face twists that he believes that this is all fun and games.

My body lurches back as he takes another step in my direction, and the scream that wants to rip from my lips is on the ready just waiting for him to charge me.

“Let me get a look,” he voices. “And I promise I’ll leave.”

“Your promises are nothing to me.”

“Well, they are the most important to me so—” His broad shoulders shrug. “—sucks to be you.”

I don’t respond because, again, nothing I say to him will make him listen unless they are answers to who’s behind his sister’s attempted assassination.

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