Page 71 of Overcast

He’s really going to kill me in his sister’s house?

“Stop shaking.” He brushes his thumb over my cheek, coaxing me to listen to him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

A violent convulsion rocks my body as he stands still in front of me, probably with the same knife I stuck him with or a gun with a silencer.

Quick and easy.

He could roll me up in a bedsheet and carry me out of here to bury me in the woods.

“Stormi.” My name off his lips is a caress of comfort. It sweeps across my whole body and tries to soothe me.

I shove it back.

It’s fake.

He’s not a good man. Emric is manipulative and cruel. Heartless in every sense of the feeling and word.

Another brush of my cheek and Emric loosens his grip over my mouth then lets me go.

He let me go.

Taking a step away, I watch him rake a hand down the side of his face that’s mostly hidden from the dark.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he mutters.

A strangled groan rumbles in my chest because he’s indebted for more than that.

His vicinity is sending crippling anxiety through my bones. My head pounds in earnest to get me to run, somehow sprint out of this house because this might be my only chance to be free of him.

"Sweetheart." His nickname for me is a calm wave through the air. It's as though everything that happened to me thus far was a dream, and he's trying to wake me up.

Except it’s not.

My leg that he thrusted his blade in still pulsates in pain. The wound to my side that he caused is tender. I can even feel the slicing of my skin from when he dragged his metal weapon along my cheek.

And my lungs still feel like they’re holding water from all the times he tried to drown me.

"What do...you want?" I ask, allowing more space between us, so it gives me a faster clue if he tries to make a sudden move.

“A few things,” he conveys matter-of-factly. “But, first, I wanted to check your wounds.”

My nostrils flare, and I shake my head. "No."

He releases a heavy sigh as if he’s surprised. “If I had a dollar for every time...I just want to make sure they’re not infected. We haven’t cleaned them in—”

"Why were you on the floor?" The room falls quiet, and I already know the answer. I'm not sure why I asked. "You were seeing if I was going to escape."

He cuts into my space with a single step. “Were you?”

I draw back again because the truth is a suicide answer, and I'm not giving him anything else against me to work with.

A slight surge of anger ramming through my veins that he’d believe I was stupid enough not to try and that he still wouldn’t let me.

Emric lets out a soft tsking sound, and I can see him rattle his head back and forth. "I'll tell you one thing, sweetheart, you got balls. You're miles away from the closest town...and if you haven't noticed, it's night."

In the dark, my nerves shout that they don't like him hovering in it where we can't see his hands or eyes. The moonlight brings a broad beam through the windows, but he doesn't fall within its realm of luminance.

Probably on purpose.

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