Page 27 of Slay Bells Ring

I decide to call it. I get up, stretch, and crack my back. I drag my chair back to the door and prop it beneath the handle. “No guests last night. We should try to get some rest today so we’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tonight.”

Holly sits up and glares at me. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Who says that?”

“I do, I guess. Didn’t know you’d take offense to it.”

“I didn’t take offense,” Holly says, watching me as I walk around the kitchen. “It’s just lame, okay?”

“Whatever. You know what I mean. We need to eat and sleep. What do you want?” Holly tells me what she’d rather eat—some cereal—and I bring it to her. We are getting down to the wire, food-wise. As it is, I’m starving half the time, but we’re sharing rations here. Until we’re ready to leave this cabin, whatever she brought is all we have.

I sit in the recliner as I eat, and I try not to look at Holly too much. Looking at her, watching her; I’m a man on a mission, but something about her is making me weaker by the hour. I came to this cabin knowing I was weak, weak enough to want to end it all, but when it comes to Holly, it’s something else. A different kind of weakness. Impossible to explain.

We eat slowly, both of us. Neither of us say a word. After we’re done eating, I help her to the bathroom and then back to the sofa bed. Having her lean on me like a crutch is something I’m used to by now, but her touch does nothing to soothe my senses. If anything, it makes everything I’m trying to fight worse.

It’s wrong. It’s inappropriate. She’s notmylittle killer.

I let her get comfy first, and then I lower my body to the uncomfortable as fuck, spring-filled bed. I lay where I started out the last time we were here, on this pull-out together. The only difference now is it’s daytime, the inside of the cabin is bright, and I’m a thousand times more aware of the girl laying less than two feet away.

I stare at the ceiling of the cabin for what feels like an eternity. I don’t dare turn my head and look at Holly instead; if I see her peaceful, sound asleep, it’ll be too much.

As it turns out, she’s as awake as I am, because I hear her whisper, “I can’t sleep. I don’t feel tired, which is weird. We’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours, and it isn’t like I’m loaded up on caffeine. I just… I feel wide-awake.”

I don’t say anything, but I hear Holly roll over to her side, and though I don’t look at her, I can feel her stare on me as she says, “You’re awake too. I see your eyes are open, Kane.”

I’m struggling. I’m struggling with so many different things, and I know it’ll be a mistake, but I turn my head and meet her stare. I don’t say a single word. I don’t have to. Something passes between us, something I can’t describe, and I’m suddenly filled with the urge to do something I shouldn’t.

I know exactly what would tire us both out.

Every muscle in my body is telling me to do something I shouldn’t, something that would change everything. Hell, if I tried what my body wants, maybeHolly really would go through with it and kill me. In doing so, she’d do us both a favor.

But, no. Her life is in danger. I can’t make things worse—or, at least, I can’t make them worse than they already are.

It takes literally everything inside, me scraping the bottom of the barrel of self-restraint, to sit up and pull away from her. I swing my legs onto the edge of the pull-out and heave a sigh. I flex my hands as I stare at them, willing myself to snap the fuck out of it.

Holly sits up behind me. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

The last thing I should do is meet those green eyes right now, those eyes that haunted me all these years. But the key difference, what sets them apart from the wide, innocent, terrified eyes that haunted my fucking dreams is that they’re no longer set in a child’s face.

She’s twenty-three. She’s a woman, yes, but she’s still fifteen years younger than me. That’s… I mean, that would be a hell of a difference, even if I wasn’t her parents’ killer.

“Kane,” she whispers my name, and in the next moment I feel a warm, tentative hand on my arm, like she’s trying to get my attention. It’s both the way she says my name and the way she touches me that make the willpower propping me up crumble.

I’m measured in turning to face her, and when I do I lock stares with her, instantly swallowed up by the emerald color of her eyes as her hand falls off my arm. Right then, when I look at her, I don’t have a flashback to that night. I’m not staring into the eyes of a terrified child;I’m gazing into the eyes of a beautiful woman who needs me.

My shoulder is tight where I got shot, but that doesn’t stop me from lifting my hand to her face. I run the backs of my fingers down along her cheek, and Holly doesn’t pull away. She sucks in a breath, flutters those eyelashes at me, and lets me touch her.

“Little killer,” I whisper, my fingers near her chin now, “you should really stop looking at me like that.”

She swallows hard, and then her lips part. “Like what?”

I’m not a man who’s good with his words. I can’t write poetry or wax poetic about all of the emotions at war inside me, but I can name one of them: desire. Searing, hot desire that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

I want to kiss her. Fuck, I want to do so much more than that. I can’t remember a time when I wanted someone this badly. All that death, all that killing, all my self-destruction… it brought me here, right where I’m meant to be.

Something in me breaks. I don’t say a word, but I do respond by leaning into her and lowering my mouth to hers. My eyes close the moment those soft, sweet lips meet mine, and goddamn it all to hell, they feel even better than I imagined.

God help me. I thought I was a lost man before, but that’s nothing compared to the way I lose myself in her.

Chapter Thirteen – Holly

---