Page 22 of A One Woman Job

Perfect at times, confusing at others. Falling for him has challenged everything I thought I knew about myself. But I’vefallen, nonetheless. Hard. Irrevocably. He’s woken up a sexuality inside of me that might have gone unnoticed forever, if the right man hadn’t made it come screaming out of me, unearthing my obsession with his own.

I amobsessed. With him.

However, even now, as I sit beside him on an old wooden bench in the train station, the violin resting in his lap, his protective arm around my shoulder, my responsibilities are calling louder and louder from the sidelines. I can’t put them off anymore. I’ve been caught up in what’s happening to me, to Koen, but my siblings are at stake. My father, too. As unreliable as he is, he’s my blood. I can’t continue to be selfish by ignoring what Etta sent me here to do—

The mere act of thinking the name Etta must spook me, because a woman in a sunhat meanders in a distance, before boarding a train. There’s something familiar about her. Something about her posture that harkens back to the woman from my doorstep, but I’m just hyperaware of my deadline. Of my upcoming confession. That’s all it is.

What I crave is one more magical moment…

And then I’ll tell Koen everything. He deserves every bit of my honesty.

“What are you going to play?” I murmur, nuzzling his shoulder with my cheek.

He watches his own fingers intently as they stroke through the strands of my hair. “Something I wrote for you. Something happy.”

I gasp, sit up straighter. “You wrote me a song?” I sputter. “When did you have time to do that?”

“When you left me to clean,” he responds, his disdain for my job obvious. “It wasn’t easy to compose something upbeat when I knew you were on the other side of the wall scrubbing baseboards.”

A flare of alarm streaks through my stomach at the specifics of his statement. Scrubbing baseboards. “I thought I heard a noise. You came into the office?”

He inclines his head, jaw tight.

“What is it?” I ask, rubbing the center of his chest, overwhelmed by so many things at once. The need to climb into his lap and be wrapped in his arms. The need to confess why we met in the first place. The need to run away…even though I’d only make it two steps before sprinting straight back to him. “You can’t be this upset over me cleaning an office.”

“I could. Easily. But…” He studies me closely, as if deciding how much of an explanation I can handle. “I wasn’t going to come into the office. I was going to wait for you in the parking lot. A man arrived, though...”

“A man…” My memory of that night drifts back in freeze frames. “The white car. I saw that white car in the parking lot.”

“It’s been stripped down and compacted now,” he says slowly, gauging my reaction.

“Did it belong to…”

His blue eyes narrow to slits. “Belong to who?”

I take a few breaths and try to relax my pulse, but it continues to race under his intensity. Books and TV shows portray healthy couples as comfortable. Calm. Content. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to feel those things around Koen. What I do feel isalive.Highly aware of every molecule dancing in my body. Poised for anything.

And I can’t help it. I prefer this over comfort.

Mystery. Darkness. The unknown.

“Did the car belong to a man? On the shorter side with blond hair?”

“Yes,” he says, sharply. “Who was he to you?”

“Was?” I whisper, every inch of my skin beating like a heart. “I don’t know him. Never spoke to him. He just…he watched me clean recently. It was creepy.”

Koen’s voice is deadly cold when he says, “He’s never going to do that again, is he?” He leans in close to rub his mouth against the skin under my ear. “I might be unable to kill for a living anymore, but this is different. It concernedyou. I snapped his fucking neck for looking at what’s mine. For thinking of doing more.” He presses his bared teeth against my neck. “The fact that my Meg was his final vision on this earth burns me alive. I want to claw my way into hell just to rip the image of you from his head.”

“Koen…” I whisper, my fingers clutched tightly in my lap, scared by the impulse to kiss him after he told me something so bloodthirsty.

“Am I scaring you?”

“A little,” I manage, trapped in a rush of awareness. Of him. Of myself. Of the entire universe. This is what he does—he makes me feel sharply awake. Perpetually energized.

Koen presses his forehead to my temple and without taking his eyes off me, he lifts the violin bow from his lap, sliding it down between my legs. Playing the inside of my high inner thigh, right on the edge of my stockings, as if I’m the instrument. “Have I convinced you yet that I’m worth a little fear, Meg?”

“Yes,” I breathe, my sex in an uncomfortable clench. Dampening in my panties.

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