Page 40 of Lock Me Out

The uncomfortable pressure in my head only gets worse when she lets her head fall back against his chest. Her eyes close, and a smile touches the corners of her mouth. I would swear I’m about to explode. Heat blazes in me, racing through me like I’m nothing but dry tinder.

It can’t be jealousy. I’m not a jealous person. Whatever I want, I can have.

At least, that used to be true. In my old life, with my old face. When I didn’t have to hide from the world.

That’s not my life anymore. It never will be again. Why does he get to have the life I used to have? And he expects me to want to stay here with them? What, so I can be reminded every day of what’s never going to be mine?

I have to force myself to swallow that burning feeling, since there’s other shit we have to do. “We better get moving,” I announce, finishing my coffee and getting up to leave the mug in the sink. “I’ll shower when we get back. We’ve already hung around too long.”

I have to pretend I don’t notice the way Leni flinches when I come close. How could she fuck me the way she did, then act this way now? I don’t get her. Colt has had seven months to get to know her better. I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to catch up, if she’ll even let me try.

Colt waits until we’re in the car to murmur, “Give her a little time. She’ll loosen up.”

“Who said I was worried about that?”

“Did we meet yesterday for the first time? I saw the way you were looking at her upstairs.” He won’t look at me, and there’s nothing in his voice that gives me a hint of what he’s thinking.

“She told me not to expect her to forgive me right away,” I confess, peering out at the world from under my hood.

“Wow. I wish I knew some advice I could give you on that.”

“That’s my problem to deal with, not yours. You’re not the one who fucked up the way I did.”

“Listen. If there’s one thing I know about her, it’s how forgiving she is. If she wasn’t, why would we be together?” he points out. “Give her time. I’m sure she already understands you didn’t mean to get her mom involved.”

“That’s not all she’s mad about.”

From under my hood, I can just barely make out the way his jaw tightens. “Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen again. Right?”

“What about what just happened this morning?”

“Not the same thing, and you know it. There’s a difference between letting her participate in something she wants and tying her to the bed when I’m not there.”

What he doesn’t understand—and I can’t find the words to say—is this morning was hot… but tying her up was better. Forcing her, feeling the way her body tried to resist but couldn’t help giving in, giving me what I wanted. There’s nothing in this world that could match the satisfaction I got from that. And now that I’ve had it, how am I supposed to live without it?

“I didn’t want to say this last night,” I mutter as we roll down the street, passing only a few cars this early in the morning. “But a lot of the reason I stayed away was for her sake, too. Because what I did to her that night at the apartment is something I fantasized about the whole time I was away from her. I know that’s probably weird for you to hear, but it’s true.”

He is quiet, gripping the wheel tighter but keeping his thoughts to himself. I wish he wouldn’t. He can call me an asshole or threaten to kick me out of his life forever, and it would be better than sitting here wondering what’s going through his head.

Finally, he clears his throat when we’re a few blocks from the warehouse. “You’ll just have to figure out how to get over that. I’m not going to let you hurt her. I love her. And we might have learned a pretty fucked-up version of love when we were growing up, but that shit stops now.”

We’re both quiet for the rest of the drive, which doesn’t take all that long. My car is where I left it, and there are no other carsparked either on the street or in the lot besides Dennis’s vehicle. The place looks even worse in the early morning, rays of sun highlighting what darkness hides. There’s something depressing about it.

“So what’s the plan?” Colt asks, since we never talked about it on the way here.

“Burning them is the first thing that comes to mind,” I confess. “But I saw a bunch of stuff next to the building last night, like tarps and shit. We could wrap them up, put them in my trunk, take them down to the river, and dump them. Fire might draw attention.”

Scrubbing his hand over his head, he groans. “Now I wish we had just gotten it over with last night.”

“But you had to think of Leni, too.” I look around to make sure there’s no one nearby—no random homeless people or whatever—before getting out and lowering my hood. Colt’s trying his best to pretend it doesn’t freak him out, seeing me like this, but he sucks at acting. He can’t hide his pained expression when he first looks at me. I wonder how long it will be before he gets used to it and if I’ll be around long enough for that to happen, since I still don’t think it would be a good idea for me to stay.

As it turns out, there’s a bigger problem to deal with, and we find out what it is once we enter the old warehouse we left just hours ago.

“What the hell?” Colt says, walking more slowly, taking one careful step after another as he looks around in confusion, while I stare at the place where I watched Deborah bleed to death.

There’s still a dark stain on the floor where her blood poured out onto the concrete. The memory is clear—the way her life force bubbled out of her mouth when she took her final breaths.

But she’s not there. Neither is Dennis. The car they used is still outside, but they’re both gone.

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