Page 66 of Deliver Me

The fabric remained stubbornly blank.

“Why does everyone keep staring at me?” he asked, running a frustrated hand through his hair and turning his back on the old man.

She bit her bottom lip and shrugged. “Impressed by your incredible good looks?”

“Mia,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and raising one eyebrow.

“Fine,” she said, her mood turning sour as she glared back at the old man, her expression so ferocious that he finally huffed and disappeared into the nearby electronics section. “The newsmayhave done a few stories on your release.”

He uncrossed his arms and glanced over his shoulder. There were far more people subtly watching him than he’d realized. “A few?”

“A lot,” she admitted. “It started out local, but it’s been picked up by the national news stations now.”

“Didn’t they get enough sensationalist bullshit when they locked me up?” he grumbled. “It’s been thirteen goddamn years.”

“Amy warned me that it might happen after the reporters showed up at the trial. It was a high-profile case back then and youarestill a senator’s son,” she reminded him. “Victim’s advocacy groups are furious that your case might set a precedent for future rulings.”

“Jesus,” he said, grabbing the cart and steering it toward the front as she trotted along behind him, trying to keep up withhis longer strides. “We’re getting out of here before someone decides to spit on you for being with me or something.”

“No one is going to hurt me,” she said, planting her feet stubbornly and refusing to follow.

“You don’t know that. People are cruel and they hate with their whole hearts.” He wished he didn’t have to explain that to her, that she could keep her innocent belief in their inherent goodness forever, but he knew she wasn’t safe with him right now.

She sighed as people turned to watch, as they squinted at him skeptically and waited to see if he’d move to hurt her in the middle of the store at nine a.m. on a weekday morning. More than half of them looked like they expected her to be the first of a new line of victims, the continuation of a pattern that he’d started all those years ago with his father.

“Let’s go,” she urged, taking back control of the cart and leading him toward the checkout line. “We didn’t get everything you’ll need but we got enough for now and we’ll order the rest online. If you’re uncomfortable being out then we’ll just stay in for a while, wait till it all blows over.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will,” she said. “Something new will come along and it’ll push you out of the news completely.”

“I hope so,” he said, but he hated the way that everyone’s eyes lingered on them as they walked and the cashier’s suspicious gaze as Mia loaded everything from the basket onto the little conveyor belt and attempted to make small talk.

They were all watching him, but doing so meant they were also watchingher,too … invading her privacy and giving pitying little shakes of their heads as they whispered behind their hands.

And he wondered, for the first timereallywondered, about what their relationship looked like to the rest of the world. He’d wondered about how it would affect Mia and how it wasperceived by people who knew her and cared about her, but he’d never given a shit about anyone else.

The people he’d worried about were people that knew Mia. They knew how stubborn and passionate she was, and they’d seen how happy she was with him. These people, the rest of the world, didn’t know Mia and all they saw was a young woman barely on the other side of adulthood that had been sucked into the life of a man nearly a decade older than she was. A murderer. A manipulator. Someone who was taking advantage of her youth and inexperience.

He wouldn’t have to hurt her for her to be a victim in their eyes. His presence in her life was enough.

He shifted uncomfortably under the accusatory look of the cashier, his mind flooded with images of Mia’s early morning kitchen and the sounds she’d made when he’s driven her over the edge into her orgasm, her thighs clamped around his cock before she’d even had a chance to clear the sleep from her eyes. She was a fuckingvirginfor Christ’s sake, and he’d been on her like an animal, lost in the memories of his disgusting past life. He’d sank back into the filth in his nightmares and then he’d taken her down with him.

Her cheeks were pink, but her face was defiant as she slipped her bank card into the machine and paid for his socks and new pants, the bathing suit trunks she’d said he was going to need for this afternoon when she took him swimming. He’d have money of his own as soon as he talked to Amy and found out how to access his trust fund, but what if he hadn’t been a silver-spoon fed trust fund baby?

No one knew about that, all they saw was her dropping money she’d worked for to feed him, clothe him. Like he was a fucking parasite on her and her life. Living in the apartment she paid for, riding around in the car she was making the paymentson. He didn’t even have a fucking driver’s license, couldn’t do a damn thing on his own right now.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and said nothing else as they walked to the car.

“You’re brooding,” she said, closing the trunk of the car after they’d tossed all his stuff in.

He rolled a shoulder, not bothering to deny it. “I don’t like the way they were looking at you or the things they were thinking.”

“You don’t know what they were thinking.”

“They were wondering if I was going to hurt you,” he insisted. “They were thinking that I’m a murderer and a monster who’s taking advantage of you because you’re young and—”

“And that’s bullshit,” she said, puffing up in irritation. “What now all of a sudden you think I’m too young for you?”

---