Page 14 of Uncontrolled

I move into the apartment, transferring the bags as I redo the locks and chain. He’s already in the kitchen, putting away the unexplained spoils of his adventure. I watch as he tosses the old milk into the garbage as if we can suddenly afford to waste food. He slides a new gallon into its empty place.

Apparently, we can afford to throw out the old milk.

“Hey,” I say a little louder this time. “Where did you get all this?”

“Robbed a grocery store,” he says as he stretches to open the cabinet where we keep the creamer.

“Did you really?” I say, baffled.

He turns to me. His face cycles from disappointment to amusement so fast I’m not sure I didn’t imagine it.

“You think I’d rob a grocery store?” he asks, as if it’s not a loaded question.

My skin prickles with embarrassment. “Of course not.”

I’m picturing him fumbling groceries into the thin bags, THANK YOU written over and over in stretched and strained block letters as the police chase him from the scene.

“Of course not,” I repeat. I gesture at the bags on the counter. “This wasn’t necessary. You should have kept your money.”

He goes back to putting the groceries away.

“So…where’d you get it?” I ask awkwardly when it’s clear he won’t offer answers.

“How’d things go with Talia?” he asks instead, which is definitely something we need to discuss, but I can’t let this go.

“Where’d you get the money for the groceries?”

I think of the wad of cash in my pocket, burning and dirty. Now, I don’t have to spend it. He and I are fed. One more day without tapping into resurrectionist dollars to save my ass at the cost of screwing over my morals.

Christopher slides a few cans of vegetables onto the counter along with a packet of chicken before he balls up the bag in his hands. He moves toward me, his lips brushing the tip of my nose. “I figured if I’m staying here, I should contribute.”

Again, that lightness in his voice like thread-thin gauze. I can see right through his words to the tension running underneath them.

“Am I?” he asks.

I raise an eyebrow, confused.

“Staying here?” he whispers, his breath on my lips. He pauses, as if he doesn’t want his kiss to influence what I’m about to answer.

Studying him, I try to decipher what changed. Is he reading my damn mind? Am I giving off subtle cues?

“Talia,” he offers. “I know she’s not thrilled we’re still…” He trails off as if not sure how to fill in the blank. His fingers fall to my waist, the balled-up bag tucked into his palm, crinkling against my hip.

“Listen,” I say. I weave my hands together behind his neck and consider him. Everything in me fights to break our locked gazes, but this is important. “I want you here. I’m obviously a mess right now, and I’m being selfish bringing you into what I’m mixed up with.”

He opens his mouth to argue. I cut him off before he can.

“This isn’t like, a typical relationship or whatever. You…you made some mistakes, and I trusted you when I shouldn’t have,” I say. The words are heavy stones in my throat. “Point is…it’d be better for both of us if I didn’t but…” I swallow hard. “I want you here.”

What happened to giving him up to keep him safe? I ask myself. Waxing poetic about how I want him to stay before I yank the rug out from under him is an extra level of cruel.

I rise onto my tiptoes to kiss him. His hand leaves my hip, the grocery bag drifting to the floor. Christopher’s fingers snake through my hair as he deepens the kiss, his tongue finding mine, slipping up and over, around it before he suddenly jolts away as if I’m electric.

He stares at me, guarded and uncertain in a way I don’t understand. We’ve kissed dozens of times over the last two weeks. It’s not like I’m overstepping boundaries or anything.

“I have to tell you something,” he says.

Does he not want to stay here? Are the groceries a parting gift I took wrong? My lip finds its way between my teeth. I can still taste him on me.

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