Page 65 of Half the Summer's Night
The question hangs in the foyer. Nameless steps toward me with his heavy boots. I don’t run away from him. Not even when he touches me, sliding his gloved hand around my neck, spraying his fingers across my cheek.
“That thing you did when you were sixteen,” he says softly, tilting his masked face toward me. I’m frozen in place, a deer about to be hit by a speeding car. “I thought that would make you someone who could understand.”
It’s suddenly hard for me to breathe.Your dark.
He does see it, the rot inside of me. But I’ve suppressed it for ten years, and I shake my head in protest. “It wasn’t the same,” I say tightly. “It was an accident. I panicked and?—”
“All my kills are accidents, too,” Nameless interrupts.
I jerk away from him, anger flushing in my face. “I’m not a killer!”
It feels hollow, though. It’s always felt hollow when I say that, and I’ve said it a lot, especially back when the investigation was going on and I was a terrified teenage girl. But I know the truth sitting in my heart like a black diamond.
It wasn’t an accident.
“You’re not a killer like me,” Nameless says, dragging me back to him. He runs his thumb over my lip, and I resist the urge to drag it into my mouth, to suck on it the way I sucked on his dick a week ago. “I know that. But you still—you understand something about killing, don’t you?”
I stare at him, trembling.Yes, I answer in my head, but I don’t say it out loud.
“It’s all right,” Nameless says, shifting his body closer to me. “You can tell me. You know I won’t betray you.”
“I—” My mouth is too dry to speak. The words can’t catch hold there. And I remember being sixteen and seeing the stairs through the veil of my tears, my body screaming in pain, and I thought,I can push him, and it will be over. And then I did.
Nameless brushes his fingers down my cheek with a soft, gentle patience. “Say it, Abi,” he murmurs. “You know what killing feels like.”
“It was self-defense,” I manage to choke out.
“I know.” Nameless wraps his hand around the back of my neck, making me shiver. “What did I say? I know you’re not like me.” He presses his head to mine, the rubber of the mask cool against my skin. I can smell him, dark and musky, and my body floods with heat.
“But you still know what it’s like, to feel that power.” Nameless tightens his fingers against my neck. “And that’s why I choose you, Abilene Snow.”
Then, before I can react, Nameless picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. I cry out, startled by his sudden show of strength, but he grips my waist tightly and carts me off down the hall.
“What are you doing?” I cry out, trying to twist around to see where he’s taking me.
“I want to admire my handiwork with you,” he says calmly.
It takes a second to register what he’s saying. Hishandiwork.
A strange, distracting heat flares in my core. I feel like I should protest and scream at him to stop. But I don’t. Instead, I relax against him as he pushes open the doorway leading to the work area. And then he’s carting me down the dark corridor toward the examination room.
He knows exactly where to go, I realize, chills rippling down my skin.. He knows his way around.
He’s been inside my house before.
It’s another realization that should disgust me, but instead just floods me with a hot, terrible sense of flattery. I press my hands against his back, my thoughts a confusing tangle wrapping around a single core truth:
I want him.
Whydo I want him?
We arrive at the examination room, and he drops me to the floor but keeps his arm hooked around my waist to hold me close. I like it, the feeling of his firm chest against my back.
“Unlock the door,” he rasps into my ear, his fingers splaying across my belly.
I do, even though my hand trembles as I press in the code. I can feel him watching me, but I don’t try to hide it from him.
The lock pops open, and Nameless shoves in the door, making the examination lights flicker to life. Everything is clean and bright and sterile.
