Page 70 of Half the Summer's Night
He steps up to me and trails his fingers along the side of my neck, and I can’t move. Or tear my own gaze away from him.
“I always wanted to see you like that,” he says softly. “Screaming with pleasure on top of my work.”
I shiver, unsure what to say to that. I know it’s so fucking wrong, what we did. The worst kind of disrespect.
But he deserved it, whispers a cold voice in my head.Just like Blake Fletcher
And then there’s the worst thought:
I don’t care that he deserved it.
I would have loved it anyway.
26
ROWAN
Ishove the body back into the refrigeration unit and scoop Abi up in my arms and carry her upstairs. Best of all, she lets me, her head pressed against my chest, her breath soft and steady. I lay her down in her bed and arrange the sheets around her naked body, and she blinks up at me, her expression dazed.
“Stay,” she whispers. “Please.”
“I always stay until morning,” I answer, sitting down beside her. She rolls onto her side, the silky sheets slipping down to reveal a flash of her breasts. She doesn’t cover it up. “That’s how I make sure you’re safe.”
She frowns, and I sense fear rippling off her, just for a second. “I’m glad,” she finally says, settling her head down on the pillow. “If you hadn’t been here that night I was attacked?—”
I brush my hand over her mouth, and she looks up at me, eyes wide above my glove. “Don’t talk about that,” I say, even though I feel a tight knot in my chest. Yes, I killed the man who killed Olivia Pearce, who tried to kill Abi. But I still can’t shake the feeling that the danger hasn’t totally passed.
It’s that presence. Not human. Not animal.
I don’t say any of this to her, though, just lift my hand away and run it over her hair. “Sleep,” I say. “I’ll be here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Her eyes glimmer a little as she looks up at me. Studying me. Studying my killing face.
“You aren’t going to sleep?”
“I don’t need sleep.”
“Everyone needs sleep.”
I smile, even though I know she can’t see it. “I’m not like everyone, little detective.”
Abi’s still studying me. Frowning a little. “Are you going—going to take your mask off?”
My whole body goes still, and for a moment, I’m very aware of the blood pumping through my veins.
“No,” I finally say.
Something darkens in Abi’s expression. A flicker of disappointment.
“Oh,” she says, and the disappointment is even clearer in her voice.
“You want to see my face,” I say carefully, trying to keep my voice measured. “But this is my face.” I gesture at the mask. “This is who I am.”
She lifts her hand to run it over the mask’s twisted mouth. “You don’t look like that,” she murmurs. “You don’t look like a monster.”
That word lodges in my thoughts as I run my hand down her hair until I reach her shoulder, pale and soft as moonlight. Monster. That’s what my mother called me when I was eight years old, when she sent me to live with Uncle Nash.I gave birth to a monster.
I didn’t think I was a monster, not then. But she wasn’t wrong. After all, when I look in the mirror as Rowan Hanover, Idon’t see a monster there either. But that’s why I wear my killing face. To show my victims—to show Abi—what I really am.
