Page 108 of Bound to a Killer
My pulse kicks, but I do as he says, pushing the door openwith trembling hands and climbing out. Falling in line behind him, I track his path around the car.
He pops the trunk open and pulls out a rolled-up bundle of black and red plaid, tucking the blanket beneath one arm before slamming the trunk shut. With his free hand, he swipes at his phone, casting a glow of light across the fragmented path and onto the wooden sign ahead. The letters come into focus.
Stoney Creek Park.
The light drifts forward as he moves, and with a jolt in my step and a flip in my chest, I follow, matching him heel for heel. “We can’t go inside after dark,” I call out. “Isn’t this illegal?”
He exhales through his nose, quiet but pointed. More of a scoff than a sigh. “Do I look like someone who follows the law to you?”
I chew on my lip, silencing myself. He has a point.
In another life, I wouldn’t have dared to follow a man this far into the dark, the rough rasp of crickets the only sound around us. Danger lurks everywhere. I’ve learned that personally, the hard way, up close and too personal. But Ledger isn’t the biggest monster out in the world. The most dangerous are deceptive. Hidden. Cosplaying as family members and loved ones. You don’t need to seek them. They reside with you at home.
My trace of thought evaporates when he comes to a stop in the center of an open field, breaking away from the shaded branches that led us in. He unravels the blanket in his arm and gives it a quick shake, laying it on the ground where the corners lift and lie uneven on the patch of grass.
I stand there with my fingers twisting the sleeves of my shirt, the light draft billowing into them, carrying the scent of freshly mowed grass and faint cedarwood. He lays himself out over the blanket, head propped on one of his arms as he sets his phone down and crosses the other behind his head.
“This is where I come when I don’t want to face Frankie’sscrutiny back home. Gazing at the stars helps clear my mind. I thought you’d benefit from it, too.”
He tilts his head toward me, his gaze sharpening as it drags over me from head to toe. The intensity builds, heat sweeping across my skin, leaving a flush in its wake and something tighter in my chest. It’s like he can’t get enough of looking at me. His eyes, like laser beams, pierce through fabric, skin, and bone, scanning the very core of who I am beneath it all. It’s deeply intimate.
I finally exhale when he rips his attention away, fixing his eyes back on the vast sky instead. “I don’t bite, you know,” he says, a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. It fades when I lower myself beside him, the blanket soft against my back as I stretch out next to his frame.
“I know. I followed you out here after all, didn’t I?” I reply, smoothing my hair over my shoulder before resting my head back down again.
He breathes out a low chuckle that settles deep in my stomach, his broad shoulders shifting with the vibrations. His body heat transfers over to me from where our arms brush, the connection sending electric sparks over my skin, charged and breathtaking.
My tongue slicks over my lips, and I take in an uneven breath. My heart skitters as I abandon the fabric at my wrist to tug on the hem of my shirt instead, twisting and fidgeting with it as the breeze sweeps beneath, chilling the bead of sweat I’ve already begun to exude.
“So, what’s been plaguing your mind so badly you had to come all the way out here to clear it?” I ask, feeling an overwhelming urge to fill the space between us before it grows silent and he can catch the tremendous gallop that’s taking place in my chest.
His breath hitches, but he doesn’t hesitate with his answer. “You.”
My heart stops. The word is deafening, ringing in my ears in a delirious tune that makes me feel strung out high, stars tilting above me as the echo resounds again.
You.
I shift onto my side to face him, catching the edge of his profile. His lips pressed thin, lashes barely moving as he stares straight ahead, tension drawn tight in his face like he didn’t mean for the word to slip out.
The world tilts slightly, spinning on its axis as I swallow down the grit in my throat, my voice low as I ask in a whispered breath, “You think about me?”
“More than you know,” he admits.
Something flutters in the pit of my stomach. My lips part, a response rising to the edge of my tongue until he squanders it with what he says next.
“But I shouldn’t be. It’s wrong. So fucking wrong.”
“It’s not wro?—”
“It is,” he clips. My eyes catch the way his jaw locks, the tendons in his neck straining when he turns to glance at me, all riven and taut. “You’re just…too young to get it.”
“I’m eighteen,” I interject.
“Exactly,” he says quietly, the heaviness in them weighing me down. “You still have your whole life ahead of you. College. Dreams.” He swallows hard. “There’s so much out there for you to explore. I shouldn’t be tainting the experience for you. I shouldn’t be here at all.”
“Then why’d you come back?” I quip, pressure building in my chest as I trip over my words.
In a futile grasp for control, I bite down on my lower lip, teeth sinking into the soft flesh. My chest cinches tighter when his eyes flick to my mouth, holding it there, like he’s waging a silent war with himself.
