Page 9 of Not With the Eyes

She'd slept four hours? Through stopping and starting? All the noise Scones must have inevitably made? Oberon's heart lurched and flipped, then started pounding. Since when did she sleep so deeply with anyone around? Let alone in a moving car with a fucking Lachapelle.

Oberon drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. Whatever. Clearly she'd been far more tired than she'd realized. She looked down at the bag of snacks at her feet and retrieved it. Her heart, which had just begun to calm, started thud-thudding all over again. Salt and vinegar chips. Gummi bears. Iced green tea. Her favorites. "How did you know what I liked?"

She looked up when no replay came, and didn't know what to make of the way nearly his entire face had gone red.

He glanced at her, then away. "I just picked it up somewhere."

That was a bald-faced lie, but Oberon didn't press the matter. She wasn't in the mood for whatever the real answer would be. "Any interesting chatter?"

"Nah, nothing but the same shit. They're looking for me pretty hard, but they won't find me. How do you Yanks say it? 'They ain't gonna' find me?"

Oberon laughed despite herself. "Dixie would say it that way, yeah. They seem to have gotten too close already."

Scones's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Yeah, well, Melody gave as good as she got."

"That's not what I meant," Oberon said with a wince. "I meant, they know who you are now. Your mother…"

Scones laughed, mean and smug. "Right now she's probably being interrogated. Locked up like all the people she's tormented over the years. Everyone, from the people who hate her to the precious few who can stand to pretend to like her, probably thinks we were colluding the whole time. I hope she's fucking miserable."

"You really do hate her, don't you?" Oberon asked quietly. "You've said, even explained it, but…"

"But Lachapelle is Lachapelle?" Scones smiled wryly, never taking his eyes off the road, hands gripping the wheel tightly. "We can't help the family we're born in, but I left it the very moment I could. Nobody hates my mother more than me, except maybe you."

Damn it. Oberon didn't want to let go of the grudge. It felt too easy. Far, far too easy. It also felt like maybe she already had… perhaps when she'd listened to Scone's anguished scream over Melody's death. Nobody could fake a scream like that. It was the scream of a broken heart. Of pieces lost forever, no matter how good a repair job was done on what was left.

Fuck everything. Who would have thought this was where her life would lead? Traveling with the son of Margaux Lachapelle, even starting to trust the bastard, maybe even not hate him entirely. Shouldn't there be some big, flashy occasion that changed her mind? Scones swooping in to save her life inthe most dramatic way possible? At the eleventh hour when all hope seemed lost?

Not because of grief and a few snarky comments.

Fuck, she was getting old. Possibly senile.

Sighing, Oberon opened the bag of chips and started eating. They really were her favorite, a brand with sea salt and malt vinegar, super sour with a faint hint of sweet that just made it all better.

"Pretty sure your French relatives are appalled with you right now."

"Don't underestimate how scathing my Chinese relatives would be," Oberon said. "They'd give the French ones a run for their money. Elitist snobs on both sides; it's a miracle I was conceived at all. You should have seen the arguing that ensued when we were planning the wedding." Thankfully Evan's family was far more reasonable, happy so long as their son and daughter-in-law were happy, and they didn't have to give any speeches.

"You had a beautiful dress," Scones said softly. "I remember it from my mother's files. She was always careless about what she left out at home. I used to poke around." The car wavered as his grip on the steering while faltered. "Even as a dumb kid I knew what she did that day was wrong—beyond wrong, beyond everything else she'd ever done. I already hated her by then, but that day… reading about… well, I've waited a long time to meet you. To tell you I'm sorry my mother is such human garbage."

"And that I had a beautiful wedding dress?" Oberon asked dryly, because she didn't trust herself to focus on anything else that Scones had just said. There was clearly more going on in his head than Oberon had realized, more aboutherin that head than she ever would have suspected or guessed. Why? Because of her slaughtered family? She wasn't even the greatestof Lachapelle's victims, just the one most determined to fucking kill her.

Scone's face turned red again, and if he stared any harder at the road his eyes would pop from the strain. "Look, just because I have a face like a wet mop doesn't mean I don't appreciate beauty when I see it."

Oberon narrowed her eyes at Scones, but those mismatched eyes stayed firmly on the road. For some reason, it hadn't occurred to her that Scones would be bothered by his own looks. Well, to be fair, she'd been doing her damnedest not to think about Scones at all.

Still, the way Scones moved, the truly haunting number of kills to his name, all the life experience he must have… and he was unhappy he wasn't model pretty? Oberon might not like the bastard—she didn't know what she thought or felt where Scones was concerned—but she wasn't going to be party to making someone feel bad about their own looks. That was a low she wouldn't stoop to. People shouldn't be ridiculed or punished for things beyond their control, especially something as trivial as looks.

"Pull over."

"What?" Scones said, daring her a brief look.

"Pull over!"

Scones obeyed that time, pulling onto the shoulder and throwing the car into park. "What's wrong?"

Oberon undid her seatbelt and sat up enough she could turn to face Scones, braced on one knee. Stupid, she was stupid. This was stupid. But she was going to fucking do it anyway. "I'm only going to do this once, understand me?"

"Yes?" Scones asked, bewildered, as he copied her and removed his seatbelt. Oberon leaned across the center console, one hand braced on the armrest, and sank her other hand intothe hair at Scones's nape before dragging him in close and taking his mouth.

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