I stared at him, confused. Then it clicked. “They left a fake suicide note?” Hart hadn’t mentioned that.
Elliot nodded, and I tried not to look at the scar around his throat, but the tissue was mottled white and pink and brownish-purple, and without the collar of a shirt, it was hard not to see it for what it was—a line of scarring where someone had strapped a rope and hanged him from barn rafters. I could tell from the scarring alone that he was lucky to be alive. That I was lucky we had ever met.
“They did,” he said softly. “They didn’t do that for any of their other victims. Just me.”
“Because it was too close to… your father?” I suggested.
Elliot shrugged. “Presumably. I don’t know if they ever explained their reasoning, and to be honest, I really don’t give a shit.”
I nodded, biting my lip, uncertain of what to say.
Elliot studied me, his eyes stripping away my skin, my muscle, my bone, searching my soul. “So why did you want to know more about it?” he asked.
I swallowed. I wasn’t sure I was supposed to tell him.
Fuck it.
“DNA came back from the body of the dog positive for the brother-in-law of one of… them.”
Elliot went absolutely still. “One of Dad’s killers?”
“I don’t think I’m actually allowed to tell you that,” I mumbled, my neck flaming.
“But you just did,” he said softly.
I nodded.
“Why?”
“I’m worried,” I told him.
“And telling me that is going to help?”
“It might makeyouworried enough to ask me to stay with you,” I retorted.
“Seth, baby, I don’t need to be worried to ask you to stay with me,” he said, reaching out and taking the towel from where I’d been twisting it in my hands. “I told you months ago that you were always welcome in my house. That has always been true.”
I gave him a look that saidthere’s a big difference between staying and ‘staying.’
His lips twitched. “Fine. I’d like you to move in with me.”
I gaped at him.
His smile twisted wryly. “I suppose three days into a relationship might be a bit early for that, eh?”
I swallowed, knowing my eyes were wider than they should have been. “A little,” I said. “But since I was sort of living with you already, I guess it’s… less weird?”
“That’s still a ‘no,’ though,” he said, and although there was still that lopsided smile on his face, it seemed a little forced.
“Well, I did just re-up my lease for another month,” I told him, trying for a light tone. “So I’m here until at least the end of December.”
“Think about it?” he asked.
I nodded. Did I want to move in with Elliot? Yes—but I also did like the fact that I was on my own. I liked having him inmyspace as much as I liked being in his. I also really didn’t want the stress of death threats to be the reason why I moved in with him for entirely selfish emotional reasons.
Of courseI was going to stay with him—or have him stay with me—for as long as this took to resolve. There wasn’t a question about that. What worried me was the idea that I would move in with him because ofthatand just stay because it was easier, not because it was what both of us actually wanted.
It also made me feel like the world’s worst hypocrite, since I’d always just jumped into relationships before—not that I hadn’t done that with Elliot, given the fact that I’d literally driven halfway across the country to be with him when I didn’t thinkhe’d actually even want to be with me—but my former attitude oflet’s see where it goesjust seemed toolaissez fairefor how I felt about Elliot.
