Page 70 of Hunting Gianna
“Why stay?” she asks, voice gone soft. “You could go anywhere.”
I don’t answer right away. I watch her for a while, the slow, steady rise and fall of her chest, the way her hand tugs at the edge of the blanket like she’s worried it’ll slip.
Finally, I say, “Because you’re here.”
She opens one eye, gives me a look like I’m the biggest idiot on earth. “That’s not a good reason, Knox.”
“It’s the only reason.”
She laughs, but it’s a sad sound. “You know what I want?”
“Tell me.”
She leans in, her breath warm on my neck. “I want to disappear. I want to run away and never look back. I want to live in a place where no one can find us.”
I nod, because I want the same thing.
She kisses me then, soft at first, then hard enough to hurt. My little bird has some tension to work out and I’m more than happy to oblige.
We fuck on the couch, her hand clamped over my mouth, her hips grinding down with a fury that almost scares me. She’s trying to make it real, trying to make it stick, trying to provethat we belong here, now, in this moment. It’s not me that needs convincing.
After, she falls asleep on my chest, drool pooling on my ribs. I don’t move. I just listen to her breathing, and I think about the cabin, and Creed, and the animal that lives inside me and what happens when it runs out of space.
In the morning, there’s a text from Creed. All it says is, “She’s better than yours.”
I laugh, for real this time, and toss the phone on the floor.Fucker.
She stirs, eyelids fluttering, then grins at me like she knows every secret I’ve got.
“Good morning, monster,” she says.
“Morning, little bird.”
And for a minute, it feels like home.
The mask stares at me from its perch on the bookshelf. The face is lacquered, black, painted with red lines that cut down the cheeks and end halfway down. I miss it. I miss what it makes me.
She’s making breakfast, for dinner. Eggs and something else that’s starting to burn. The air smells like ash and pepper. She’s humming, but there’s a hardness under it.
When I stalk into the kitchen, she doesn’t look up. Just cracks another egg, the shell splitting in her palm like it’s nothing.
“You want to talk about it?” she asks.
“Talk about what.”
She flips the eggs. “You’re pacing again. Last night you walked the whole block twice. You’re gonna get a reputation.”
I lean against the counter. “I don’t care.”
She doesn’t smile. “You’re not sleeping, either.”
She slides the eggs onto a plate and shoves them in front of me. I don’t bother with a fork. The yolk bursts under my fingers, hot and bitter.
She leans in, close enough that I can smell her shampoo, the way it never fully washes out the scent of me. She kisses my cheek, slow, then whispers in my ear:
“Put it on.”
I blink.
