“As in Pop, not as in the flower.”
“Too late, I’m already visualizing it.” He sat down on a bar stool and reached for another brownie. “Poppy. You’re brilliant, you know that?”
“I’m sure Dad will think so too.” She shook her head.
A flicker of movement behind Mercy drew her eyes, and she was startled to see Michael approaching them, his walk silent across the boards, his expression something more careful and emotional than the usual Terminator mask.
She was mildly shocked. He’d never spoken to her, never come willingly toward her, never eaten any of the baked goods she’d brought in for the boys. And yet it appeared that he was about to do all three, coming up to the bar, making eye contact with her.
Mercy turned toward him with a mixture of surprise and veiled hostility.
Ava spoke before Mercy could. “Michael. Hi.”
He nodded. “Hello.”
Ava nudged the plate toward him. “Brownie?”
He glanced down at the offering, then back at her face. If he saw the way Mercy was glaring at him, he didn’t acknowledge it. He stared at her a long moment, until Mercy cleared his throat rudely and Ava had begun to twitch inside her sweater, the heavy weave suddenly itchy beneath his intense scrutiny.
Finally, he said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
And then he just stared some more. Saying nothing, not even blinking.
“What do you–” she started.
He pulled back and turned away, striding through the common room and down the entry hall toward the front door.
“Fucking creep,” Mercy said, glaring after him.
Ava touched the pulse point in the side of her neck, felt the rapid tattoo adrenaline and fear had brought on. “Something’s up with him.”
“Yeah, he’s a fucking creep.”
“No…something else.”
Eight
She would be better off, Holly reasoned, to stop thinking about him. She would put him from her mind, stop engaging him if he came into the bar, and let him fade slowly from her every waking thought. She would stop penning his name in her journal, stop seeing it printed in her slanted, masculine handwriting each night. She’d ask one of the other girls to take his drink and dinner order. She’d do what she’d always done best: make herself small and unnoticeable.
A great idea in theory. But when he came into Bell Bar at his usual time, he wasn’t carrying a book, and his gaze wasn’t fixed to the floor like it always was. He took his table, and she felt his eyes come straight to her across the dim interior, locking on like laser guided missiles.
She felt a weakness ripple through her, a softening of muscles, a clawing desperation. She didn’t want to stop thinking about him. It wasn’t just about him being The One anymore, the perfect killer. Mostly, it was just about him, and the way being around him made her want to be around him more.
Was this what normal women felt for normal men? Or was this just as twisted as every other part of her life?
He wanted her to come to him – that was plain by the way he watched her. But she wasn’t going to hop to. She’d done plenty of that in the past, out of fear, and necessity. She’d followed orders to stay alive. But she wasn’t afraid of Michael.
She felt the tiniest flexing of power inside herself. He didn’t own her, control her. She could make him wait a second. He, in his calmness, steadiness, his self-assured masculinity, had given her the gift of that tiny power. And because she was so grateful for that, she finally went by the bar, picked up his usual Jack, and went to his table.
His eyes were still fixed to her face.
She tried to appear calm, indifferent. “Something to eat?” she asked, setting the whiskey in front of him.
“A burger. I don’t care. Something.”
So unlike him.
