Page 152 of Unwritten Rules

?Chapter 40

Fallon

Iwoke up at threea.m. with Brent holding onto me like I would slip out of his grasp. My nightmares were getting worse and now I unlocked a new fear—sexual assault. Not to mention stalking and being watched without my knowledge. All of it freaked me out and sleep didn’t come easy when you were freaked out and on edge most of the time.

Luckily, I didn’t throw up and felt like having a snack. Brent didn’t budge as I slipped out of bed and made my way into the kitchen.

That man from earlier who was holding onto Brent was still here. He was wearing a pink ski mask?

“Uh, hi.” I waved. I glanced over at what he was doing, and he was watching cat videos and drinking with his feet up on the coffee table. “I’m Fallon.”

“Reaper,” he grunted and put in a headphone under his mask.

Guess I interrupted something important. He was in my house, the least he could do was be respectful or say something to me. He was worse than Brent and looked three times as weird. Who covered their face like that?

“Do you like pink?” I sat down with a box of Chinese leftovers that James had brought for me. Craving lo mein when I felt like crap was my go-to. If I could hold my food down, this would bode well.

He didn’t respond.

I threw a roll of paper towels at him, and he caught them mid-air. “I’m watching something. You don’t have to be so annoying so early in the morning.”

“Do you want any food?” Anything to make this interaction less odd, actually.

He sighed and took out his earbud and made his way over to me. There was attitude in the way he walked. It was like he was a petulant child in a grown man’s body.

I handed him a plate. “Thanks,” he grumbled.

“Does anyone see your face and live?”

“No.”

“Is that why they call you Reaper?”

He took the stack of napkins from my hand. It was funny watching him eat through a mask. “They call me Reaper because that’s what I’m good at.”

“How long have you worked for the Vaughns?” I didn’t know why I was interrogating the brooding, large man whose face I couldn’t see, but I had bad nightmares and needed a distraction and Brent was knocked out cold. The least I could do was get to know the people that would be around me the majority of the time.

“Long time, little girl.” He scooped piles of food out of the containers and onto the plate without so much as a glance in my direction.

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