Page 56 of Scaredy Cat
He almost succeeds, too, but Shiloh snorts and sits, reaching down to swoop Arugula up onto the bed beside him. For my part, I just…hover in the doorway. Somehow I managed to turn the living room light off after getting the blood off of my floor, and the only light is the illumination of the moon and the glow from my bathroom that cuts across his face with the door half-closed.
He really shouldn’t be this gorgeous. It should be acrimefor a man who’s been stalking me for weeks and showed up here covered in blood to be so attractive.
“It’s not fake.” His words make me blink, confused, and I just stare at him as I try to regain my train of thought. “The blood,” Shiloh adds. “Not fake.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You deserve to know.” He watches me press my fingers against the back of my neck silently, but unexpectedly reaches out and drags me to him. Before I can think to question it, I’m sitting beside him on the bed, and he tilts my head forward to press his fingers into the knotted muscles of my shoulders.
I hiss at the feeling of both pain and relief, tensing a little. It’s hard not to, when I have built up tension from clearly the last twenty-three years of my life, and he gives a little impressed whistle.
“Have you considered getting a massage?” Shiloh asks with some dry amusement in his tone. “This is like, really tight, pretty girl. You feel like you’re carrying just about every ounce of stress you’ve had since you were born in these shoulders. Are you always like this?”
“Just for the last couple decades or so,” I admit with a sigh. It’s hard not to just melt into my bed like jelly, but I tell myself that’s not going to happen right now. I need answers.
Especially since I’m not sure when I’ll have another chance to get them. It’s occurred to me more than once in the last fewminutes that Shiloh is probably here to take back his cat. While that’s reasonable, my insides are not on board with the plan and I’ve already come up with at least four ways to keep Arugula, with only two of them involving moving out of the country and taking on new identities.
Arugula, from then on out, really will be known as Rutabaga.
Before I can stop myself, I turn to look at him, studying Shiloh’s face in the darkness of my room. He just looks back at me, not stopping my inspection of him, though his hands drop as he readjusts to sit mirroring me with his legs crossed under him. Unlike me, however, he doesn’t look nervous or agitated. He seems completely at ease with the situation, even though he has to know what I’m going to ask him.
“Is it actually real blood?” I breathe quietly. There’s no reason to beat around the bush when all roads lead to that question. “Or were you fucking with me?”
“Scaredy Cat…” There it is again. The way he says my name as he cups my cheeks is nothing if not affectionate and sweet as honey. He leans forward and tugs me in as well, though I see his grin grow helplessly and he nuzzles my nose. “It’s absolutely, one hundred percent real blood.”
My stomach tries to shoot up my esophagus, and I have to swallow back the waves of nausea. “D-did you…” I have to ask.I have to.“Did you kill someone?” Mentally, I cross my fingers. Surely the answer has to be no. I cannot believe that the person who’s been stalking me, who’s made my spooky season more than interesting and who’s given me the best orgasms of my life could possibly have?—
“Oh, absolutely. Did you see how much blood was on me?” Shiloh sits back and braces himself on his hands. “Yeah, no, he’s incredibly dead.”
Fuck.
I just sit there. I don’t know how to respond, or what to say. The towel around his waist is still doing God’s work and somehow hasn’t even come untucked, no matter how much he moves. He rolls his shoulders and watches me come apart at the seams with only a small grin on his lips and finally snorts. “Do you want me to tell you about it?”
No.
Maybe.
My mouth opens and closes like a fish gasping for air. I should refuse and drag him out of my house wearing only the towel from my bathroom that he can keep. It’s probably DNA evidence at this point, which sends another unpleasant shock through me. “A-are the cops after you?” I glance toward the window as if I’ve missed blinking red and blue lights surrounding my place. “Did you come here because you’re on the run or-or?—”
His chuckle is soft, and so is the hand that grips my chin to turn my face back toward him. “No, Persy,” Shiloh tells me. “I am most certainly not on the run.” He rolls his eyes. “God, that would be so pathetic. Ten years of doing this shit for me to get caught now?”
Ten years?
My insides go completely numb, and I grasp the blankets under me. Fear isn’t the right word for the heavy and complicated things twisting my organs around, but it’s definitely close. “You’ve killed people.”
He fixes me with a look, his lips twitching with something that might be uncertainty. “I didn’t think you’d mind,” Shiloh admits. “Well, okay, I thought you mightmind,I guess. But you’re too much like me to be screaming and running for the hills.” He hesitates, then adds, “Though I’m taking it as an excellent sign that youaren’trunning, screaming, or trying to call the cops. That would be embarrassing.”
“Would you kill me if I did?” I glance toward the living room, where my phone is lost somewhere in the cracks of my couch that I’m convinced lead to a different dimension. “If I couldn’t handle it and I ran across the room to find my phone?—”
“Coffee table,” he supplies. “I saw it when you hit the floor in there. I think you missed a call from your mom.”
“Great. Okay.” I run my fingers through my tangled hair, slumped over my lap. “Question stands.”
He scoffs. “No, of course not. First of all, I doubt they’d believe you. All you know is my first name, and are you really going to tell them what we’ve been doing for the past few weeks?” He fixes me with a flat look that has me studying the window. “I would take my cat back, though.”
“Not if I flee the country with him and change my name and his.”
“I’ll find you. And that seems like a lot of commitment for Arugula. Not that I’m disapproving of the idea.” He gently dumps the cat in my lap. “Next question?”
