Chapter 20: Zayna

Chapter Twenty

Zayna

R uger ate my pussy sixteen days ago. I shouldn’t use that specific point in time to mark the passage of it, but that man haunts me. I mean it in the literal way where he keeps perpetual watch, even when he shouldn’t. He watches when I hold Eden, he listens when I’m in the kitchen. He doesn’t touch me. No kisses. No affection. He makes no effort to shower with me again. It’s like co-parenting with an ex-husband… who stares at me every chance he gets like he wants to eat my pussy again.

He had a conversation with his sister-in-law, but I didn’t believe Ruger’s ridiculous lie for a second. I just keep acting like this is normal, pretending like I’m some Midwestern mother and housewife. The weird thing about trauma is that it can make you strangely adaptable. You don’t really react externally. It’s like your mind just goes, “This is what we’re doing now.”

And you do whatever “that” might be to survive. I’ve been in this position before. Except those other situations weren’t exactly like this. Ruger keeps the fridge stocked. He eventually listened to my pleas for more spices – salt and pepper are not enough. He doesn’t raise his voice or lay his hands on me. He seems very different from the man I first met, except this is who Ruger is when no one is looking.

Everything in this damn house is strange and I don’t know what to make of the tension between us. We haven’t had sex, so that man has sixteen days of pent up tension. He hasn’t jacked off at all. We’re in each other’s sight all day and maybe he could pull it off while I’m asleep but… I think that would wake me up.

I honestly didn’t think men could go that long without lust conquering their senses and I never thought Ruger had much sense. On that sixteenth day, Ruger leaves me alone for an hour in the afternoon – which rarely happens. I don’t run away because this fucked up situation is better than any of the other ones I’ve been in lately. His cabin in the woods is relaxing. Plus, I can’t leave baby Eden behind. Ruger knows I wouldn’t do that.

Zeus curls up next to me while I play solitaire on Ruger’s coffee table. He doesn’t have wifi out here and he only uses his phone to talk to family and watch football highlights. When Ruger returns, there is far more suspicious shit going on than just his absence.

“Friend of mine gave me three pounds of freshly caught salmon,” he says. “Would be nice if you cooked it.”

He ducks to enter the cabin, even if he could have built the door bigger than a standard height. Once he gets all the way indoors, Zeus goes crazy with barking and wagging his tail, putting his paws all over Ruger until he whistles and Zeus obediently sits up all perky.

Ruger sets a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter before coming closer to me and kissing me on the forehead.

Okay, I’m not wrong here. Something is definitely going on.

“Is it your birthday?”

Ruger wrinkles his nose. “No. We need to talk.”

Those four words are bad enough to hear under most circumstances, but hearing them from a man who killed his ex-wife sends an immediate chill up my spine. What could we possibly have to talk about? I must look like I swallowed a possum tail because Ruger kisses me on the forehead again. I assume he’s going to give me reassurance that he won’t gut me like one of those salmon, but he just mutters, “I’m checking on Eden.”

“I’ll start cooking.”

The best I can do is remind this man that my death means an end to the bomb ass cooking he has clearly never experienced in his life if he doesn’t even know the difference between thyme and cilantro. Ruger comes back out with Eden on his arm. I hate how seeing him hold her makes me feel a throb that goes straight between my legs. I am cursed by biology.

Cursed by what Ruger did to me.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks me. He could have asked me that sixteen days ago.

“No.”

“But you did.”

“Over two years ago.”

Ruger scowls. “You loved him?”

“He’s not a part of my life anymore.”

Eden giggles and touches his face. She senses the shift in his emotions, but she trusts Ruger too much to realize that this shift was in a bad direction. I can feel him sucking the life out of the room as his anger takes over. I watch his eyes fade right in front of me. The darkness in him should scare me more. Everything should scare me more.

But nothing seems to make me feel except this fucking maniac’s tongue. I want to accuse him of being stupid and jealous, but both these accusations feel too dangerous because they are most definitely the truth.

“What if he wanted you back?” he says while putting Eden in her highchair in the kitchen.

“That’s ridiculous. Ruger… I have a mission. The second those bikers got me out of Vegas, I told myself it was a sign and then… we met.”

“Your mission,” he says, interrupting my train of thought. “Kill people.”

I shouldn’t feel so nervous discussing this in front of him. This man is far more devil than saint. I told him what I wanted.

“I thought that was just dirty talk,” Ruger says. “You were trying to scare me.”

My eyes flicker towards Ruger’s. Those eyes still make me flinch every time I look at them for the first time in a few minutes. Just when I forget just how blue they are, I look and get lured back in. I finally see the appeal. I never really cared much for blue eyes, but I never saw eyes like Ruger’s before. Feeling eyes, for a devil.

“It wasn’t.”

“Start putting dust on that fish.”

He calls Adobo fish seasoning “dust”, even if I read the ingredients out loud to him last week. I turn around and start cooking, because I don’t know how to feel about him prompting this discussion of our murder plans and I’m pretty sure he wants me to have no preparation, no time to get one up on him.

I get out my materials and just wait for Ruger to talk. Because I know his stubborn ass won’t respond if I press him. He stands next to me as I set the fish out on the cutting board and slice a wedge off the lemon from yesterday to squeeze over it. He watches with fascination, but this time he stands a little too close to me.

“You want me to help you kill some men?” he says.

I mince some garlic.

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it,” he says. “But you have to be honest with me, Zayna.”

Honest. What the hell do I have to lie about? There are no more secrets in the internet age and even if I don’t want to talk about my past, I have no reason to lie about it either.

“Okay.”

“Good,” he says. “And I want something in exchange.”

I season up the fish with thyme. Adobo. A little paprika. Salt. Black pepper. A little fresh thyme that I crush beneath the base of the knife.

“What do you want, Ruger?”

He doesn’t mind long, extended silences. But I won’t act like I used that silence to think things through. I just barely get myself to calm down, because I have a feeling that I won’t like what he wants.

“Few things,” he says. He’s so close to me. So goddamn close. I can smell him – and his armpits. I hate that they smell good to me. That after my first night sleeping next to him, Ruger’s smell is like heaven. My stomach lurches from guilt. This man killed a woman.

“I need you to tattoo something small for me on your body. Then, I need you to tell me the names of the men you need me to kill. Once I have their names, I need your cunt.”

He says it like it’s a normal thing to ask. I drop the knife. Ruger reaches around me with his long ass arms and catches the knife. He edges me out of the way with his hips and begins mincing garlic. His ass has been watching me much closer than I thought – and now, he’s just awaiting a response.