Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Cinna

I smelled the bleach when the elevator doors slid open.

Christ.

Did someone spill an entire bottle somewhere?

On a sigh, I made it to my door, working all the locks free, thankful that Joel had locked up for me.

As soon as I whipped open the door, a wall of bleach stench slammed into me, making me hold my breath as my eyes burned.

My gaze went immediately to the spot on the floor where the body had been. Where a giant blood puddle had been.

But it was gone.

So was the blood on the fridge from propping up the body.

Joel.

That kid was really going far and beyond.

It wasn’t until after I closed and locked the door behind me that I realized I wasn’t alone.

Because right there on my couch, huddled under a winter jacket for warmth, was Joel. Sleeping soundly.

I knew I was supposed to wake him up, push him out, let him know he was gonna be late for school.

But the kid had a rough night, even before cleaning up a literal crime scene for me.

I walked over to the kitchen, sliding the window open to air out the bleach smell a bit, then walking into my bedroom, finding my only extra blanket, and bringing it out to drape over him.

He didn’t even flinch.

Did he always sleep that soundly?

Was it the adrenaline or exhaustion?

Or was it something else? The sleep of a kid who finally, fucking finally, had a safe space?

I understood that feeling all too well. I wasn’t sure I even realized how sleep-deprived I’d been my whole childhood until I moved out at eighteen and had several locked doors between me and anyone who wanted to hurt me.

More than anything, that was why I let the kid sleep. All through that morning as I went over his cleaning with a fine-tooth-comb, never truly satisfied if I wasn’t in control of a situation. Then part of the afternoon as I packed up my blood-free clothes to toss, showered, and tried to catch some sleep, but found my mind wandering back to the woods, to Dav, and all those sticky, complicated feelings I was trying to avoid around him.

It was a door slam coming from across the hall that finally had him jerking upright on the couch, sleepy eyes wide, his hair all mussed.

“You’re alright,” I said over the mug of my coffee. “Just the neighbor,” I added as he focused on me, confused for a moment, before it all came rushing back. “Thanks for cleaning, kid. I don’t think my floors have ever been this clean.”

“Didn’t know it was white linoleum under all that dirt,” he teased, making my lips curve up as he sat off the side of the couch.

“Want coffee? Fair warning, everyone thinks I make it too strong.”

“No such thing,” he said, folding his blanket and draping it over the back of the couch before coming and taking a cup from me, then going for the canister of sugar that sat unused most of the time since I liked my coffee bitter enough to start a rock band.

“Well, no, not when you put a cup of fucking sugar in it,” I said as I watched him pile it in, stir, and take a greedy sip.

“What time is it?”

“Two. In the afternoon. You missed school.”

He shrugged that off. “I never cut. It’s fine.”

Of course he didn’t. School was a place away from his asshole parents.

“Hungry?” I asked. “I was thinking of ordering.”

With that, I had a ton of shit delivered, and we sat on the couch eating while talking about the night before, about how he didn’t have to worry about the body, that it was handled, that he was best to just forget there ever was a body.

And it was all very… comfortable.

Which was weird as fuck, considering I never had someone else in my apartment. Maybe the abused kid in me just recognized it in him or something like that.

“I liked that guy,” Joel said as we sat back on the couch, watching the idiots on the remodeling show rip out a bunch of original woodwork and stained glass.

“What guy?” I asked. I felt his gaze on my profile, his brow raised.

“Oh, right. Dav. Yeah.”

“He likes you,” Joel said.

“Oh, what do you know? You’re ten.”

“Fifteen,” he said, doing that chest-puff thing again.

“Same difference,” I said just to annoy him.

“He does, though,” Joel said, shrugging, not knowing when to shut up. “Like you. Why’s he not here?”

“Because it’s not like that.”

“He wants it to be.”

“Dude, how could you possibly know that? You’ve probably never even talked to a girl.”

He didn’t take the bait, though, shrugging it off.

“He looks at you like Spike looked at Buffy.”

“That reference is… way too old for you,” I said.

“It’s true, though,” he said.

“I’ve never watched Buffy ,” I admitted. “Had my hands full with real-life monsters growing up. Hey, don’t turn that off before I can rant and rave about how ugly the final renovation is,” I grumbled as he reached for the remote.

“You don’t have streaming?” he asked, shooting me a disgusted look.

“I don’t watch much TV.”

“I’ll scam you a free week of the one that Buffy is streaming on.”

“Scam me a free week?”

“Yeah. I just make a bunch of new email addresses, use a Visa gift card with next to nothing left in it, then sign up for a free week, and cancel it before it tries to charge me. Rinse, repeat.”

“Or you could, you know, use my credit card,” I said, giving him a small smile as I got up to hand him my wallet. “Sign me up. I’m making more coffee.”

We sat on the couch for the next few hours, watching the grainy first season of the show about slayers and vampires and witty sidekicks.

“So… Spike…” I said when by the fifth episode, he still hadn’t appeared.

“You have to be patient. The look isn’t until like season five or six.”

“Five or six?” I snorted.

“Don’t try to act like you don’t like it.”

“I don’t… dislike it,” I started. I mean, badass girls who kick ass, what’s not to love? “But that’s a big commitment just to prove a point.”

“But you have to see the whole evolution. We can watch it whenever you have free time,” he added, and there was a needy edge to his words that pulled at something inside of me. It was that same thing that had me befriending Lore, even though we’d been polar opposites. I might like to project myself as cold and unfeeling, but some people could get to me.

Lore.

Joel.

Dav.

“Alright,” I agreed. “But I reserve the right to make fun of you mercilessly when we get to season five or six and we both find out you’re wrong about Dav.”

“I’m not,” he said, all teenage cockiness. “It’s gonna be nice to watch it on a big screen,” he admitted.

“What have you been watching it on?” I asked.

He reached into his pocket, producing a phone with a spiderweb crack toward the top corner, likely obscuring part of whatever he was trying to watch on it.

I’d never had just a strong urge to buy someone something as I did now. A big fucking tablet or something. I wondered if he would even accept it. Maybe I could lie about him needing it to work for me. That it was related in some way.

“Alright. Cue up the next episode.”

“Fair warning, this is one of the worst episodes,” Joel said. “Eclipsed only by the fucking swim team episode,” he said, grimacing.

“Look at you with the potty mouth,” I teased.

“You must be rubbing off on me,” he shot back.

We watched the show until, eventually, the last twenty-four-plus hours caught up to me, and I crashed on the edge of the couch, waking up covered in a blanket and confused by the daylight streaming in through the windows.

Stretching, I looked around.

“Joel?” I called, but got no answer.

I got up, making my way toward the scent of fresh coffee, finding a pot waiting for me with a note beside it.

School. Coffee new @ eight.

Huh.

There was a perk to having someone else around, it seemed, as I made coffee and finally went in search of my phone, reading through the texts from Renzo, talking about a meeting in two days about the whole butcher shop situation.

I’d almost forgotten all about that with everything else going on.

I was about to check in with my crew when there was a knock at the door, making my heart shoot up into my throat, and start pounding frantically, making it hard to breathe.

What was wrong with me?

I reached for my knife, the one that already had one body on it, and made my way to the door, only to have it shake as someone knocked again.

On a gasp, my coffee cup slipped from my hand, splashing hot liquid over my feet, porcelain shattering around me.

“Cin?” Dav called, voice tight, likely having heard the crash.

“Dav?” I asked, ripping at the locks to pull open the door and glower at him. “What the fuck?”

“Good morning to you too, love,” he said, head tilted to the side, looking at me. “Did I scare you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said, even though my chest and throat still felt tight.

“I would have called,” he said, pushing his way in, even though I hadn’t moved out of the doorway. “But I didn’t think you’d pick up,” he said as he reached out, tucking some of my hair behind my ear.

That little touch seemed to ease the tension in my chest and throat, letting me breathe again.

“I wouldn’t have,” I agreed, stooping down to gather the pieces of my cup. “Joel is going to be pissed at you.”

“The kid? Why?”

“Because he scrubbed the shit out of the floor last night,” I told him, tossing the cup fragments and reaching for the paper towels as Dav dropped a bag on the counter.

“He was still here when you got back?”

“He cleaned up then crashed on the couch. Then made me watch almost a whole season of Buffy with him.”

“He seems like a good kid.”

“He weighs all of a hundred pounds, but he rushed in here to crash a lamp against that asshole’s head while he’d been choking me out.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Dav said, his gaze sliding to my throat.

There were some bruises there if you looked close, but that Chet Wheaton guy knew what he was doing, putting pressure in the carotid instead of just choking me with pure brute force.

“I didn’t think there needed to be a blow-by-blow,” I said, shrugging, as I wiped up the coffee. “What’s in the bag?”

“Breakfast sandwiches. Did he do anything else to you? Aside from your cheek.”

The cut from his ring had been pretty superficial, despite how bad it had bled. It was just an angry scratch now, likely sealed after a full day, and nothing but a memory in a week’s time.

“I’m fine.”

“And that’s not what I asked,” he said, digging into the bag to pull out two foil-wrapped sandwiches. “Bacon or sausage?”

“Is that even a question? Bacon,” I said, holding a hand out, and he slapped a sandwich into my palm. “Why are you here?”

“You’re pleasant this morning,” he said, voice as calm as ever, unfazed by my attitude. “I am here because I figured you got enough sleep now, and we can hit the streets.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, pausing before biting into the bacon, egg, and cheese on a bagel.

“Find out who Chet worked for.”

“Um, no,” I said over a mouthful. “Absolutely not. This is my problem.”

“And, yet, here I am. You can tell me no all you want, love, but I’ll just follow you around then.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” I grumbled, even if some part of me was pleased at the prospect of not having to do this by myself, of there being someone to have my back if things went sideways again.

“I can tell everyone that you’re my bodyguard, if that makes you feel better,” he invited, looking pleased at the prospect.

If there was one thing you truly had to respect about Dav, it was his unshakable comfort in his own masculinity. He never felt less than when he let a woman take the lead.

“You can come with me, but only if you let me do the talking. Some of these people I am going to talk to are skittish.”

“You take the lead, boss,” he agreed, polishing off the rest of his sandwich. “Is that coffee going to melt my stomach lining?” he asked, nodding toward it.

“Joel said it was good.”

“What? Did he put a pound of sugar in it?” he asked, shaking his head as he brought down two mugs, pouring me a new cup, then himself one. “I owe you a new mug,” he decided.

“If it is anything pink and girly, I will break it on purpose this time.”

“Not pink or girly. So covered in dicks would be fine?”

Damn him.

Why did he have to be so utterly… tolerable? Even likable? He was making it really hard to keep him at a distance. Especially when his stubborn ass was insisting on being at my side through this.

“Okay,” Dav said, clapping his hands when he was done with his coffee. “So, where to?”

“The electronics store,” I said, getting scrunched brows from him. “I want to get a tablet. And then we can go from there. It’s gonna be a long day. If I don’t do the store first, I won’t get to it.”

“This tablet… would it happen to do with a certain teenager?”

“So what if it is?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“Retract the claws, love. I was just asking a question. He seems like he needs someone to give a fuck about him,” he said, walking over to grab my jacket, holding it open for me. And I tried not to notice how his hands lingered on my shoulders for just a second after I slid into it.

“Let’s go,” I said, putting as much space between us as possible as we left.