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“Do you actually like to shop?” I ask him.
“I don’t mind it,” Deklan says. He grins over at me. “I don’t think I like it quite as much as you do.”
I’m pretty sure I’m blushing like a schoolgirl. Despite Deklan’s short and concise manner of speaking, he’s easy to talk to.
“I think I’ve always liked it,” I say, “even a
s a kid. I loved going to toy stores and playing with all the stuffed animals. I had quite a collection of them. I’d line them up on my bed and sleep with a different one each night so none of them would feel jealous.”
I laugh at the memory, and Deklan shakes his head at me.
“Did you have stuffed animals as a kid?” I ask him.
“I had a teddy bear,” he says quietly. He takes his hand away from my wrist to he can shift into a lower gear and take the exit off the freeway.
“Did your parents give it to you?” I remember his reluctance to talk about his family and try to tread softly. It’s been a good day, and I don’t want to ruin it by asking too much.
“I guess so,” he says. “I don’t remember exactly. I just remember having one.”
“Did you still have it later?” I pause, trying to choose my words carefully. “I mean, when you lived with foster parents?”
“Yeah.” He goes quiet.
I want to press him for more information. I want to know how he got that scar on his shoulder and the burn marks on his leg. I want to ask him what happened to his biological parents, but he’s focused on the twists and turns of the road and offers no additional clarification.
It takes three trips from the car to the apartment to get all the packages inside. While I take everything out of the bags, Deklan makes space for my clothes in the closet and clears out a couple of dresser drawers for me. He also makes room in the medicine cabinet and empties a drawer in the bathroom for me.
After the clothes in the bedroom are organized, I start finding places for my toiletries in the bathroom. New toiletries mean a lot of packaging to disposes of, and when I’m done, I try to shove it all in the bathroom trash, but the small bin is already full. There’s something made of blue cloth taking up most of the room, and I pull it out of the trash to see what it is.
It’s the shirt Deklan was wearing when he left the apartment this morning, and I wonder if it fell in there by mistake. I pull it out the rest of the way, intending to ask Deklan if he meant to discard it, when I see the dark, red-brown stain on the front of it.
Blood.
I swallow hard.
The shirt isn’t soaked in it, but there is enough to know it isn’t from a small cut or a scrape. Deklan hasn’t been acting like he’s hurt, so I can only assume that the blood is not his.
What did he do?
My hands are shaking as I silently shove the shirt back in the bottom of the trashcan. I place a few of my empty boxes on top of it, arranging them carefully to make them look like they’d been casually tossed in. I can’t risk him realizing I’ve seen the shirt, which he has obviously shoved in here so I wouldn’t notice it.
I take a step back and clasp my hand over my mouth as the abject idea of Deklan being a killer and the reality of what he does slam together like two MMA fighters dueling for the championship. The burn of bile fills my throat, and I can no longer breathe.
My back hits the wall before I realize my feet are moving. I squeeze my eyes shut, praying that the whole idea will simply fade from my mind as the light fades from my eyes, but it doesn’t work. Even with my eyes closed, I can see the dark stain. I can still smell the acrid odor that threatens to bring my dinner back up.
While I was casually cleaning and making dinner, my husband was out killing someone.
I barely have time to turn the water on to cover the noise as I grab the sides of the toilet, my dinner suddenly wasted.
Chapter 10
The next morning, I sit on the couch with my cup of coffee, dressed in the sleek purple robe Deklan bought during our shopping spree. The night before, Deklan had insisted that I looked pale, questioned me continuously about my head, and threatened to take me back to the doctor. I convinced him that I just needed a good night’s sleep, and he cradled me in his arms as I thought about all that blood.
In the end, I’d barely slept at all.
This morning I’m focused on my options, of which there are really only two: stay or go.
If I were to leave, I know I couldn’t go back to my parents’ house. They would just force me back here. The only other option would be to make a run for it—flee the city and never look back.
