Page 169 of Johnny

“What?”

“Stop it.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“You’re being… reasonable.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. And see? This is what I mean.

“Because then, later,” I say, desperate to make my point before I get an overwhelming urge to let

him fuck me again, “you went on and on about how the Way wants to live forever and my rats are the

key, and those people in the lab were working on that, and blah, blah, blah. And it was so perfectly

planned, Johnny. It was such a flawless fucking argument. I mean, kudos, really. The way you set it up

and then went in for the kill to gain my trust? Absolutely perfect.”

He points at me.

“If you say one word about me saying fuck I will scream.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“But you wanted to.”

“So what’s your point? You don’t like me?”

“I do. I mean, maybe?”

God, I really want to like him. I could get lost in this man. But that’s the part that scares me. He’s

one of those people who runs you over and then picks you up and drags you along with them. And I’m

just not sure I want to be in that kind of relationship.

And I can’t tell him this because he’s too smart. He’s too calculating. He’ll come up with another

nineteen-part story that he will unleash on me over the course of the next twenty-four hours to make it

look like it was all spontaneous. And then he’ll spring something on me while we’re… I dunno,

swimming with glowing dolphins or scuba-diving with octopuses or some shit. And I’ll swoon all

over his hot ass, and forget that he’s a diabolical killer, and…

Yeah.

Get lost in him. I’ll get lost in him just like that.

“Well.” He laughs. “That was… kind of adorable.”

“What?”

“I mean… you,” he says, shaking his head at me. “You just… and then… and the way you…” He

shrugs. “I just like it. I like all of it.”