Page 27 of Heat Lightning

EIGHT

MAX

I stared. And stared. “But… that’s not possible. We aren’t… bonded. I’d know. I’d feel it.”

The mask stretched in a grimace. “We aren’t fully bonded. But your heat forged enough of a connection to require a formal break before things can go back to normal.”

A formal break? What did that even mean? I shook my head. “I really think this is a mistake. Your rut has to be tied to something else.”

“Trust me,” he said with a resigned sigh. “It’s not a mistake.”

A tiny part of me took offense to the disappointment in his voice, but then my common sense kicked in. “No, you don’t understand,” I explained. “The stimulants messed up my heat cycles—I haven’t had one in two years. Not since the clinic. I can’t be the one you’re bonded to. It’s not possible.”

Something in me, petty and jealous and weird, growled at the idea of the Masked Man having a different mate. I’d examine that when Hell froze over.

He looked at me carefully. “I don’t think it’s from the stimulants,” he said. “Unresolved bonds affect people differently. Some go into a perpetual heat or rut, and others just shut down.”

“How would you even know that?” I asked skeptically.

“Doctors,” he replied flatly, emphasizing the plural.

Yikes. How many had he been to in an attempt to fix this before coming to me?

I stared at him some more with the knife held limply in my lap, completely flabbergasted at the turn in this conversation. Had I stepped through the looking glass? What Twilight Zone episode was I in? How could I be partially bonded—whatever the fuck that meant—to a vigilante stalker for two years and not know?

“I feel like you’re messing with me,” I said. I wasn’t sure what he’d gain from that, but it just didn’t feel real.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look. I didn’t want this bond, and I definitely didn’t want things to get this far. I’ve tried nearly everything before coming here. My life was fine the way it was before, and I certainly don’t want to bring someone like you into it.”

Alright, I did take offense to that. “I beg your pardon? Someone like me? And you’re what? A stunning catch? Should I be falling all over myself for a psycho who crawls through people’s windows at night?”

His jaw clenched. “I swear, I don’t normally do that. Not for people like you.”

I stood, gesturing wildly with the knife. “What does that even mean, people like me?”

He stood too, looming over me. The knife slipped in my hand when I held it out in defense.

“Someone innocent,” he growled. His sheer presence sucked up all the air in the room until he was all I could see, eyes full of desperation and something else I couldn’t identify. “Someone who can’t handle the reality of what I do.”

My heart beat frantically. He looked at the knife I held pathetically between us, seeming to realize he was scaring me again. His voice softened, and his shoulders fell from where they were clenched around his ears.

“Someone who doesn’t deserve to be caught up in the danger I live in every day,” he said quietly. “I don’t hurt people like you, Max. Hell, I don’t even talk to people like you. We were never meant to cross paths.”

“You followed me, though,” I threw back, voice only shaking a little. Trying to gain some control of the situation, I took a step forward, pushing the knife against his chest until he retreated. “Before all of this happened. You stalked me—terrified me. Why should I believe anything you have to say?”

His eyebrows narrowed. “I was hunting a serial rapist,” he spat back, hand wrapping around my wrist to steady the knife. “Joseph Weber. Who you were enthralled with, if I remember correctly. It’s not my fault it took extra effort to keep you safe.”

I jerked back, the knife clattering to the floor between us.

Joseph Weber. Joey.

The name was a punch in the face.

I intentionally tried not to think about him. After everything that’d happened, I’d avoided any chance of running into him at all costs, afraid he’d find a way to blame his dead friends on me.

And maybe I didn’t want to be reminded of how gullible I’d been, how naive I was to believe someone just wanted to be around me. Maybe I didn’t want to feel the icky, creeping shame of allowing myself to end up in a situation like that and not see the bright, flashing warning signs over and over.

Even more so, I didn’t want him to see that shame. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.