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Layla arches a brow at me. “Are you going to let me go?”
I shake my head to clear my thoughts. “You’re a big girl. You know how to handle yourself.”
I can’t tell if she’s disappointed or not.
She moves to the edge of the bed, cat-crawling across the top of the sheets until she’s in front of me. Then she drops back to her haunches.
“This…is weird,” she admits.
I grunt out a laugh. “You said a mouthful.”
“You’ve told me about your kills that aren’t kills.”
“You’ve been more vulnerable,” I supply.
She pushes a hand through her mass of dark hair, her eyes soft but wary. “It’s not a position I’m used to. It’s more than I’ve done with people before. I’m not really sure how to act and I know I’m going to make a complete fucking mess of things.”
“If you think I’ll be any better, then you’re delusional. My history is a joke, sweetheart.”
My heart constricts when she reaches out to place her hand over mine. “The sex was more than sex.”
She wants me to say something here, to disagree with her. She’s right and we both know it, and still the words get stuck somewhere on their way up my throat because admitting it feels too large for comfort. It feels like a step in a direction where I won’t be able to backtrack if necessary. A direction where I’m not in control of anything anymore. Not my life, not my future, not my safety. None of it.
Yet the thought of having sex with anyone else at this point turns my stomach.
She trusts me.
I trust her.
“Hell of a honeymoon phase we’re in,” I say blandly. “Isn’t it?”
She stares at our combined hands and then shoots me a sweet, ethereal smile that I don’t trust one bit. Layla flicks her tongue across her bottom lip. “People like us don’t get a honeymoon phase. It’s unnatural, and pretty soon I’m going to do something to sabotage it whether I know it or not.”
“No, we don't get our honeymoon glow, so we have to settle for great sex.”
It’s a fact of life and one we’ve both had drilled into us repeatedly by circumstance. It doesn’t matter how often you try to fool yourself into expecting good things. The bad always comes to pass. I’m terrified to tell Layla that she might be the only good thing I’ve had in my life, and this fucked-up combination of the two of us only works because of that. She’s just as mental as I am. There’s no coming back from that headspace once you’re in it.
“What would you do if I asked you not to hold the press conference?” I go out on a limb. “Would you be able to stop it?”
“Why do you want me to stop it?” A simple question.
The fact that she’s asking me without flying off the handle says something. I’m not the kind of man who leans into faith, or hope. I know better than to trust that when things are going well they’ll stay that way.
And neither of us is fool enough to think that this entire situation won’t blow up like a tornado.
“I don’t think it will be good for you or your precinct to have Broderick’s spotlight on you. And that’s exactly what will happen if you go through with this press conference,” I tell her, smoothing her hair back from her face.
She shakes her head. “Doubtful I’ll be able to do anything. I’m not the one in control of those things and it’s going to look suspicious to my captain and chief if I mention it.”
Her eyes narrow as she stares at me. The expression on her angular face is open but she’s withholding judgment on me. Or my motives.
“A press conference, with these murders, means attention. Attention is never good,” I tell her.
Especially when the inner ring wants this quiet. Taken care of under the radar the way things in our world are always done.
I trail a hand through my hair. “Fuck.”
I’m falling for her.
