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I blinked. “What?”
“Which part did you not understand?” he wondered, reaching for his drink and taking a long swallow. Without a straw.
What kind of monster didn’t use a straw?
That was how you stained your teeth.
Though, I saw that wasn’t a problem with Hannibal. Either he whitened his teeth, or knew how to brush away bad decisions.
“The part where you’re not okay treating me like that,” I explained. “Why would it being me have to do with anything? We don’t even know each other.”
We really didn’t.
I mean, sure, I’d seen him a time or two and thought he was rather spectacular. But I rather doubted he’d done the same.
Keene had told him to stay away from me. But, more likely, the only reason he had was because he didn’t want to force his friend into anything.
“I’m going to tell you something, and if you admit this to your brother, he might very well kill me,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s funny that you think my brother talks to me. The only time we even acknowledge each other’s existence is when we’re going over the weekly schedule, or I’m asking him why he can’t pull his head out of his ass when it comes to my sister.”
Hannibal’s mouth twitched up at the corner as he said, “Well in that case, I’ll be blunt.”
“Oh, please do,” I said. “I’m honestly quite tired of people beating around the topic at hand. Just say what it is, and I’ll react accordingly.”
Hannibal’s eyes were an interesting shade of gray. With the light of the diner filling his eyes, they went from a lighter shade of gray to gray so dark they looked like a thunderstorm waiting to happen.
“I want you.”
I blinked, surprised he’d gone for that so fast and hard.
“Okay…” I waited.
“I’ve wanted you since I saw you in a fucking photograph,” he continued. “And I can’t say that your appeal to me is the healthiest of obsessions, but it is what it is. Honestly, you should probably stay away from me. I’m not the easiest man in the world to be around at the best of times. But if we do anything more than eat dinner here again, I can’t promise that I won’t smother the hell out of you.”
Why did him smothering the hell out of me turn me on so much?
If I were being honest, I did have a bit of an obsession disorder.
Not in an unhealthy way—at least not when I was admitting it to myself—but in a fixating way that a person became all I could think about.
Though, that was a fairly new development since Benji. And I hadn’t wanted to be around him so much as I wanted to kill him in his sleep. I’d been overly obsessed with the desire to take him out of my life since he’d broken my college self’s heart.
That obsession had never been a healthy thing.
“Hannibal,” I said stiffly. “I’m not any healthier of a person than you are when it comes to mental stability and relationships.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners.
“I’ve seen a lot of shit in this world,” he said. “I’ve done things, things that I’m more than proud of because of the scum of the Earth that I’d inflicted those things on, and I’m not a normal person. Shit doesn’t affect me like it would affect a normal person. I don’t do relationships because relationships come with me turning into this overprotective, smothering, you’re never going to be able to step away from me more than five feet without me being very aware of your surroundings…” He shot me a smirk. “And my desire to know more about you has only been fueled over the years. So let’s just call it now. I figure out what the fuck’s going on with your sister. Your brother pays me. Then we chill the fuck out and live our life without knowing what the other has to offer.”
I eyed him with a speculative work. “If we haven’t been able to stop thinking about each other since we’ve taken notice of each other, how, exactly, do you think that this is going to get any better if we just ignore it?”
How did he expect me to ignore it?
I wasn’t an ignore it kind of person.
“I just know that with my track record, you’ll probably hate me soon,” he said.
I tilted my head and stared at him. “How about you give me everything, and I make that decision. Then I’ll give you everything, and you make yours.”
He took another sip of his drink, this time nearly draining it.
“I have severe PTSD. Broken down cars on the side of the road turn me into a raving lunatic that has to be sure it’s not a threat before I’ll even go near it,” he expounded. “I don’t like being around kids because they shriek and scream and trigger something inside of me that makes me want to fight or flight. I’m not even sure that I should be around my nieces and nephews without being supervised. That feeling is easing the longer I’ve been out, but it may never fully go away.”
