Archive of Our Own

You wouldn’t have considered Cooper Adams twice if it weren’t for his eyes.

He sat alone at the end of the diner bar when you started your first non-training shift, bent over and working at cherry pie and coffee as if his life depended on it. You knotted your apron, embroidered with VAL’S EST. 1998, and looked around. He was the only customer in this late. 

The waitress you relieved wished you goodnight, and then it was just you, the cook smoking out back, and the man at the bar. You picked the fresh coffee pot up off its burner and walked over, an excuse to introduce yourself in case he needed to flag you down.

“Hey there. I’m taking over for Erin tonight. Can I top you off?”

He glanced up midbite, brown bangs flopping over his eyes, eyebrows raised. 

His gaze struck you like a slap, stiffening your muscles slightly and melting the polite, intentionally mundane hiya there expression off your face. His eyes glittered a hot black, bright even in the dim light of the 24-hour diner, like the sockets were stuffed with shards of glossy obsidian. The skin across your shoulders and at the backs of your biceps prickled.

But you pressed your lips together, smiled anyway, and held up the pot at him. He returned your smile and nodded, eyes narrowing into black slits. “Thanks for letting me know. That would be great.”

You noticed the dot of whipped cream on his lip as you filled his mug. “You’ve got a little something,” you said, tapping the corner of your mouth once. 

He watched you as he dragged a thumb along his mouth and sucked the pad, then laughed and shook his head, like he just remembered to act embarrassed. “Yikes. Thank you. Don’t need the wife knowing where I’m spending my evenings.”

“I’m sure you could be in worse places than this.” 

“Not for me. That woman takes a lot of pride in her baking.”

“Sounds like a lovely lady.” You tipped up the pot and steam curled into your face. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thank you.” He wiped his hands on a napkin and stuck his hand out. “I’m Cooper, by the way. Cooper Adams. You must be new here.”

You shook his warm hand and gave him your name. “I am. And you must be a regular.”

He opened his hands. “Guilty. Val’s is the only place open after my night shift. Plus I have yet to find a better spot for cherry pie. Don’t tell my wife I said that,” he said, spearing a cherry and biting it off his fork. 

You zipped your lips, flicking the imaginary key out the door. “Where do you work?”

He tapped the small logo printed on his weathered navy t-shirt, right above his heart. “Fire department.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Oh, it is. Very. If you feel so inclined to call me a hero, I won’t stop you.”

“Funny.” 

He grinned and leaned forward on his elbows, pushing his plate to the side just a bit as if he’d found something tastier to sink his teeth in. “What about you? What brings you here?”

You set the pot on the counter and looked down to retie your apron. You liked the uniform; it let you blend into the restaurant like a booth or bottle of ketchup. At Val’s you weren’t you, you were Waiter Girl. Normal and easily forgettable. “I grew up near here, actually. I’m trying to sell my parents’ place.”

Cooper’s brows furrowed. “Oh. Are they…?”

You shook your head and walked the pot back to its burner. “Moved down south,” you said over your shoulder. You didn’t like the idea of lying to his face; something about those obsidian eyes convinced you they could latch on to lies in a second and suck them dry, like leeches. “Cream or sugar?”

“Both, please.” Cooper tapped his fingers against his mug, a wedding band clicking against the ceramic. “Sounds like a lot to leave a young person like you with.”

“Family is a lot.” You passed him a handful of half-and-half cups and sugar packets and he smiled. “Do you have kids?”

“Two,” he said, ripping open sugars with his eyes on you. “And I’m sure my kids would say the same. About family being a lot. Especially Riley, she’s my teenager now.” He dumped the packets in his mug. “How do you like it being back so far?”

You shrugged one shoulder. “It’s certainly the same suburb. Have you lived here long?"

Certainly, except it was early autumn, and your younger brother wasn’t playing in piles of dead leaves in the yard anymore like during your childhood, but sitting alone in a jail cell at Valdosta State Prison in Georgia. And instead of baking pumpkin muffins and raking leaves for him to leap into, your parents were sweltering in a shitty condo just over the Georgia-Florida border to be near him as he awaited trial for bursting into your college apartment in the dead of night armed with a machete and slaughtering your best friend on his way to you.

All that remained the same this autumn was you, the leaves, and the old, empty house. 

You grabbed a rag and began to wipe down the counter, even though Erin left it sparkling. Cooper watched you in your peripheral. “A while," he said.

Then he cocked his head and leaned forward on his elbows, dropping his voice. “You know, I don’t mean to be forward, the last three times I’ve asked you a question about yourself, you’ve tried to deflect it to a question about me.”

You paused and glanced at him, white-knuckling the rag in your hand, feeling the Waiter Girl guise catch and slip, like he’d stepped on it with a toe and exposed a naked, blushing bit of you. “I think that’s called making conversation.” 

You tried to keep your voice light, but an edge crept in all the same. You weren’t very good at pretending to act like everything was normal anymore when it wasn’t. And you didn’t like not blending in when you tried very, very hard to do so.

Cooper sucked his teeth. “Not the way you do it.” 

He watched you stare a moment, then smiled, opening his palms. “Sorry, sorry. I’m not trying to ride you. Really. It’s just—well, this is a small town. It’s hard to keep your business out from under other people’s noses, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

You finished wiping down the counter and folded the rag back over its sanitizer bucket. “Honestly? There’s not much business. I’m not a very interesting person.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” he said, and cocked his head, eyes narrowed, like he was trying to look right through you with those obsidian eyes and root out your secrets. “Everyone’s interesting in one way or another.”

“Oh yeah? What makes you interesting?”

He gazed another moment, impassive, then broke into a sheepish grin, hands open. I surrender. “Okay. Maybe not me, I guess. I don’t do much more than my job and dad duty. I’m a pretty boring guy.”

But no, he didn’t feel like a boring guy. The intuition struck you like a sixth sense the second he said it, with the same reflexive speed his eyes made you stiffen and feel cold. A couple of truckers jangled their way through the front door and slid into a booth and you nodded at Cooper, who watched you walk over to them. 

No, the sense hummed as you poured coffee and pasted on a sweet smile, rattling through greetings and specials, fading from yourself back into Waiter Girl. This was not a boring guy. This was very much not a boring guy.

-

You tossed in the throes of a bloody nightmare when the alarm went off.

You sat bolt upright, your brother’s blood-spattered face vanishing the moment you snapped open your eyes, heart already thundering in your chest. Your hand immediately pushed underneath your pillow for the pepper spray you kept there, gripping the comforting tube tightly. The small pistol you not-so-legally owned stayed in your bedside drawer.

The house creaked.

Then four sharp beeps. Pause. Four more. Carbon monoxide detector. 

You exhaled shakily, rubbing a hand over your face. Not good either, but not an intruder. Not your brother, escaped and run up haggard through the Appalachians all the way to Philadelphia to finish the job. Your hairline felt damp; you must have been sweating in your sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time.

You rolled out of bed and into your slides, grabbing a hoodie and your phone on the way out the door and dropping the pepper spray into your pocket. You stepped out into the cool night air and shrugged the hoodie on before calling the fire department. The operator yawned multiple times after answering and you checked your watch. 2:56 a.m.

“All right,” she said, and you heard a keyboard clicking somewhere in the background. “We’ve got someone on their way.”

“Thank you,” you said. “I’m sure it’s just a faulty alarm.”

“Better safe than sorry. Stay outside for now, all right?”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome. Good night.”

You sat on one of the boulders at the edge of the yard and drew your knees to your chest. Your father had them carted in on a truck and dumped in the yard to deter out-of-control cars after you and your brother started playing in the yard constantly as kids, nervous you’d be mowed down by a distracted Ford F-150. Turned out that cars weren’t the deadliest factor in that little equation.

Just under ten minutes later, a red Philadelphia Fire Department SUV pulled up in front of your house. You gave a lame wave and slid off your rock as they parked and flicked their lights off. The side door opened and the driver stepped out.

You blanched. 

Cooper.

He took a few steps forward, squinting at the house, hands shoved in his back pockets. “Evening! Got a call about a—oh. Hello.”

“Hi.” He wore clean cargo pants and that same neat, tucked-in navy t-shirt. You wondered if he might have been planning to head to Val’s again when he got called out to your house. “I…didn’t know you worked.”

“Why would you?” He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Late night for me tonight. I get a few a month. What can you do, right?”

When he approached you the hair on your neck prickled again. His black-beetle eyes shone so bright and dark at the same time, even in the dead of night. Like the recesses emitted a light of their own.

“It’s probably nothing,” you said, ignoring the twinge of discomfort. You’d dismissed the feeling at Val’s, too, once more patrons rolled in and Cooper paid and left. Your guard never went down these days; it felt like every solo diner at Val’s was watching you and that the first few customers in the early morning shifts arrived just to get you alone. You’d felt taut as a frayed rope since the night at the apartment; high-strung didn’t begin to cover it. 

You slid your cold hands into your hoodie pocket. “My carbon monoxide detector went off, but I don’t know when they changed its batteries last. I’m sure it’s dead or something. Sorry you came all the way out here.”

Cooper shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I was craving some fresh air, anyway. Was all stuffed up in an office filling out paperwork. Can I take a look?”

He slipped a respirator mask over the bottom half of his face, and the sight of those dark eyes staring out without his quick smile to ease their intensity made something within you twist hot and nauseous.

“The door’s unlocked. I’ll wait out here,” you said abruptly, turning on your heel and stalking back to your rock without waiting for a response. You sat down facing the road and waited for the door to close behind you before gulping in the cool night air like ice water and trying to ease the twisting in your stomach. 

Not a boring guy. 

It’s nothing. 

Cooper reappeared a few minutes later, mask dangling mercifully from his neck. “Kind of creepy in there, huh?”

You wrapped your arms around yourself. “Um…yeah. I’ve been working a lot. Haven’t had a chance to really start tidying up the house yet.”

He shrugged. “Guess I’m used to my family. Empty homes give me the heebie jeebies.” He brushed his bangs out of his eyes and looked down at you. “Your batteries were dead. I changed them for you. Should be all good.”

Warmth flushed up your cheeks and ears. “I didn’t even think to try that myself. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Carbon monoxide is dangerous stuff. It can kill you like that.” He snapped his fingers and sent a jolt down your spine. “It was smart of you to call.”

“Got it. Thanks.” 

Cooper nodded, then looked back at the house. When his gaze returned to you his brows furrowed. “Are—you’re sure you’re all right in here all by yourself? Not to be patronizing, I’m sure you can take care of yourself. I just—” He spread his arms a bit. “I’m a dad. I worry.”

You stared at him and a sudden wave of The Guilt washed over you. The same that did when you ignored people who approached you in public or watched an old person’s expression fall when you stone-faced their “Hey there!” on the sidewalk. Sorry, I was attacked with a foot-long blade a couple months ago and watched my friend get stabbed to death with it, it’s not your fault! Just me being crazy, ha ha. 

And here you were now, so fucking high-strung and paranoid you were coldly wary of this cheesy pie-loving firefighter dad who came out in the middle of the night to change your alarm batteries. The feeling was accentuated by a pang of the deep, cavernous loneliness that gaped within your rib cage. It was a scary house to be by yourself in. You hated being alone in it. You hated being alone, period.

“I’m okay. Thank you for asking, though.” You stood and nodded your head to the house. “Do—do you want—I don’t know, coffee or anything? I have half an apple pie from Val’s if you want any of that.”

Cooper’s eyes brightened and the skin around them crinkled. “This was my last call. I’d love some.”

“I—” You stood awkwardly and looked back at the house. “I don’t invite people in. But I can bring it out here.”

“Oh. Okay.” Cooper looked around then sat down on the boulder you’d been perched upon when he rolled up. “Cozy. I’ll be here.”

“Cream or sugar?”

“Both, please.” He rubbed his thighs and smiled up at you. 

The coffee machine was one of the few things you’d unearthed from storage in the garage, where your parents packed up everything they could into cardboard boxes with messy tape jobs, then left behind whatever didn’t fit in their Toyota Prius on the way to Florida. You spooned out some Folger’s into a filter and refilled the water. The little machine gurgled and coughed menacingly before acquiescing and dripping coffee into the stained glass pot. As it brewed, you fetched the pie from the fridge and cut out a slice, then paused. You didn’t even have a microwave unpacked. 

“No worries, I have it cold all the time,” Cooper said when you arrived back outside and apologized, mugs in one hand and a plate in the other. He’d wrapped a flannel around himself and you felt a little bad for making him wait out in the chilly night. “Thanks very much. Not to make you do your job in your own home.”

“I offered, didn’t I?” You handed a mug and the pie plate to him, which he took with soft thanks. 

“Aren’t you having any?” he asked. 

You stood with your hands wrapped around your cup. “Um…no. I was going to save the rest for breakfast.”

“Well, we can split this one.” Before you could argue, Cooper used his fork to slice the wedge of pie in half. He shifted aside on the boulder. “Here. There’s room too.”

You sat on the rock next to him, aware of the body heat from his back just inches from you. He sipped his coffee and hummed a pleased sound.

“I don’t usually have guests,” you admitted.

He looked up and around at your dark yard. “Really? I couldn’t tell.”

You rolled your eyes and sipped your coffee, burning your tongue. Cooper grinned. “I’m kidding. You’re a very thoughtful hostess.”

He held the plate in front of you and you sliced off a bite of the pie. He did the same and closed his eyes as he chewed. “Phenomenal.”

You nodded, unsure what to say next. “Busy night?”

He shook his head. “Just you, it seems.”

You both took another bite of pie.

“Where do you think you’ll start with the house?” he asked, sipping coffee as he glanced back toward the front door. “You said you needed to do some repairs, I mean. What kind?”

You stared at your coffee and sipped even though it was still too hot to drink. “I—I don’t really know yet. I’m just trying to afford my groceries and gas right now so I pick up a lot of doubles. And every time I come home it just—” 

You sucked in a breath and smiled, knowing it was tight. “It’s just a little overwhelming.”

Cooper nodded “I get it. My wife, Rachel, and I bought our house for cheap, back when she was pregnant with Riley. God, it feels like forever ago. Anyway, it was exciting at first, having a place of our own and all, but after we realized how much really needed to be done it was just…it was a lot. Hell, I’m still putting in work here and there.”

You broke off a bit of crust. “How long ago did you move here?”

He blew out a breath and leaned back with his mug on his thigh. “What was that, fifteen years ago now? Yeah. Jeez, feels like not even a minute.” 

You wondered what Rachel was like, and if she’d trigger the same pinpricks on your skin as her husband. Cooper sipped his coffee and looked at you. “Have you spoken to your parents at all about where to start with the house?”

His eyes beckoned, but you couldn’t meet his gaze. You couldn’t lie to them. You knew they’d know. Somehow, those intelligent, gleeful spots of light would see right through you.

“Not yet. They can be hard to reach.”

Very hard, especially when you never phone them and ignore their calls for you to come down to Florida–Georgia and visit your poor, poor misguided brother, who is oh so confused and oh so sorry for cutting down your friend like a scythe to a cornstalk and attempting to do the same to you.

“I’m sorry. Parents should always be there for their kids,” Cooper said, and in a strange way, you felt like he meant it more than anything else he’d said to you thus far.

Well, they’re certainly there for one of us. 

“And hey, if you ever need any help with anything around here, you’re welcome to ask,” he said. “I’m pretty handy.”

You smiled. “Thanks, but I can barely afford to pay for my bills, let alone hire you.”

“It would be a favor.”

Your skin flushed. “I—”

“No pressure.” He stabbed a bit of apple and bit it off the fork, shrugging a shoulder. “Just an offer. I’ll move boxes, whatever. Check off my good deed for the day.”

“Um, thanks. I’ll let you know.” You swirled your coffee. “Do you make these offers to all of the waitresses at Val’s?” you asked, sarcastically.

Cooper just smiled and went back to the plate. He sliced the last chunk of pie in half and nudged the larger piece toward you. You looked down at it, then at him, sucking on the prongs of his fork. 

“Go ahead. I’m stuffed.” 

You both knew he wasn’t, and in a moment of wild, vulnerable hope you wondered if maybe it was okay to have someone in your corner here, someone you at least felt comfortable talking to, no matter how dark and bright his eyes were while you do so. That maybe you didn’t need to keep lying to this man who was now the only person you kind of knew in your hometown.

“Any siblings you could call, help you work on the place a bit?” Cooper asked, knotting his fingers together and stretching his arms over his head with a yawn. His shirt lifted just a bit at the hem, exposing a slit of stomach. You watched his broad shoulders flex beneath the t-shirt sleeves and were suddenly very aware of how large he sat compared to you. How easily he could shove you off the rock and pin you to the grass before you even had the chance to fish the pepper spray from your pocket.

You plucked the last piece of pie off the plate with your fingers and looked right into his eyes.

“Nope.”

-

She lied very, very well. She could look into his eyes while she did it now, too, a slight disadvantage to his nighttime house call. Guess it made her comfortable enough to stare at him while she lied, but not enough to tell him about the brother. Or what happened at the college.

Cooper slowed at a red light in a deserted intersection and wet his lips, tasting cinnamon. She’d let him stay but kept him outside, no matter the awkwardness of sharing a fucking rock for a seat in her cold front yard. He’d almost busted out laughing in genuine admiration, the way she sat there sipping her coffee like yes, this is what is happening right now and if you do not care for it then you can leave . That night in the college apartment must have flipped some big switches, even bigger than not inviting strangers inside. One of which was the impressive gut instinct that closed her off to him from the moment she’d approached him with a coffee pot at Val’s.

The light turned green and Cooper obediently stepped on the gas. A model citizen, not running the light even though he could see from a mile away the lack of approaching cars. 

It’d been so striking, at the diner, her immediate narrowed eyes and stiffness, as if she could see through his shirt and inside him. He liked to be the one seeing through people. It was odd to be on the receiving end. But not entirely unpleasant. Not when it was her.

Hell, everyone liked him. He didn’t even have to work at it, he was just, ironically, a likable guy. Still, he liked being good at it. Maybe it was the side gig itself that kept him so loose and laid back, drained of all the stress and tension that seemed to inundate everyone else. Even Val’s greasy chainsmoking line cook stepped onto the floor to shoot the breeze with him sometimes, and that man avoided customers like the plague. 

But her. He’d been so… enraptured by that strange detached demeanor she gave him—and only to him, it seemed, as he’d watched her make friendly chatter with the other waitress and slip into an easy smile when she served some truckers coffee. So enraptured that he abandoned his plans to pay a certain resident at one of the safe houses a late-night visit and instead waited down the road from the diner in his truck, patiently watching the parking lot. When the back door finally burst open hours later, spilling her out into the lot, he’d leaned forward as she hurled trash into the dumpster and strode to a beat-up old car, fists balled, head on a swivel.

She hadn’t caught him following her home, but in her defense, he was really, really good at following people home. Plus the growing number of vehicles with waxing daylight allowed him to blend in excellently with the early-morning commuters.

The old blue house she traipsed into needed a new paint job and a good week’s work from a landscaper. He’d jotted down the street number in his little pocket notebook and found the property records in no time. 

Then he found the news articles.

Emory student killed in gruesome machete murder.

Man breaks into college apartment, kills roommate in attempt to target sister.

Man charged in Georgia college machete murder.

That was something.

There was a photo of her in one of them, but he’d almost missed it at first glance. In the photo her face barely fit around a wide, toothy grin, arm slung around the neck of a pink-cheeked brunette, the one apparently now deceased. She looked…bright. Not the dark-eyed, uneasy thing in an apron he’d met at Val’s.

Cooper turned a corner. Not that she wasn’t attractive. She was cute in the news photos, but god was she something else now. Cute wasn’t the word anymore. Not pretty. Striking. Doubly so for the unnerving, piercing way she looked at him. Like she could actually see him.

Unnerving, yet painfully, brutally exciting. Cooper shifted his hips, aware of the tightening in his crotch. That happened a lot when he dwelled on her. Which was also a lot these last few days. 

He turned a corner and cruised the last few miles home, rolling down the window so the cool autumn air lifted his bangs. He thrummed his fingers against the car door and wondered what it would take for her to really open up to him. To see just how similar they were.

He wondered if he could wait that long. 

-

You couldn’t believe they still did Pumpkin Fest at Soergel Orchards. 

Moreover, you couldn’t believe you were actually back.

You zipped up your jacket; the gently cool late September chilled into a brisk October as quickly as the trees burst into explosions of orange, red, and gold. Not that you minded. The crisp air felt clean, like a bite of an apple, and you felt a little more secure wrapped up in a couple snug layers. 

Families swarmed around you, clutching fat pumpkins, candy apples, and white paper bags full of apple cider donuts. Val’s put up a little stand at the festival with a handpainted board tacked on the front offering FRESH DELICIOUS HOMEMADE PIES. You weren’t too keen on the offer to work the stand until Erin mentioned the free food vouchers and leftovers for festival staff and volunteers. At the rate the little Amish family under the white tent across from you was churning out apple cider donuts, the end of the day’s extras might mean breakfast for a week. 

You sipped your lukewarm coffee and restocked a couple pumpkin pies. Your parents used to have to lure you and your brother back from the massive pumpkin patch with cups of hot chocolate and bags of donuts, and even that sometimes was a battle. Once unleashed, the two of you would scour the rows of ropey green plants hunting for the perfect jack ‘o lantern for nearly an hour. You’d carve them up together the same night, slicing big grinning faces into the pumpkins while your mom roasted the seeds in the kitchen, half salt and pepper, half cinnamon sugar. The idea of using a knife on a pumpkin now made your insides twist. 

You sold an apple pie to a young couple, stomach growling as you dropped coins into their hands. Maybe you could slide the “BACK IN FIVE MINUTES!!!” sign onto your little counter and go grab a fresh apple cider and steaming bowl of the chili and cornbread a woman with a blond bob cut doled out from a crockpot a few stands down. Its spicy smell wafted your way here and there with the breeze and nearly made you drool.

You rummaged through the bin of decor and paper plates looking for the break sign. It was in here somewhere, buried beneath piles of wrapped forks and orange ribbon and pie boxes and—

“Anyone there? Please tell me there’s a pecan left, my wife will kill me if I missed them.”

You popped up, brushing your hair out of your face. “I think I sh—”

You blinked. It was Cooper.  

“Oh. Hello.”

He raised his eyebrows but smiled, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets. “Oh. Hey there. Nice to see you again.”

You tucked your hair behind your ears. You much preferred running into Cooper at the diner, when you could come and go at your leisure. Not trapped in a little wooden stand like Zoltar Speaks. Your intuition is strong right now. Trust your instincts and purchase a peach pie. “Um, you too. You said pecan?”

“Uh, yeah. Please.” He ran a hand through his bangs. “Val’s really putting you to work, huh? Having you run the stand all the way out here”

You shrugged. “I like apple cider donuts. The pie is fifteen dollars. One second.”

You packaged up the pie in a box and grabbed a piece of pumpkin-printed ribbon to tie it shut, aware of Cooper’s eyes on you the whole time. “Are you here with your family?” you asked, tugging the ends of the ribbon.

“I was. Rachel helps plan this, she was running the chili stand until just now. She and the kids are getting ready to take off. She asked me to get this for Logan, it’s his birthday this weekend.” That must have been Rachel with the blond bob. You glanced down again, but a bearded older man stood in her place with a ladle. He caught your eye and nodded at you.

Cooper leaned against your stand. “How long are you here for?”

“Just an hour more. I thought Rachel liked to bake?”

Copper smiled a little. “Good memory. She does, but pecan pie is Logan’s favorite and that’s where she admits defeat. He likes your guys’ the best.”

“Can’t blame him.” You sealed the box with a pumpkin sticker and slid it across the counter. Cooper passed you a twenty and waved off your change. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. Hey, you should stick around a little after your shift. I got roped into driving a couple haunted hayrides through the forest once the sun goes down. I’ll let you ride for free.” 

You gave him a look. “I think I’m a little old for that.”

“I don’t know,” Cooper said, raising his eyebrows. “Word on the street is they’ve got some extra-scary creatures in those woods this year.”

You raised your eyebrows back. “The only thing that’s gonna be scary is me if I don’t put this ‘be back soon’ sign up and go get some chili from the—oh no.”

A tractor unloaded its pumpkin patch passengers onto the grassy festival grounds and a few families and couples immediately began drifting behind Cooper, building up to a steady line. You shrugged a shoulder at Cooper. “Duty calls. Enjoy the pie.”

He winced and mouthed sorry, then vanished. 

You served up desserts for the better part of the next half hour, and your stock looked dangerously low once the line dwindled back down to nothing. That was when you noticed the little pile at the far end of your counter: a to-go cardboard soup container and paper cup lined up neatly behind a small takeout box, a package of plastic utensils, and a mound of napkins. Someone had scrawled words in black Sharpie on top of the box. 

Price: 1 haunted hayride.

You rolled your eyes and cracked the containers open. Fresh, hot chili wafted that mouthwatering spicy scent into your nose and you nearly moaned. The hot chocolate in the cup was still warm, as were the cornbread and a fresh apple cider donut stuffed inside the small box. You swore adoringly under your breath at the small feast in front of you.

Cooper strolled by just as you were swirling the dregs of your hot chocolate, food containers scraped clean, full and warm and nearly wholeheartedly content for the first time in weeks. He pretended to notice you out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, hello. You sure got busy.”

You leaned onto the counter. “Thanks for the food. That was sweet.”

He shrugged a shoulder and shoved his hands in his pockets. “What food?”

You rolled your eyes and finished the hot chocolate, eyeing him over the rim. His eyes glittered at you. “Reconsider the hayride?”

“Hm. I don’t know yet.” You ducked to start packing away some boxes and get a breather from his eyes. It was more than mixed signals, his unsettling, alarm-bell gaze and intensely generous actions. It was total juxtaposition.

“Well, you should know that—oh. Hi Shannon.”

His voice fell flat but you barely noticed, neatly piling pastry boxes into plastic bins, trying to think of what to say next. It was only when you grabbed the dusty chalkboard eraser and stepped out of the back of the stand—you had to erase PECAN PIE and CHERRY PIE from the menu out front—that you locked eyes with the redheaded woman speaking with Cooper. Your jaw fell slack.

Cooper’s tight expression melted when he spotted you over her shoulder, and he watched as she spun and gasped.

Shannon. 

Your mom’s friend Shannon. 

Shannon with the perfect cream house down the street and the son your age and the incessant penchant for gossip. Her bulging eyes rooted you to the spot.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, her thin silver wrist bangles jangling. “Oh. My God. I had no idea you were back, not after—”

That was when Cooper strode past her, jostling her right shoulder, and grabbed your forearm. “Yes, there you are, finally. Are you ready? We need to run a round of the hayride path before it gets dark.”

You stared at him, frozen. “I—”

He squeezed your arm and slipped the eraser out of your hand, setting it on the pie stand’s counter and shooting you a look. “You signed up last week, remember? Come on. Let’s hit it.” He wrapped a firm arm around your shoulders and guided you toward a bright red tractor parked by the edge of the forest.

“Wait!” Shannon shouted. You heard her bracelets tinkling against each other, like she was jogging after you. 

“Sorry! Very tight schedule!” Cooper called over his shoulder. He squeezed your shoulders tight, temple bumping against yours momentarily, and steered you around a laughing group of teens.

“I—the stand,” you said dumbly.

“I’ll text someone to keep an eye on it. Right now we’re getting on this tractor.”

“But—”

“Come on.” He approached a huge back wheel and stuck a hand out for you to grab, the other bracing the small of your back. “Upsy daisy.”

You were half-pushed half-helped up onto the tractor and fell into the seat. Cooper circled you and climbed into the driver’s seat, fiddling with a few buttons. “Ready? Great.”

You glanced over your shoulder. Shannon stood a few feet from the pie stand, staring at you, one hand holding her phone to her ear and the other gesturing between the stand and the tractor to a few adults who’d gathered nearby. You slid down in your seat, stomach churning.

The tractor lurched forward, then, and you with it. A brown-sweatered arm slung across your chest to keep you from flying out onto the dirt road. 

“Hold tight please,” Cooper said, looking straight forward. You held tight.

The tractor churned forward and you were soon enveloped in a trail shrouded by large trees glowing gold and red and orange in the late afternoon sun. You gripped the side of the seat but had to wipe your hands on your jeans first. They were too slick. 

Fucking Shannon. You’d bet the entire festival she was calling every nosy parent in the HOA right now to tell them that you were back in town. Tonight there’d be a line out your front door of your home full of bug-eyed people bearing casseroles and thinly veiled questions about My goodness, how does that happen? What set him off on you? How did you say he killed Bethany again? A machete, my goodness, there wouldn’t be photos would there? Of something so horrible?

The tractor jolted over a ditch and you swore under your breath, reflexively clutching Cooper’s arm because it was the closest stable thing to you. His head turned a few degrees toward you and you yanked it back into your lap. “Sorry. Thought I was going to fall out.”

“Don’t apologize.” He looked ahead, brows scrunched, forearms flexing as he maneuvered around a sharp turn. He glanced over his shoulder then and braked to a slow roll. “Okay. We’re pretty out of sight now. I think you can breathe.”

And you did, a huge, shaky exhale that shuddered out of you and burned your eyes. It caught in your throat but you coughed before it became a sob. You’d die if you cried in front of him. Cooper just drove the tractor.

You flattened your hands to your face. How fucking stupid could you be to think some people wouldn’t know about everything, let alone that everyone would just forget about it? Or at least about you. Shannon’s white-faced, bug-eyed look flashed in your head and your stomach roiled. It was like the whole thing had branded you with a bright red steaming burn on your face. DAMAGED GOODS. APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

Meanwhile, those who did approach treated you like a host of a true crime podcast, putting on a compassionate mask and mining you for the gory details. The house made you feel alone in the town, but the people made you feel alone in the entire world.

The tractor rolled to a stop. You didn’t take your face from your hands and Cooper didn’t ask you to. The trees rustled overhead. A few birds twittered. 

You rubbed your gritty eyelids and dropped your hands into your lap, blinking away black dots. In your peripheral, Cooper squinted up at the sky. 

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” you said into your lap. 

“Probably none of my business anyway,” he said. 

You both stared right ahead.

“Shannon’s kind of a stuck-up bitch, by the way,” Cooper said into the quiet woods. “I’m not a fan.”

You couldn’t help the thick laugh that sounded a little like a sob. 

Cooper’s arm extended toward the far end of the pumpkin patch. He’d perched the tractor overlooking a leafy green valley dotted with orange pumpkin bellies. “That’s where all the good ones are. They don’t let the public at that part because old Levi Soergel is trying to grow a state championship pumpkin at the far end. It’s over two thousand pounds right now, apparently. You can see it if you squint.”

But instead you looked at Cooper, with what you knew were brutally wet, pink eyes. His black ones glittered right back. He brushed a hand through his hair, brows knit slightly.

“Do you want to pick a pumpkin?” he asked. “They won’t charge you if you’re an employee. I don’t know. Or we can just sit here a little.”

You wiped your eyes on your sleeve. “I’ll get a pumpkin.” 

You really didn’t want to cry in front of him, and you were worried you might if he kept looking at you all concerned like that. Plus your house was so fucking depressing at this point, it was the least you could do to prop a few gourds on the stoop.

He helped you off the tractor and the two of you trod in silence to the far end of the pumpkin patch, Cooper lagging just a few steps behind you. Once, you caught the toe of your boot on a root and he grabbed your shoulder when you half-stumbled, pulling you upright without a word. 

When you stopped in front of a buttery orange duo sitting plump in the dirt, Cooper unearthed a pocket knife from his back pocket. You backpedaled immediately five steps at the sight of the blade but he didn’t seem to notice, focused instead on sawing the pumpkins loose from their thick green stems for you. He carried them back up to the tractor even though you offered, one under each arm. 

A violet tinge bled into the sky by the time you collapsed back in the tractor seat. Cooper checked his watch. “Got about thirty minutes ‘til the first ride. We can sit here until it gets darker, so you can kind of slip away once we’re back to the festival grounds. If you want.”

You nodded. Your eyes felt heavy and sore. You wanted a long hot shower and a full day’s worth of sleep. Minutes passed in leaf rustles and bird calls.

Then Cooper looked at you. “People never know as much about anything as they think they do, you know,” he said. “About other people’s lives, about certain situations. A lot of times they just want to feel like they know something. Or have an opinion, because that makes them think they know something.”

He rapped his fingers on the steering wheel and looked back out into the pumpkin patch, where trees and pumpkin bellies began to cast long dark shadows. “But it’s all just peripheral. White noise. Just have to—” he swatted a hand past his ear, like shooing away a mosquito. “Whoosh. Let it fly right by. Move forward with your own life.”

Your white noise wasn’t so much static as a volume-maxed bass-boosted cacophony, but it still made you feel a little less miserable. 

“Thanks.” You rubbed an eye. “You seem like a really good dad. Riley and Logan are lucky to have you.”

His mouth twitched but he nodded. “Thank you. I do my best. They’re incredible kids, really. They deserve…everything.” He leaned back in the seat, propping a boot on the tractor’s dash and knitting his fingers together on his stomach. “A good thing about becoming a parent is that you start seeing through the bullshit pretty quickly. Once you’ve got little people relying completely on you, all of the stupid shit you used to worry about becomes white noise, like I said. You can get your priorities straight.”

You squeezed your arms around the pumpkin sitting in your cross-legged lap. “I feel like that sometimes. But I kind of miss the bullshit.”

Cooper smiled. “Do you have a secret kid you’re not telling me about?”

“Ha. No. Just…” You shrugged. “Feels like a lot changed before I was ready for it. And now I’m trying to get my footing but…I don’t know if I will.”

He looked at you then in a way that made your skin prickle a little, though not entirely uncomfortable. His black eyes glittered and he blinked slow, like a cat. “You will. And or what it’s worth, it seems like you’re doing a really good job.”

And when he reached over and tapped the toe of your boot, the prickles turned into something else, a warm, shivery jolt of heat that melted to your stomach and spread to your fingers and toes like magma, warming you from the inside and burning at your eyes and you thought oh. Oh no.

-

Your next full day off work, you resolved to haul the worst of the junk from your home. You took a morning stroll to a coffee shop a few blocks away to build resolve, ordering something sweet and pumpkin-flavored from the extra-friendly baristas who were much too young to know or care who the hell you were, let alone about your brother or parents. 

You’d barely stepped foot in public except for Val’s and the Soergel’s festival since you returned to town. Waiting for your drink in the cafe’s overstuffed green armchair tucked away in a corner, completely ignored by customers tapping on computers and chatting and sipping around you, offered a delicious taste of utter normalcy. You sunk into it like a hot bath and felt a pang of disappointment when a barista finally called your name.

The pumpkin coffee was probably fifty percent sugar and fucking fantastic, and it warmed you from the inside as you crunched leaves in the brisk air on your walk home. You reached an intersection and considered taking another lap around the block, but thought of the piled-up boxes in the garage and crossed the street instead. That was when you spotted the figure on your front porch.

Shannon.

She noticed you before you could spin on your heel and pop up your hood and stride away. She’d been sitting on your stoop, it appeared, head on a swivel and something clutched in hand. A newspaper. She bounced to her heeled booties and made an awkward jog toward you. “Hey!”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Shannon,” you said curtly, rummaging in your pocket for your keys. “And I don’t appreciate the ambush.”

She shook her head, auburn waves bouncing maniacally about her head. “Ambush? What? Don’t be silly. We’ve all been worried sick about you and your family, you all just disappeared after that horrible, horrible accident—”

Your eyes snapped to her pink-tinged face. “It wasn’t an accident. Please get out of my way.”

“All right, no need to be rude, my goodness.” Her bangles jingled as she shuffled this way and that, trying to catch your eye. “Look, we’re all just worried about you, we want to help out, especially with the situation we’ve got going on here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Where the fuck did you put your keys? You had about a thousand pockets between your pants and bag and jacket, they had to be somewhere—

“We’ve been talking, now that you’re back, you know, serial killers sometimes go for survivors of other attempts, I thought you should know. I think I heard that in a true crime podcast or—or maybe it was a Criminal Minds episode, either way—”

You froze, hand buried in your bag, and stared at her. Serial killers? Survivors? “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Shannon looked scandalized. “I—my word , you’re quite the—”

You shook your head. “What do you mean? What are you talking about, serial killers?”

She shook her head, eyes buggy. “That’s why I came by, to show you—” She held up the crumpled newspaper and you snatched it from her hand. “My God—you know what, I’m calling Linda, you—”

“Don’t.” 

You opened the paper. PHILADELPHIA “BUTCHER” STRIKES AGAIN—REMAINS OF LOCAL SCHOOLTEACHER FOUND IN MORELAND POND.

A shiver dripped down your back. Your father used to take you and your brother fishing at Moreland Pond to catch largemouth bass. A large color photo of a taped-off area near the shore scattered with police officers was printed below the headline. You licked your lips. The pond wasn’t even a half hour drive from your house.

“When was this?” Your voice came out higher than expected. The paper dampened in your fingers.

Shannon covered her phone mic. “What? Oh, Tuesday I think. John leaves his papers everywhere though, so…oh never mind.” She hung up the phone and pushed it in her suede jacket. “Look, I have a book club, we meet on second Tuesdays. We’re reading this murder mystery now, small-town Maine setting, you know, and I thought it would be great if maybe you stopped by and could chat about, you know, the realism of it all and—“

You gaped at her. The chatter about being a book club’s special feature guest briefly pierced through the growing panic that there was another fucking murderer running around. She had to be fucking joking.

“Please get out of my way,” you said, shoving the paper in your bag. Something jangled at the bottom. Your keys.

She stepped closer to you. “If you’ll just consider it, we’d be happy to pay, it’ll be fun! Lots of fun folks, we drink wine sometimes too and—“

“Shannon,” you whispered. Your hands closed around your keys. “Get the fuck out of my yard.”

Her jaw dropped, cheeks flaring red. “Why—how dare you speak to me like—I can call your mother! I will call—“

You pushed past her, a slow burn catching in your stomach and licking up your esophagus, begging you to scream obscenities in her red face. Instead, you ignored her indignant sputtering and slammed the door shut.

You dropped your bag on the floor and took a deep breath. In, out, in… out. Your mouth felt dry. You picked up the paper and spread it on the kitchen table. You read it three times, standing up, tracing until your fingertip stained gray.

By the final read-through, you itched to hunt down whichever drooling reporter dubbed the killer “the Butcher” and strangle them with your bare hands. The fucking nerve . 

They tried to give your brother a nickname once. The Emory Student Slayer. A community paper printed it on its cover with a few exclusive photos that some asshole student with a window facing your apartment snapped on a smartphone. Printed above a photo of blood dripping from your kitchen window, someone had printed EMORY STUDENT SLAYER ROCKS LOCAL COLLEGE. 

It was the only time you made a scene. When you’d seen the paper folded beneath someone’s coffee cup, you slipped out of the situation room police set up in the campus public safety office and drove to the newspaper’s building to cuss out whoever the fuck thought they were so fucking clever giving your brother his own little killer nickname. It had taken two security guards to haul you out of the office as you screeched and spat at the paper’s pale, goggling staff, but the nickname wasn’t printed again. 

The Butcher. Fucking journalist assholes. 

Your coffee tasted too sweet now, but you drained it anyway and changed out of your sweaty clothes into an old tank and shorts. You’d move the shit out of the house today serial killer or not. If it got you one step closer to getting out of the suburb and away from its ghosts and demons for good, God help you you’d get it done. 

You picked up your phone.

You’d get it done. After calling a locksmith to change the locks throughout your house. 

-

You grunted under the weight of the nicked old nightstand as you lugged it down the stairs. What were the drawers filled with, concrete?

“Um…do you need a hand with that?”

You made it down the last stair and leaned on the top of the nightstand to catch your breath. The white-bearded locksmith glanced over his shoulder at you from his chair in front of the back door handle. 

You waved him off. “No, but thanks. I need the workout anyway.”

“If you say so.” He went back to his locksmithing, whistling through his teeth and you grinned at the floor. It was sweet of him to offer, but the man looked about a thousand years old and you’d rather not have to call the police explaining why he was dead on your stairs spread eagle beneath a 200-pound solid wood dresser.

You took a deep breath and squatted to hoist the thing back up again. Your arms trembled, muscles rubbery from trips up and down the stairs for the better part of four hours. But you’d nearly cleared the bedrooms and cluttered upstairs “office,” if that’s what the half-buried desk and chair made it, your most daunting task. Things were looking up. 

You backed out the front door and dragged the nightstand across the grass before heaving it alongside all the other junk in the driveway. Hopefully, you could parcel most of it off on Facebook Marketplace for a couple bucks a pop. The rest would be thrown to the wolves sitting at the edge of your yard with a cardboard FREE sign. 

You grabbed a rag from atop an old desk and wiped the dust off the top of the nightstand. Not in bad shape. You stepped back to snap a few photos. If you charged low enough, someone would probably pick it up within the day.

“Yard sale?”

You started. The red fire department SUV idled in front of your lawn, Cooper looking out the window. He smiled and gave you a little finger wave. 

You pressed your chest, glaring. “You scared me.”

He winced. “Sorry. Was just nearby on a call and passed by your little collection over there. Not stalking, promise.”

“Sure.” You dragged the nightstand next to the dresser with a grunt. “Jesus. You want any furniture?”

“Tempting,” Cooper said. “Hey, I’m about to wrap up here. You need any help?”

You looked at him, then back at the furniture. You did need help. There were some ominously large pieces of furniture you’d found upstairs that needed hauled down the treacherous stairs and into the driveway. You’d briefly considered calling Val’s cook and asking if he’d help you for a six-pack of beer, but then you’d remembered the whole Butcher ordeal and lost your nerve. Even the locksmith, Ray, you’d asked for a reference to call before letting him into the house. He didn’t seem to mind, though, listening to the soft rock station in his car and whistling along while you called an older lady who went on about how sweet he was but how he kind of smelled like cigarettes and scared her cats.

Cooper you’d avoided calling for another reason. The same reason that left you feeling all warm and flushed and oh no after he tapped your shoe in the tractor. 

You bit your lip. But you really, really needed the raggedy upstairs leather sofa taken to the driveway.

“Um. Are you sure? Because there are a couple things that are more of a two-person job if you don’t mind.”

“Absolutely.” Cooper killed the engine and stepped out of the car. He wore the same neat cargo pants and t-shirt uniform, but grabbed a flannel from his passenger seat and slipped his arms into it, rucking the sleeves up to his elbows. You felt the same inside-out simmer that you had in the tractor and looked away, pushing the nightstand a few unnecessary inches. 

Cooper clapped his hands together. “Let’s do it. Where to you want me?”

Thirty minutes later, the two of you stopped at the landing halfway down your staircase, breathing heavy, a huge faded couch suspended between you. Your tank top clung to your back and Cooper had stripped down to his undershirt five minutes ago in front of you, much to your grit-toothed eyes-averted chagrin. 

“You go left. No wait, your right. Yes. Okay now I go here.” Cooper took two tiny steps to his right and the couch shifted slowly. “There we go.”

“My arms are going to snap,” you wheezed. “I think they injected the cushions with lead.”

“Come on, just ten more stairs.” Cooper looked up at you, pink cheeked and grinning. Bits of his bangs stuck to his forehead. “Let’s go.” 

You blew out a breath and stepped down carefully. Cooper finally reached the kitchen floor and looked up at you. “Okay. Careful now.” 

He looked over to Ray, who sipped a lemonade by your side door. “How’s the drink, slack off?”

The old man chuckled. “Always a smart ass, Coop.”

Cooper winked at you and you rolled your eyes. There wasn’t a schmuck in town he didn’t know by name.

Finally, you lugged the couch out to the driveway and lowered it next to the sizeable pile of junk. Cooper had helped bring down not only the sofa, but a china cabinet, clothes chest, and your father’s unnecessarily big-ass bedroom desk. 

“There we go. Nice,” he said, grinning at you. A v-shaped patch of sweat darkened the undershirt at his chest. “All right. What’s next?”

You wiped off your forehead. “I think that’s the last of it. At least what I can’t carry by myself.” You walked through each room of the house in your mind. “Office is empty, parents’ bedroom is empty, the hall—oh.”

“What?”

You grimaced. “There’s an attic, but the string pull broke in half. The ceiling’s so high I can’t get to it on top of anything, and I don’t have a ladder. Do you think—?”

Cooper ran a hand through his sweaty hair and grinned. “Baby, I’m a firefighter. ‘Course I can.”

He said it jokingly, but your cheeks burned. You turned to head back into the house before he could see, throwing the great, thanks over your shoulder. God, what were you, fifteen?

You’d felt out of tune with your emotions since the night at your college apartment. You distrusted your trust, couldn’t read the flows of emotion toward your family, and grappled with a chunk of guilt the size of Antarctica. But this, unfortunately, you could read for certain.

You had a crush on Cooper.

You’d felt it in the tractor, you’d felt it just minutes ago in your house when he’d moved your hands with his own, showing you where to grip the couch before lifting it together. It ricocheted through your body like a bullet when he said baby, no matter how lighthearted it was. You knew that you knew then and had been pretending to not know. You knew that you liked him and you hated it.

“Maybe I can get some of that lemonade after we’re finished?” Cooper asked, jogging inside the door behind you. “I’d take a beer if you had one too. Call it my wages.”

“Yeah, for sure,” you said, not really thinking. 

He grinned. “Thanks. Gonna use your bathroom real quick. Be up in a moment.”

You nodded and wandered up the stairs, stomach stirring. It all felt so wrong. Cooper threw you off from the jump. He’d triggered your intuition in seconds— something’s not right.

Very much not a boring guy.

But what wasn’t right? You couldn’t put your finger on it, but even if you could, would you trust your own judgment? Something’s not right, yeah, well, something wasn’t right with your brother either and now Bethany was six feet under and you snapped awake from nightmares of him in the middle of the night in your empty childhood home. You’d trusted him and shouldn’t have, you trusted your parents and shouldn’t have, what if now you were distrusting the only person you might actually be able to trust? You worked so hard at protecting yourself now, but it felt like all of you left to protect was in pieces, scattered so far one didn’t know what the other was up to.

Then there was the guilt. 

That you were familiar with. The guilt of enjoying a sweet pumpkin-flavored coffee or being pleased a generous diner tipped you 30% at Val’s or thinking the pumpkins you got at Soergel’s really brightened up your porch. The guilt of feeling anything that wasn’t remorse or misery because Bethany was dead and you weren’t. Your best friend was buried next to her grandma while her parents cleaned out her bedroom and you had the audacity to have a crush on a fucking middle-aged married man in your neighborhood, what the actual FUCK was wrong with you—

“Is that it?”

You whirled and Cooper stepped back. “Sorry. Thought you heard me coming up the stairs. That the attic?”

You looked up. You were indeed standing beneath the broken string dangling from the attic. “Oh. Yeah, sorry. It is.”

“Hm.” Cooper rubbed his chin. “Not sure if I’d be able to reach it on a chair. Let me try.”

He couldn’t, but you barely realized because you were staring at the stomach his lifted undershirt hem exposed when he reached up atop your mom’s wooden vanity chair, straining for the string. His cargo pants hung low on his hips and you stared at the v-shaped indentation peeking up from their waistband and the little sprinkling of dark hair below his stomach. Your mouth felt dry.

Once, just once, tucked up in your bed the night of the Soergel’s festival, wrestling with the stirring in your stomach and the memories of the tractor that replayed over and over in your head, you gave in. You screwed your eyes shut and let your fingers slip between your legs and tested out the thoughts of him while they moved around the damp warmth there. 

You’d bit hard on your lip as the memories of him glancing over at you and wrapping an arm around your shoulder quickly twisted and morphed into his chest pressed against your back and face buried in your neck, his own thicker, firmer fingers replacing your own between your legs. Then not his fingers but him, holding you tight and filling you from the inside, firm and warm and achingly sweet. The orgasm had torn through you like a bullet and left you shaking and panting and burnt up from the inside with shame.

“Ah well, worth a shot.” Cooper stepped down and you righted from where you’d been leaning against the wall, trained on his exposed skin. His eyes narrowed at your wide eyes that snapped up at him. “What?”

You opened your mouth and closed it, then shrugged. “Nothing. Do you have a ladder?”

He looked at you a moment, brows knit, then shook his head. “No. Not in the car at least.” He glanced up at the ceiling, then back at you, black eyes sparkling. “What if you got on my shoulders and tried to reach? I think the chair is sturdy enough to hold us.”

You gaped. “Uh—I don’t think that’s safe.” Yeah not safe, not if you don’t want to fucking melt and drip down his shoulders because you’re a fucking horrible friend and loser who has a CRUSH ON A MIDDLE AGED MARRIED MA—

“Come on. I won’t drop you. Otherwise, it’ll be at least an hour until I can come back with a ladder.” Cooper shrugged a shoulder and raised his eyebrows.

You swallowed. “Okay. Just—don’t drop me. Please.”

“Promise. Don’t worry, I carry Riley all the time.” He lowered himself to his knees with a grunt and patted his shoulders.

“Well I’m not exactly fifteen,” you grumbled, bracing your hands on his shoulders, a tingle running from your fingers to your stomach at the warmth of his body. You ignored it. He felt steady enough.

You carefully slung one leg over his right shoulder and inhaled sharply when his hand immediately curled tight around your bare thigh, just above your knee. “Just keeping you steady.”

“Right.”

You got the other leg over and he opened his left hand. “Hold my hand. It’ll keep you on tight.”

You bit your tongue and slipped your hand into his, squeezing hard. He stood then, in one fluid motion, and tapped your leg. “See? Easy. I’ll step up now.”

“Go slow,” you said. A nervous tickle spread in your fingertips and toes. When Cooper stepped up onto the chair you shifted the tiniest bit, swearing under your breath and squeezing your thighs around his head to stay steady. His nails dug into your leg and you relaxed. “Sorry. Wobbly.”

“It’s all right. You’re fine.” He stepped up the rest of the way. “Okay. Go ahead.”

You grabbed the string easily and tugged the attic door open. The folded ladder slid out a few feet and stopped. “Okay. It’s open. Down please.”

“What, you’re not having fun up there?”

“Cooper!”

“All right, all right.” He stepped off the chair and eased back down to his knees. You held the crook of his neck and shoulders as you slid off. “There you go. Easy peasy.”

You blew out a breath, shaking the jitters out of your hands. “I don’t know about easy. But thank you.”

He nodded, looking at you with a tinge of red across his cheeks and nose, and you got a strange, awkward feeling with him then, like an invisible line had been toed. You stepped back and pretended to brush an imaginary speck of dust off your shorts.

Cooper cleared his throat. “All right. Let me pull the stairs down for you. Then how about that drink?”

-

She still lingered on him. The musky, hot smell of her, it seeped into his undershirt and lingered. He pushed a knuckle in his mouth and bit hard. Fucking hell. The feeling of her wrapped around him was almost unbearable, but the scent—good God. She’d felt warm, a little damp from all their up and down the stairs, and then when he touched her leg and felt the unbelievably soft skin there—want wasn’t even close to the right word for what bloomed in him. Need. 

He rolled into the fire station parking lot, blood simmering beneath his skin, positively thrumming with that heavy, urgent need that pulsed hot in him, like a heartbeat. Different than the other need, the one that felt more of a head high, a balm for his mind. This was a full-body throb. When she’d squeezed her thighs around his head to keep steady and he felt the heat of her against the back of his neck, he’d felt like he might burst into flames.

Then he caught her looking and nearly did.

When he glanced down from reaching for the broken attic string she’d been looking—staring, really—at his exposed navel, eyes snapping away guiltily when he stepped down. Poor thing. Whatever she was feeling flustered her; she’d acted nervous and short around him the whole time, looking away and falling deep in thought such that she didn’t even hear him coming up the stairs right next to her. Granted, he’d been walking quietly on purpose. Something about surprising her—watching her whip around and look up at him with wide, dark eyes—made that heat stir in his stomach so pleasantly, so thickly, he could feel it sitting in his throat and prickling through his fingertips. 

He parked and ran his hands through his hair. He liked Rachel well enough; she was sweet and kind and a great mother to Riley and Logan, plus just busy and trusting and well-raised enough to miss all of his red flags. 

But Rachel liked the show he put on. This one was different. Something she liked was actually him, even if he hadn’t revealed himself fully yet. She’d known part of him as soon as she met him, intuitively, and now she liked him, in one way or another. He didn’t mind ambiguity; his whole fucking life was threaded through with it. But he never thought he’d be looked at that way by someone like her. The feeling was so visceral he could choke on it.

Cooper killed the SUV’s engine and reached to grab his bag from the back, nestled up against the ladder scattered amid the rest of his equipment. The twist of his body brought her scent on his clothes to his nose again and he groaned, feeling that familiar hot tightening between his legs he now associated with thoughts of her. If she smelled that good, the taste of her might be pure divinity. He couldn’t even dwell on it; the thought made his brain overheat.

He locked the SUV and walked to his car; he’d say he forgot to drop off the keys tomorrow morning. He couldn’t be around people who knew him right now. The bone-deep hot thrumming made him feel out of control and he doubted his ability to keep up appearances. 

Cooper slipped into his car and closed the door. Rachel knew not to expect him at one time or another with the random calls and hours of his job, so he figured he had a few hours or so to burn. He’d check one of his houses, make sure everything was tidy and in order, then maybe cruise around and hit a few bars, scout out the crowd. See if he could find anyone that scratched that itch. He hadn’t picked up anyone since he’d met her, he’d been so distracted. But now he could use the balm, the comfort. She was driving him fucking crazy, and if he didn’t do something to someone else about it, he might do it to her. 

Not that, he reasoned with himself, firing up the car’s engine. He couldn’t kill her. But something. Jesus, he felt wild. He probably didn’t even need the key to get into her house if he really wanted to—hell, she might even welcome him in at this point—but he’d still pretended to use the bathroom and chatted up Ray before swiping one of the new keys the old man made for her locks. It wasn’t his usual style, but he just liked to know he could get in if he wanted. Get to her.

Cooper pressed on the gas. God, he was hot, inside and out. He rolled down his windows and pulled out of the parking lot, the wind blowing through his damp scalp. Just a few hours, just a few bars. Just in case.

-

Your watch was broken. Time could not be moving this fucking slow.

You poured coffee and checked your watch, then doled out a few plates of Val’s Classic Breakfast and checked your watch, then polished silverware and checked your watch, then rolled the silverware and finally, finally it was five. 

It was Friday and you were off at 5 p.m. like an actual normal office person like most of the people in town, so why not continue the trend of normalcy and drag yourself to the nearest local dive and have a cheap beer? You’d felt out of place for long enough this week, what with the crappy encounters with Shannon and confusing feelings about Cooper. You deserved to pull up a chair at a sticky bartop, order the cheapest, most tasteless glass of suds, and fade into complete, blissful invisibility as just another customer at just another bar. 

It was also October 9th. Your brother’s birthday. Texts from your mom, then your dad, started pinging into your phone around noon and hadn’t stopped. You’d check them in a few days, once you were late enough to acquiesce to their requests and could guiltlessly ignore them. Besides, you had a pretty good idea of what they might say. Please send us a happy birthday text we can read to him, he misses you. Please visit. For God’s sake, just answer us. It’s cruel to ignore your baby brother on his birthday when he’s locked away like an animal. And so on.

You wished Erin a good night shift, smiling at her eye roll, tossed the trash from Val’s on your way out, then set off down the street. The dive you found on Google Maps was a small, rather crooked two-story perched next to a patch of woods, a gravel parking lot, and lit by a single streetlight across the street. You could leave your car at Val’s and walk there. If you got sloshed enough you’d call an Uber, you reasoned. Not that that ever really happened anymore.

A few scattered patrons already sat when you arrived, and you felt a sweet kind of lull scraping up a chair and nodding at the bartender’s “one second” finger. You’d probably spend the next hour or two people-watching, but you had a battered paperback in your bag to either pretend you weren’t or flip through a few pages of if the going was slow.

The bearded bartender chatted with you like any other patron and served you a watery beer in a sweating pint glass. It was cold and the first sip left you smiling at the bartop like a buffoon; it was so fucking boring and so fucking normal it hurt your cheeks. Perfection.

You flipped through your book and watched people filter in and out, mostly in, half hidden in shadow in the dim bar lighting, for the better part of an hour. Then you swirled the suds at the bottom of your glass, contemplating a refill, mourning the fact that you even had to contemplate another three dollars. Doubles almost every other day at Val’s and you still felt a little sick when your car made a weird noise or the house temperature felt off. Which led to pink-faced moments like these when the bartender asked “Another beer?” and you had to shake your head.

“Two, actually. Please.” 

Cooper leaned onto the bar a couple feet over from you. He looked over and smiled. “My treat. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you be. I’m just stopping by for one on my way home.”

Your skin went hot. “I—hi. I didn’t see you come in. You don’t have to—”

He shook his head. “Don’t need to drink it if you don’t want to. Not a problem. But if you want it, it’s yours.”

The bartender placed two cold beers in front of you and Cooper thanked him, nodded at you, then gave the bar a once-over, looking for a seat presumably a respectful distance from yours. You watched the bubbles rise in your beer for a moment and took it. “Thanks. Um…you can sit. If you want.”

Cooper looked over, brows raised. “You sure? I don’t want to bother you.”

You shook your head. “You’re not. I’ll probably leave after this one too, anyway. 

He nodded and raised his glass a little in your direction. You clinked yours against it. “Cheers.”

“Off early tonight?” you asked, looking at him over your rim. He smiled.

“No. It’s my day off. The kids are at sleepovers and Rachel is visiting her sister. Thought I’d…blow off some steam.”

“And this was your place of choice.” You roved your eyes around the bar; twenty or so folks sat scattered around the place now, quiet or talking low over beers, the only light afforded by a couple neon beer signs and a lamp above the pool table where a couple men shot balls. Some old singer crooned a guitar-heavy 90s love song through the tinny speakers. You came here for the quiet and melty feeling of blending into an unnamed place, but weren’t sure you’d spend a precious day off in a grubby dive if you were normal.

Cooper dropped his voice. “Hey. The bartender is right there. Be nice.”

You smiled into your beer and heard him laugh under his breath. “Well you’re here, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, but I worked before this.”

“And I’ve got a place five minutes away. We’re not so different.”

Your brows scrunched at that. Got a place, like he was collecting apartment rentals. “You mean your house?”

And you thought you saw something twitch in his face, the tiniest little tic out of place, but it was so fast and you’d been turning to look at him it had to be imagination. Talk about high-strung.

Cooper’s eyes glittered. “Yes. My house, I meant. We don’t live too far from here.”

“Ah.” You nodded and tapped your glass with a nail, then took a sip, then put it back down, the whole time aware of his gaze on you, just at the edge of your peripheral. Why did he always look at you like that?

A stool scraped across the bar where a thirty-something guy in a rumpled button-down stood. You watched him push his empty bottle forward and nod to the bartender. There was a blur of motion to your right suddenly as Cooper checked his phone. He winced at his screen and reached forward, placing his not half-finished beer on the counter.

You sipped your own. “Taking off already?”

He pressed his lips together. “I guess Riley needs picked up after all. Looks like I’m doing overtime tonight.”

“Ah. Well it was nice to see you. I’ll probably catch you at Val’s soon,” you said. 

Cooper stood and flipped open his wallet, laying a twenty on the bartop. He tapped it. “You too. Use that to cover your drinks and mine, okay?”

You went to protest and he raised a hand, shoving his wallet in his pocket and smiling. “Hey. My treat, like I said. I’ll see you soon.”

“Thanks a lot. Have a good night.”

And he was gone, out the door just behind the rumpled businessman.

You swirled your drink, suddenly feeling a whole lot lonelier than before Cooper arrived. Something gnawed a little in your stomach, and the beer wasn’t helping much. 

You watched your drink for a few minutes, willing yourself to finish it, but gave up and pushed the twenty and your glasses forward on the bar. The bartender drifted over and picked up your glasses, nodding at the bill. “Change?”

“No thanks. Have a good night.” You slid off your chair and grabbed your bag. The walk to your car would be nice, you might circle the block once or twice. Maybe the fresh air would boost your mood.

You stepped into the cool night, crunching on the gravel parking lot. A single buttery streetlight lit the road in front of the bar. Dry leaves rustling in the wind laced the air with a comforting hum. You straightened your bag, clutching it closer to your stomach, and set off. 

You crossed the street and took a deep breath of the cool air. It was okay to feel lonely. Everyone felt lonely at one point or another. You’d already sold off most of the things from your parents’ house and contacted a few real estate agents; you’d be out of the town and starting anew in no time anyway. Or so you thought to yourself, over and over, as you walked along the sidewalk across another lot, the bigger one in front of a strip mall.

Then you paused.

A murmur of voices sounded from the far end of the parking lot, a darkened, shadowy edge where the streetlights didn’t manage to reach. You squinted at a white van parked in the dark corner with its hood popped. Two shadows moved around it.

“ —such a moron, this is the second time I’ve had to jump it,” a man was saying. He stepped away from the car for a moment, rubbing the back of his head, and you caught his silhouette. Cooper.

The other shadow stepped next to him and bent over the engine. “No problem. I can pull around. You said you’ve got cables?”

“Yep, yeah, they’re in the back,” Cooper said. “Can you grab them? I want to try something first. Should be right inside that door,” he said, pointing to the van’s side. He leaned over the engine and seemed to be poking at something. 

The other man nodded and walked toward the side of the van. Once his back was turned, Cooper stood ramrod straight. The skin at the back of your neck prickled.

Without thinking, you moved close to the brick exterior of the building you stood next to, slipping into its shadows and out of sight. You didn’t know why. That weird, gnawing feeling deepened inside you.

Cooper opened his jacket and took something from the inside pocket. You watched him glance around, once, then stride forward, behind the van. 

A beat.

“WH—”

The cry was cut off before it even started. Something thunked dully against the van and you heard the scraping and crunching of boots over gravel. You shoved a hand over your mouth and pressed yourself fully to the wall, heart thudding against your chest.

And then nothing.

The scraping, the crunching all stopped and you stood in silence, hearing only the thunderous beating in your chest and your short, muffled breaths against your hand. Seconds passed, then a minute.

A van’s door slid shut with a muted thunk that made you jolt. Footsteps crunched until a figure emerged from behind the van, wiping off his hands.

Cooper.

Your stomach dropped.

He wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore, only a sweater with the sleeves rucked up to his elbows. He pushed his van hood shut and brushed aside hair that had dropped into his eyes.

You couldn’t move. You could walk back into the bar, but streetlights would catch you before you neared the door and he’d certainly see you then. Bricks scratched your back. You’d have to stay put until he drove off. Then you’d call the police. You stood as still and silent as each brick mortared into the wall behind you. Your heart beat in tune as you thought—

I was right.

I was right.

I was right.

So what? Your sweat slid cold across your palms and back anyway. Your breaths were shallow and fuck, your stomach felt so fucking sick—

Then the truck drove by.

It clambered down the road, speakers thumping to a bass that rattled its frame, blazing LEDs piercing through the dark parking lot as it roared by, sweeping over you, blinding you and spotlighting your hiding place against the brick building. You put a hand up to shield your eyes, wincing, and when the truck had sped off, put it down and blinked hard to see Cooper’s silhouette turned straight at you.

You caught those piercing slits of obsidian for a heartbeat before turning on a heel and striding away. Maybe he didn’t see you. Dear God let him have not seen you.

Boots stepped on the pavement behind you. 

“Hey,” Cooper called into the night, too lightly. He said your name, then.

He saw you.

Worse.

He knew you saw him.

You broke into a run.

Bits of gravel spewed up beneath your grubby work sneakers as you took off down the sidewalk, blood thundering in your ears. There was a string of curses and then hard footsteps behind you. Run. Run. RUN.

Your bag slid off your arm and thudded into a strip of grass, but you kept running. The patch of woods rose a little ways away, between you and the dive, if you could slip in and hide…

You veered to the right and ran for the trees. They swallowed up all of the dim streetlight into nothing; the trunks blended together into a thick, impenetrable darkness. Shrubs caught at your jeans as you pushed into the dark. You ran another fifty feet and slipped behind a massive pine, crouched low to the ground, chest heaving.

Cooper burst into the woods behind you. His footsteps crunched down hard on the layer of twigs and leaves and shrubbery and you blindly clutched the tree trunk in front of you, your eyes trying and failing to identify anything beyond shadows in the thick darkness.

Then the movement stopped. 

Silence. Again.

You took tiny breaths, barely filling your straining lungs with oxygen, mouth muffled in your palm. Your uniform shirt clung to your back against the slick, cool sweat there. For a moment, there was only the occasional rustle of the wind through the trees.

Then him. 

“Please come out now.”

You flinched. He stood closer than you thought. All of the regular airiness had left his voice, and it was deeper, like when you’d been speaking on the tractor. Not angry, though, or at least it didn’t sound like it. Just…firm. 

Cooper said your name and sighed. “I will stay in here until I get you. I promise. I’m very patient.”

Your eyes went hot and watery and you closed them hard. Get you he said, not find you. Get you. Take you, it implied. End you.

“I know…what you think you saw,” he continued, and you clutched hard to the tree bark. He was closer now. Could he hear you? Smell you? Seek you out in the dark with those obsidian animal’s eyes? You bit hard on your lip to keep a shudder in and tasted pennies.

“It’s all right. We can talk about it. Just talk.” Footsteps crunched toward you, then away, slowly, and you could breathe again. He couldn’t see you. Yet.

Cooper stopped and you heard him laugh, once, short. “But who am I kidding. You knew it, though, didn’t you? I saw it on your face. Just the first time I met you, you were so… hesitant. So wary.” Footsteps again, softer, pressing slow into the ground instead of crunching on it, what was the word? Stalking. “Now you know. How’d you sense it? I’d love to know. Really.”

Your legs burned but you didn’t dare move. A slow, hot panic began to bubble in your stomach, threatening to boil over. You had nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape. You were trapped in these woods with Cooper and his glittering black eyes until dawn finally broke and he would catch you.

Then what? your mind hissed. You bit your lip again.

You couldn’t outwait him. You couldn’t see him, so there was no way to attack him and catch him off guard—let alone the fact that he could probably overpower you even with the element of surprise. He’d taken down that man fast, regardless of what he’d pulled from his pocket right before.

You weren’t that far from the bar. That you knew. If you could outrun him for just a couple hundred feet, maybe take off while he was farther from you, you could get inside and get help. 

You’d have to run for your life.

“Hey, I’ve got a better idea than us waiting around here all night,” Cooper said, and your heart rose a fraction of an inch. He was farther now, and from the sound of it, facing away from you. If you could cause a distraction, you might make it.

Might .

You pressed your hands slowly, so slowly to the ground, and slowly, so slowly, moved them against the brush.

“If you come out now, I’ll let him go,” Cooper said. “I’ll leave him in the parking lot. I promise.”

Your right hand closed around a small, thick stick.

Cooper exhaled. “But, if you make me wait around all night, I will kill him. And I will make you watch.”

Now. Now. You just had to do it.

You cocked your arm back and threw the stick as far away from you as you could.

It thudded with a loud rustle into the brush far from you. Cooper’s crashing footsteps followed it immediately. You stood, waited two seconds, and ran faster in the opposite direction than you’d ever run in your life.

It was so fucking dark. Fallen branches grabbed at your ankles and thorns nipped at your clothes. You stuck your hands out in front of you to find trees before slamming into them, but when you veered to escape a pile of branches, a thick trunk caught you off guard. You slammed into it and careened off with a gasp of pain, falling into the brush. Your diversion only bought seconds; footsteps tore behind you in the woods.

You scrambled to your feet and sprinted, tasting blood in your mouth, lungs aching, and then you could see it through the trees, the dim light of the bar, it was ahead and you could see it and you could make it out of here alive, you could, you could, you—

A massive force tackled you from behind and brought you smashing to the forest floor, forcing the air out of your lungs. You gasped tiny, shallow breaths, eyes streaming. Large hands pinned yours to the ground, and you felt his breath on your face, the scratch of his stubble against your cheek, his body heavy and crushing atop yours.

“Caught you,” Cooper whispered.

You wriggled violently beneath him, choking out pleas. You begged so easily, now that you’d done it before.  “No, no no no. Cooper, please don—”

“Ah-ah.” He forced your wrists harder into the ground and pushed himself up, knees bracketing either side of your waist. “Stop. It’s over. We played fair, and I won. You lost.”

You inhaled to scream. He must have felt your lungs expand because he clapped a hand over your mouth and held it there, even when you gnashed your teeth against him, trying to bite.

“Stop,” he hissed. 

He held your squirming body fast between his own and the dirt until you finally went limp. The panic and gnawing and skin-prickling fear boiled over and you trembled, heaving shallow sobs into the dirt. Cooper slid off you and knelt, laying a hand on your shoulder. “Come on. Sit up. Don’t try anything, you’re smarter than that.”

You obeyed, pushing yourself up on your hands, breath still short and gasping. You slumped back on your heels and Cooper put a hand on your back. “Slow,” he said. He placed the other on your breastbone, feeling the rise and fall of your chest, his breath palpable on your cheek. “Catch your breath.”

You did, breath by breath, until they deepened into long, shaky inhales and exhales. Cooper watched you the whole time, moving only when he raised his hand to wipe the tears from your cheeks. “There you go. You’re doing good.”

His fingers slipped to your jaw, where you’d hit the tree. The spot throbbed, and his touch stung the cut there. You winced and jerked your head from his fingers.

“That must hurt,” he whispered. “I wish you hadn’t run. You knew I was always going to catch you, right? You just hurt yourself trying to get away.”

You couldn't speak. Cooper brushed some leaves from your hair, tucking it behind your ears and dabbing away your tears with his thumb again. He stood then, behind you, and bent to grip your biceps. “Up, now,” he said softly. You stood, shaking, and he brushed off your arms and chest. “There we go.”

He brushed himself off, then, and placed a hand on your shoulder, clearing his throat. “All right. Now what we’re going to do is walk to the car. If we run into anyone, you will be quiet and calm. That man’s life depends on it. I think you know I’m not bluffing.”

The man in his van. The young, rumpled businessman who’d offered to help Cooper with his fake dead car battery.

Your stomach turned and you barely got the words out. “Are you going to kill me?”

He squeezed your shoulder, his voice too casual. Light. “We’re not talking. We’re walking.”

But you stood firm against his nudge at your shoulder. You felt his breath on your neck and cheek; God why did he have to be so fucking close. “No. I want to know if you're going to kill me.”

Cooper’s hand ghosted over your back and when he whispered, his lips brushed your ear. “I think we both know I’ve had more than enough opportunities to do that.”

Your skin tingled. Yes, he had. In the diner or the night at your house or on the tractor or the other time at your house or the handful of times you’d made idle chitchat at Val’s in between. But your stomach still twisted with nerves; your brother certainly had plenty of opportunities to kill you before he decided to really try.

Cooper steered you out of the woods and back to lot with the white van, fingers pressed tightly into your flesh. When he opened the passenger side door, a few older men walked out of the bar down the street, laughing and jostling into each other. A buttery orange light spilled out behind them. You stopped dead.

Cooper’s breath was in your ear instantly, hands gripping your biceps. “Don’t.”

You stood frozen. You’d done enough safety research after the night with your brother to know that if Cooper took you to a secondary location, your chances of surviving this—whatever this was—plummeted. Your mouth was dry. If you screamed would they turn fast enough to see you before Cooper whisked you away and made up some story?

You thought of the rumpled businessman probably bound and knocked out a few feet from you in Cooper’s van and your stomach twisted. Could you really survive anyone else’s blood on your hands?

You didn’t even get the chance to decide. In the moment you froze Cooper moved, fast enough you knew he’d done it before, acting in the moment of panic. He wrapped his right arm tightly around you, forcing you back up against his chest, and used the left to grab a scrap of cloth that he pushed into your mouth, flattening his palm against your lips so you couldn’t spit it out. The deft movement sent a bolt of panic through you and reflexively went to writhe against him, but he stepped forward, pressed you up and trapping you against the passenger’s seat. He grabbed your wrists then, and before you could yank them away, you heard a metallic click. You jerked them, moaning. He’d handcuffed you.

You met his gaze for a split second when he pushed you fully into the seat, knowing your eyes were lidded and wet and pink. His face slackened then, from tight-jawed resolve to a deep, honey-sweet sympathy you’d seen before, all dark eyed and furrowed brow. His hand rose and pressed your cheek, once, thumb brushing over the apple. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you.”

“Please let him go,” you muffled through the cloth, half unintelligible. The man’s shallow breathing in the back of Cooper’s van made your skin crawl. Not again. Please not again. “Please, Cooper. Do whatever it was to me instead. Please.”

The tight expression returned and Cooper cuffed your ankles. You heard duct tape rip; that went over your lips. “That’s not exactly how it works,” he whispered.

When the door slammed you twisted to look at the man tied up in the back. He looked like a lump in the darkness of the van’s interior. Did he have a wife? A husband? A family?

The door next to the man slid open and Cooper hoisted himself inside. He grabbed a coil of rope and slung it around your chest, just beneath your breasts, binding you to the chair. You stared straight ahead until he was finished. He paused then. Like he was considering something.

“I’m letting him go now,” Cooper said. “For you.”

You coughed into your gag. There was a beat, then you heard Cooper grunt behind you and the thump of a heavy object landing on pavement.

You turned to make sure. You caught a fleeting glimpse of the man’s crumpled-up form on the parkling lot before Cooper was sliding the door shut.

You closed your eyes. At least the only death you might be responsible for tonight would be your own.

You kept your eyes shut when Cooper slid into the driver’s seat. You didn’t want to look at him.

But you didn’t see him lean over to you with the needle.

“Just a little pinch,” he whispered.

Something stung your neck and your eyes flew open. Cooper was already moving back into his seat and buckling by the time you realized what happened. The engine growled to life and in seconds he was grabbing the gear shift into reverse, then drive.

You screamed. You shrieked through your gag and tape, even thought it all emerged as a garbled, horribly muffled moan. You writhed and jerked against your bonds, rope rubbing hard into your arms, thinking not again. Please not again.

Cooper just turned the radio on and cranked up the volume. Your voice became nothing, just like your struggle against his tight bondage, then your mind joined it, edged with a fuzzy purple haze, sweeping in and out like a sea tide, until all your thoughts were wiped clean like fresh sand and all that remained was

obsidian the black.

-

The purple sea tide ebbed away, inch by inch, leaving behind tiny, cloudy shells of perception—a creak of floorboards, the warmth of fingers on your face and arms, water trickling past your lips. Once, the tide ebbed enough that your eyes cracked open, gummy and hot, and you twisted over on a mattress, moaning. You barely made it to the edge of before heaving vomit onto the floor. Dark snippets of memory rushed at you like shards of glass, embedding themselves in your skin. The tied-up man. The rope on your skin. Your brother, blood-spattered, advancing. Cooper’s watchful, obsidian eyes.

Your eyes burned and the sob heaved itself from your chest, a half-moan half-cry drenched in tears. Then a door creaked and hands were pressing you back onto the mattress, wiping off your face and lips with a cool, damp cloth, whispering soothing words that seemed to float down from every which angle. Hands carded through your hair, brushing it back from your damp cheeks and forehead, and you dropped back into the purple ocean, drifting and motionless. Like the dead.

-

You ran.

His footsteps thundered up the stairs behind you. Even at the frenzied pace, you recognized their weight and cadence. You’d probably chased each other up and down stairs thousands of times. 

Never like this.

Your chest heaved as you burst into your bedroom and slammed the door shut. It took three fumbles for your fingers to flip the lock. Not two seconds later, the doorframe shuddered beneath a barrage of fists.

“OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR,” he bellowed. “OPEN IT. OPEN IT. OPEN IT.”

Your vision swam and the room with it, bed and desk and closet all blurring into blobs of brown and pink and white. You stumbled to the window and yanked it up. It stuck like it always did, six inches above the sill, and the sob that crawled up your throat was pure misery.

“IF YOU DON’T OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW, I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL GUT YOU LIKE A FUCKING FISH.”

A heave wracked your body and you bent, squeezing your knees, gasping. This was it. It was over. 

Blows rained down on the door. It wouldn’t hold much longer if he was really as intent as he seemed. You lifted your bedside table lamp, tearing the shade off and flipping it over in your hands. The heavy metal base wobbled once in your shaky grip. You backed into a corner and waited.

Silence.

Then—

BAM. 

The door slammed open, bouncing off the wall with a crash. The scream it tore from you was involuntary; a death scream.

He stumbled in, blood-spattered and heaving, the blade in his hand dark and dripping on your rug. When his eyes latched on you, they shone a glittering, lifeless black. Obsidian.

“Wake up, now,” he croaked, voice not quite his own.

“Stop,” you gasped. Your hands squeezed deathly tight on the lamp, bloodless. “Stop it, you’re scaring me, you—”

“WAKE UP,” he yelled. The machete sliced upward in an arc, a deadly silhouette beside him. “WAKE UP,” and the sound split and richocheted around the room, WAKE UP bouncing off surfaces and screaming into your ears WAKE UP from a thousand angles, you dropped the lamp WAKE UP and he was advancing WAKE UP he swung—

You snapped awake, mid gasp. Your heart thundered in your chest like an alarm. Wakeup. Wakeup. Wakeup.

Dark. 

You blinked, heaving to catch your breath, as senses returned one by one—stiffness caking your muscles, the thick, achy sensation that someone scraped out your skull and filled the space with sand. The sound of your short, spurting breaths and the sour taste of your sticky mouth. The grayish haze that filtered through a single covered window, slicing the room into shadows your eyes struggled to adjust to.

Then you twisted and felt the rope.

Even in the dim you could see thin lengths of white rope that bound your ankles and bare feet to each of the front legs of a chair. They crisscrossed your chest and arms and wound into thick, looped cuffs on your wrists, lashing them together behind the chair. A few jolts did nothing to loosen them; the knots held strong, with just enough slack for you to breathe and shift your weight. Just enough to suggest the touch of a seasoned handler.

The taut white strands stood out stark against your red Val’s uniform shirt, like bleached bones. You’d seen them before. The same cordage knotted up the rumpled businessman from the dive. The one you saw in the back of the van. 

The van.

It careened back. The dark woods. The van. Cooper’s body slamming into yours and pressing you into the earth. I win. You lose.

Cooper.

“There you are.”

Your stomach dropped. 

His shape thickened out of shadows in the corner, wisps of black around the edges falling away with each hard blink. He sat backward on a chair, arms crossed over its top rail, chin resting on his forearm. Settled in, as if he’d been watching you for a while.

It was uncanny—even in the thin, choked light of the covered window, pinpricks of light glittered in his dark eyes, giving them the appearance of black gemstones enlaid into a shadow figure.

Cooper’s head rose, eyes trained on you. “How are you feeling?”

“Bad,” you croaked. You tried to swallow and coughed instead, rope straining against your chest. Careful there, bucko. “Where am I?”

Cooper shifted and a light suddenly glowed to life above you, mounted at what you assumed was an intentionally unreachable height up the wall. It was one of those industrial-looking ones, with a white metal cage over it, but instead of blazing a harsh white fluorescent, it bathed the room in a buttery, low incandescence, ushering the shadows to corners. Cooper’s eyes gleamed in it; his hair was mussed, bangs hanging in front of his forehead, but otherwise he positively glowed. Like your sorry state left him brimming with vigor.

You took stock of the room—it contained only your chair, Cooper’s chair, and a plainly dressed bed to your right. Modest was the first word that came to mind. The second was precise.

“This is a safe house,” Cooper said.

“A safe house.”

“Well.” He cocked his head. “Safe for me.”

You stared at him. “Was that supposed to be funny?”

“No.” Cooper sucked his teeth and produced a bottle of water from nowhere. “You thirsty?”

Thirsty? You could barely swallow, your mouth was so dry. “No. Why did you bring me here?”

“We’ve got a lot to discuss,” he said simply. “Are you sure you don’t want any water? You really should rehydrate, what I gave you was strong.”

“What you drugged me with, you mean?” you returned. “And no. I’d rather you untie me. Look, I have shifts at Val’s and they’ll know I’m missing, they’ll—”

“Who will they call?” Cooper whispered. He sat up and stared at you, eyes narrowed, shining and lively. “There’s no one who is going to come for you. I doubt you gave them your parents’ number, seeing as they’re almost a thousand miles away. And I don’t exactly anticipate Valdosta State Prison jumping at the opportunity to shuttle your brother up here to help out.”

You bit your tongue, cheeks flaring hot.

He knew. 

Of course he fucking knew something hissed. Everyone fucking knew. Everyone fucking knew and they whispered back and forth behind closed doors about the crazy little girl who’d been nearly stuck like a pig by her own flesh and blood. The one who moved home, alone, and sat by herself in the big abandoned blue house, pretending everyone would just forget how much of a freak show her life was.

Cooper leaned back, eyes never leaving your face. “Now. I’d really like it if you drank some—”

“Fuck you.” It came out hoarse, but what did it matter? “How long did you know?”

His chair creaked then and he rose, running a hand through his bangs. He’d changed from the brown sweater into a flannel, the top few buttons undone, a shift from his usual tight, extra-neat look. “Water first.”

You shrunk back against the chair as he approached, skin humming, screaming at you to run, run, RUN . Cooper has always been tall compared to you, but knotted up and exposed, it felt like he towered over you. 

He bent to a knee in front of your legs, one hand holding the back of your chair, the other raising the water to your lips. “You can open up, or I’ll do it for you,” he said.

You opened up.

“Let’s get a few things out of the way,” he murmured, tipping water into your mouth. “Your chair is bolted to the floor and the bed is bolted to the wall. The light is out of reach and shatterproof. There is nothing you can use as a weapon against me, and if you somehow manage to remove your restraints, I can overpower you easily. That we both know.” 

The plain, practiced way he said it made your skin prickle. Everything about the room and Cooper exuded the seasoned feel of a man entirely in his element. He even tipped back the bottle at perfect intervals, like he knew exactly when you wanted to swallow.

“To answer your question, I knew the night I met you,” Cooper said. “I followed you home after your shift and used your address to find the property records.”

You choked, coughing. Water dribbled down your chin and Cooper dabbed it away with the pads of his fingers. “It’s okay,” he hummed. “No rush. Finish first.”

You swallowed the last swig of water hard, esophagus burning. “Why?” After you tried so, so hard to mold yourself into the most boring, forgettable girl anyone had ever met. Waiter Girl.

Cooper huffed out a laugh, capping the bottle and setting it down in the corner. He dragged his chair over in front of you and eased into it, arms crossed over his stomach, smiling.

“Come on. You remember. When you came up to me with coffee, at the diner? It was like that, ” he clapped a palm on his thigh. “You looked at me and you knew, somehow. No one else ever looked at me like that. Not to mention how fucking wary you acted, it was…amazing. Years without anyone batting an eye and then here comes you, this girl I’ve never seen before, staring at me like you could see right through my skin.”

Definitely not a boring guy, you’d thought. You stared at him. But how you looked at someone certainly didn’t warrant them following you home. 

“But I didn’t know anything,” you said. “How could I? You didn’t have to follow me.”

“But was I wrong?” 

You bit your tongue and looked at your knees.

Cooper leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him, brows furrowed. “What was it? What threw you off?”

When you looked back up those eyes glittered at you. Obsidian eyes. Hungry and voidlike and endlessly sparkling with unfamiliar life. The same ones that fixed on you months earlier in the darkness of your apartment and haunted your dreams since. The pieces clicked together with a final thunk in the mess of your mind. It had been so obvious, but your unwillingness to dwell on the memories of the apartment held it from you all this time. 

“Your eyes,” you said. “You have the same eyes as him.”

And yet you’d still found yourself alone with Cooper. On purpose. You’d welcomed him in your house. You remembered teetering a few moments atop his shoulders, his hands on you, and your whole body tingled. Didn’t it strike you a thousand times, including that first time you’d caught his stony gaze at the diner, that something was off? Not a boring guy at all.

And yet chance meeting after chance meeting proved so normal, so kind and… comforting , because God, you were lonely—

—unless the meetings hadn’t been chance at all.

“Well,” Cooper said, cracking his neck. “Guess I couldn’t do anything about that.”

“What were you going to do with that man?” you asked, avoiding the real question, the one that tugged at your heart since you heard the dull thunk of the man’s body against Cooper’s van. 

Cooper blinked, impassive. “I think you know.”

The room felt thick with the unspoken. It pressed against your skin and throat and you knew before you said it.

“So you’re the Butcher, then.”

He inhaled hard through his nose. “I really don’t like that name.”

You looked at your ropes. “I don’t either.” It was true. You fucking hated it. Fucking reporters.

“I didn’t think you would,” Cooper said. A half smile played on his lips. “What was it? Emory Student Slayer … couple of my first responder buddies down south said you made quite the commotion about that.”

A bead of sweat slid down your back. He’d done his research and then some. In his element, you’d thought earlier. More than you’d anticipated. 

Had spotting Cooper and the man in the parking lot been a coincidence that led you here? 

Or had he planned to get you here?

Your wrists twisted in their ropes. “Is this… all because of him?”

After the night in the apartment there had been mail. And emails. And calls. Threats and promises to finish the job for your brother, to gut his whore-cunt-bitch-slut (pick your favorite) sister like he did her roommate. The police screened most of them before they reached you, but some trickled through. Just some. Just enough.

Cooper leaned back, but taut, unrelaxed, like he was both in control and unsure exactly how to handle you. “No. But yes. I think.”

You gnawed on your lip, trying and failing to keep the wave of cutting self-hatred at bay. Of course it was because of your brother. Everything was because of your brother these days, which was why half of the quick comfort you found in Cooper, despite the unnerving feeling, came from his not being one of those people who cooed and whined at you about how difficult it all must have been, how sad, and did he really kebab right though Bethany with the machete like they said in the tabloids? 

“So what, then? Do you want to finish the job? Maybe he’ll send you a thank you note from Valdosta.” Your voice was a sharp thing, edged in rage. The heat seeped from your stomach into your veins and made you feel incandescent, flickering you to life from the inside. God you’d been fucking stupid. 

Cooper raised his eyebrows. “No, I don’t want to ‘finish the job.’ And it wasn’t just because of him,” he said. “It’s because of you. What it made you.”

“And what did it make me, Cooper?” Your ropes strained against your skin.

“Don’t you see what we are?” he whispered, leaning forward, eyes widening just a moment. “We’re two sides of the same coin. There is no one in the world who can understand us like we understand each other. No one who can see us… for who we actually are.”

“What?" The water had ebbed away any last drug-induced grogginess and the anger tingled your fingers and toes, stinging your eyes wet. “Who we are? You mean murderer and survivor? I don’t really think we could be more different.”

“Oh, we could,” Cooper said. He wet his lips, watching you with the same unbreaking gaze. “We’re players in the same game. One that no one else, except us, could ever understand.”

“A game? My friend is fucking dead!” Tears spilled over onto your cheeks but you ignored them. “My brother who tried to kill me is in fucking jail for murdering her and my parents are there with him trying to get him free. This isn’t a game, Cooper! This is my fucking life!”

“It’s mine too,” he said quietly. “Do you think I want to be constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering when someone with sharp eyes is going to start noticing and then all of a sudden Riley and Logan don’t have a dad? Do you think I want to be coming home when they’re already in bed and leaving before they’re up?”

“That’s your decision!” The ropes rubbed at your wrists, straining.

“But it’s not,” Cooper said. “Do you want to be paying to get your locks changed or install that fancy security system you’ve got? I don’t think so. I can’t change that part of myself. Just like you can’t change what happened to you, or who you are because of it.”

You stared at him, eyes wet, chest heaving. “I am nothing like you.”

“You’re just like me,” Cooper whispered. He reached out and touched the pads of two fingertips to the side of your knee, sending a tingle arcing up through your thigh. “I can see you, just like you see me. The loneliness, the knowing that no matter who you meet, no one will ever, ever be able to understand.”

As badly as you wanted to refute him, to scream at him until your throat was raw, you couldn’t. Because despite the things he’d done, the things you’d read about and seen, despite all that had led to you tied to this chair, you knew that he was telling the truth. What happened that night in your apartment was something no one could imagine, no matter how many people assured you they got it. They understood how it felt, poor thing. The hard, cold shard that wedged itself inside the thick blanket of loneliness that you dragged like a shroud was just that—the knowledge that no one could ever understand. And if they found out after all your efforts to hide it, no one would ever try. Because deep down, you knew what happened didn’t make you so strong and brave and resilient like everyone said it did. It just made you different. Scared. Completely unknowable and unlovable. 

But Cooper saw you. 

You swallowed thickly. “Were you going to tell me?”

“I think you would have found out sooner or later.” He opened his hands at you. “And you did.”

“It was a coincidence. I could have walked home another way. Would this have still happened?”

“I don’t know,” Cooper said. “I thought about it. A lot. But I wasn't sure.”

His voice was lower now, edging the line between speech and whisper. “But then there was that time at your place. Moving furniture. I saw you look at me.” He cocked his head at you, eyes glittered and fixed. “Not many people have looked at me like that before. Certainly not anyone remotely like you.”

You exhaled and closed your eyes. He’d caught you staring. “I didn’t know—”

“But you did,” he said. “Right? You knew something, you knew it the whole time. And yet… you still looked at me like that.”

“Please stop,” you whispered. That familiar, stone-like guilt settled in your stomach, sucking all the heat and anger out of you. 

“No,” he said evenly, looking at you. “Not after…all this time.”

He eased out of his chair, watching you, lowering himself onto his knees, hands sliding atop your thighs, yanking a sharp breath from you. “Not after you’ve been the only thing on my mind for weeks. Not after touching you like that. Do you know how deep a hole you’ve dug in me?” 

“Get off me.” The sentence broke midway, falling to pieces in your throat. 

Cooper half laughed, half sighed, shaking his head. “No. I don’t think I could get you out now if I tried. You’re under my skin and in my head and—I don’t think I could ever stop wanting to fully know you like you know me. Every inch of you.”

You squeezed your eyes shut. His hands felt molten on your legs, just tense enough they seemed to be resisting the urge to squeeze, to grip your flesh and claim it. 

Much, much worse was the stirring you felt in your stomach when he touched you, knelt between your legs, looked up at you with those dark fucking eyes that were bottomless and hungry and more alive than you’d ever seen them.

A breath shuddered out of you like a ghost. “I don’t think there’s anything left to know.”

“Oh yes there is,” Cooper whispered, eyes sparkling, hands sliding off you, slow, reluctant. He licked his lips. “Do you know I haven’t taken or planned to take anyone since you moved here? It’s the longest I’ve gone in years. I’ve been so fucking obsessed with figuring you out I haven’t even thought of it. The guy from the bar was to take my mind off you because you were driving me crazy. ”

The man from the bar. The one he’d let free because you asked him. The idea wormed its way into your brain and twisted your stomach in knots. Not because it made you nervous to ask, but because you knew it would work. You had leverage. The only problem was that the leverage was you. 

Cooper wiped the tears that slid down when you blinked and sucked them off his thumb, looking at you. “Let me be the one who gets to know you,” he whispered. “All of you.”

You took a deep breath, trying to slow the heavy beating of your heart. “What’s it worth to you?”

“You? Anything.” His eyes narrowed. “Tell me what you want.”

“I’ll do…anything you want me to,” you said. “But no one else dies. Ever again. The Butcher ends here. Forever.”

Cooper’s face remained perfectly still, but you saw a vein in his neck throb. “And if I say no?”

“I can’t stop you from trying to do what you want. But I swear to God I will fight you tooth and nail every fucking second of it. I’ve done it before and I promise you I can do it again.”

Cooper’s lip curled, just barely. You were right. He didn’t want a fight out of you. He wanted you soft and pliant and his. 

“Yes or no?” you asked. 

He looked at you. “I think…I think if I had you, it would be enough. I could stop.”

The breath held tight in your chest eased out. “Okay.”

“But.”

Ice down your spine. 

Cooper held three fingers up. “Three conditions.”

You watched him, skin tingling at the small of your back. A familiar dread hardened in your stomach, the same kind as when you locked yourself in your bedroom at your apartment. The feeling of getting backed into a corner. Trapped. 

“One.” A finger went down. Cooper’s eyes bored holes in you. “You will not leave.”

You swallowed. “This house?”

“No. This town. You will live at your place, or get a new one, I don’t care. But you will stay here, with me. Indefinitely.”

You bit your cheek, withholding the immediate fuck no that rose from your throat. Stay in the town you grew up in, the one where everyone probably saw you and thought murder girl as they crossed the street to get to the other sidewalk? Where playgrounds and parking lots and and ponds all contained a memory of your childhood, of the sweet before that made this after so, so fucking painful?

Hell. Fucking hell. 

“Two.” Another finger. “You will be mine, and only mine. Do I need to elaborate?”

You shook your head once at the floor. Think of Bethany. Think of the businessman. Think of the people you’re saving. Your stomach felt hot. What about you?

“What about Rachel?” you whispered.

“This has nothing to do with her or the kids,” Cooper said. “You and I aren’t a part of that life, and I don’t let the two lives touch. Ever. Understand?”

You nodded, remembering the blond bob at the chili stand. Maybe you were helping her too, keeping Cooper from killing anyone else. Guilt panged around your stomach anyway. 

Cooper smiled. “Good. Three.” He stood and looked down at you, grabbing the back of your chair and leaning toward you, caging you in with his arms, face inches from yours. His eyes glittered down at you as your heart threatened to pound out of your chest and twitch on the wood floor. 

“You will not lie, and you will not pretend about how you feel about me.” He leaned in further, lips brushing your ear, and you screwed your eyes closed. “Because I know exactly how you feel. And I am very, very good at picking out lies.”

“I–I don’t understand.”

“Let’s practice then.” He slowly eased back into his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, watching you with a predatory gleam in his eye that made you tense. He licked his lips. “Have you thought about me fucking you before?”

Your jaw went slack, heating flushing your cheeks and ears. You couldn’t even try to lie if you wanted to. The guilt was practically written over your entire fucking face.

It came out a whisper. “Yes.” 

“Did you touch yourself while you did?”

You closed your eyes. “Yes.”

“See?” he said, voice low, eyes positively shimmering on you. “You’re a natural.”

Think of Bethany think of the man think of the peoplethinkofbethanythinkofthemanthinkofthemthinkofthemthinkofthem—

“Now,” Cooper said, cocking his head. “Do we have a deal?”

You got the sudden feeling that you were signing your own death certificate. Locked in while fists rained down on the door. “Yes.”

“Excellent. Then let’s not waste any more time, hm?” 

Cooper unbuttoned his flannel, eyes hot on you as he pushed off his sleeves and folded the fabric up neatly on his chair. Your hands shook and you looked at his chest, then fixed your gaze to the wall over his shoulder, lip bit hard beneath your teeth. You weren’t ready for this. You had to be ready for this. Whatever this was. 

“It’s okay,” Cooper murmured. “I don’t mind. I want you to look at me.”

His fingers drifted beneath your chin and lifted your gaze back to him. His body made your head feel light. It was inconspicuous under the bulky jackets and flannels he wore, but you’d seen him in a t-shirt enough times to notice the thick, toned muscles of his arms and stomach. He looked even larger like this, fully shirtless, more than capable of holding you down right where he needed to. 

He stood and looked down at you, eyes lidded and dark, brushing the back of his knuckles down your cheek and jaw. “You’re breathtaking, you know that? Absolutely fucking breathtaking,” he whispered.

He trailed a finger down to your shoulder and across your back as he circled you, out of sight, and placing both hands on your shoulders. Your entire body rose up in pinpricks. 

“When did you start thinking about me like this?” he murmured, breath fluttering against your ear. “You were so wary, then it changed—why?”

“I don’t kn—”

His lips dragged against the back of your ear and you jerked. “Don’t lie. ” He slid his hands down your collarbones, stopping just short of your breasts. 

“I—the tractor,” you breathed. “You were—sweet, and-and kind, and I thought it was just that, and then you touched my shoe and I—that was it.”

Cooper hummed appreciatively in the crook of your neck, palms and fingers crawling down the sides of your waist to your hips, making you arch. “Very good.” His scent lingered on the air, spicy and musky. 

“Was that even real?” you croaked.

“Of course it was,” he said. “Everything was real with you.”

His hands moved up to your collar, to your goddamned Val’s-issued uniform shirt that buttoned down the front. He buried his face into your neck and kissed you down from your ear, latching onto where the skin became shoulder and sucking. You gasped when you felt his teeth on you, the effect immediately apparent between your legs. God you were sweating.

Cooper undid each button slowly, unrushed, then pushed aside each piece of the cheap shirt fabric, letting his fingertips drag against your stomach. You’d think your plain work bra was a scrap of lace, the way his breath shuddered against your skin. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

He buried his mouth in your hair and inhaled, close to your ear, voice muffled against you. “I know what I promised you, sweetheart, but if I could kill every single person who’d ever seen you like this to be the only one alive, I would in a fucking heartbeat.”

You screwed your eyes shut, trying to breathe, heart thundering against your chest. “Are you going to untie me?”

The slick between your legs was becoming obscene; you could feel it soaking your panties, the flesh swollen and damp. If you could wipe yourself off before he got to you first, maybe you could stave off the deep, hot shame—

Cooper circled back in front of you and bent to a knee. “Soon. But I kind of like how you look like this, all tied up for me. All mine.”

Then those thick arms reached forward and undid the button of your jeans, easily dragged down the zipper, and tucked fingers in your waistband before dragging the denim down to the rope at your ankles, leaving you half-bare and shivering in an open shirt and damp panties.

His cheeks were flushed with a hot, vicious life when he looked up at you. “Don’t worry,” he said, voice gravelly. “We’ll go nice and slow.”

You forced your wrists against the ropes, willing their burn to ground you, snap you awake. The heat between your legs was pure sin and you didn’t know who to pray to about it. You couldn’t think.

Cooper’s fingers slipped under your panties and he looked up at you before dragging them down your ankles. You screwed your eyes shut at the feeling of the cool air hitting the hot, wet heat of you. 

“Oh,” he breathed.

You heard the flick of pocket knife and your eyes snapped open. Your blood ran cold at the sight of the short, wickedly sharp blade in his hand. “Wait, Cooper! ”

“Hold still, sweetheart.” You shrunk away from the knife as he grabbed the three ropes around your stomach and sliced through them in a deft motion. “There we go. All done.”

Then he closed the knife, tucked it in his back pocket, and grabbed your hips, pulling them to the edge of the chair. Your thighs went to close as much as the binds allowed, but he wedged his body between your knees, broad shoulders forcing them wide. He looked up, once, staring through your eyes and into your skull. You stared back.

“When you sat on my shoulders, I could smell you,” he whispered. “Some of it was just you, but some was you you.”

His hands squeezed your thighs. “After that, I could not stop thinking about how you’d taste.”

Then he ducked his head and put his mouth on you.

You gasped, jolting, but Cooper’s grip and the ropes kept you firmly in place. Cooper wasted no time, his tongue licking you up and down in broad strokes, sucking all of your excess wetness in his mouth. He hummed against you, kissing and nipping here and there, tongue soft but firm and torturously sweet. 

Your thighs clenched tight, the pleasure arcing from your core throughout your body like lightning. The pure fucking bliss of it stole your breath away. You’d barely been touched by anyone in months. To be touched like this was almost overwhelming. Your head tipped back and you shuddered. 

Cooper’s tongue circled your clit and you bit down on a whimper. The barely restrained need in his tight grip and fervent mouth made your stomach twist. It was as tangible as the dig of his fingertips in your skin, desperate and obsessive.

Cooper wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked and you clenched up, hips pushing you further against his face and thighs pressing into his shoulders. He groaned against you then, hands sliding up the small of your back, pulling you deeper into his mouth. No amount of squirming broke his hold; if anything, he gripped you tighter when you twitched and jolted, eating at you like a man possessed. The thought flashed through your mind if he’d even stop with an orgasm or just keep going until one of you gave out.

You kept the gasps and whimpers at bay, pressing your lips closed and biting your tongue until you tasted pennies, but then Cooper found that spot on you and you moaned. The sound pushed through your mouth of its own volition, a shudder of pure bliss. Copper groaned against you. Once the dam broke, you couldn’t hold back.

“Oh God,” you gasped. “ Fuck, Cooper.”

His knuckles went white on you and he looked up, eyes pure black. No glitter, nothing. Just hot, deep black. “More. Say it again.”

He kept his eyes on you, sucking the pad of his thumb and circling it over your clit, slow. You bit your lip, flushing under his gaze. He cupped your face with his free hand and brought his mouth an inch from yours.

“Say. It. Again,” he whispered onto your lips.

“Cooper,” you breathed. His eyes fluttered closed, like you’d drugged him. “Cooper, Cooper please…”

“God, you’re going to fucking kill me,” he mumbled, leaning back on his knees and pulling out the knife again. You watched, dazed, as he cut away the ropes that tied your ankles to the chair and dragged off your pants and panties from your ankles, tossing them aside. He lifted your legs over his shoulders, drawing you even closer together. His arms wrapped around them, fingers pressing into the soft skin at your inner thighs, holding you in place as pressed a kiss to the side of your knee, lidded eyes locked on yours, then dragged his lips down your thigh and back onto your pussy.

It was too much. He circled his tongue against the spot that made you writhe, and your heels dug into his back. The way he went for you, drunken and starved, sent a tickle of fear down into the simmering depths of your stomach. Like given the option, he might never leave the warmth and wet between your legs. Like he would consume you.

No one had ever wanted you this much. After the night at the apartment, you’d truly believed no one ever would. But the image of Cooper lapping you up like his life depended on it was very, very much at odds with that notion. Let me be the one who knows you, he’d said. All of you.

Your thighs trembled. Too much. The feel of him running his soft, wet tongue over you, the way he clutched you and stared at you like you were already his. You bit down on your lip hard, the pleasure bubbling up faster than your fried brain could keep up. It built in you, expanding and tense like a bubble, and you felt a momentary pang of trepidation at the idea of completely losing control in front of Cooper. Giving him exactly what he wanted. The fear made you clench even tighter. 

A moan slipped out, pitched, and Cooper hummed, squeezing your thighs once. It’s okay. Come on.

“Cooper, Cooper, fuck—”

The tension snapped at your core, tearing a half-formed gasp from you, hot, sweet pleasure rippling through every inch of your body. Each pulse was pure bliss shuddering through you, from the tips of your fingers and toes to your scalp. 

Cooper worked you through the orgasm, prolonging your heaving, shaky breaths with warm, soothing licks up your overheated flesh, thumbs rubbing against your skin. 

When the trembling ceased and you melted into a shivery, damp mess on the chair, he finally took his mouth from you. He licked his lips, chest heaving, and when he looked at you, the gleam in his eyes was fucking feral.

“Let me get the ropes on your wrists,” he rasped.

He untied them behind you, and the looming sense of his presence behind you made something in your stomach twist. The ties slipped to the floor and you pulled your hands into your lap, rolling the stiffness out of your wrists. Angry pink marks encircled them, where you’d strained over and over against the rope. When you shakily managed to stand, you felt Cooper’s chest brush against your back. 

“Come here,” he murmured, hands slipping to your hips and turning you to face him. He watched you as he lowered himself in the chair, strong arms lifting you up and maneuvering your body just how he liked it—arms over his shoulders, hips nestled up against the bulge in his jeans, your legs spread over his thick thighs. He looked at you, cheeks tinged red, eyes lidded. “You did so, so well, sweetheart.”

Then he slid a hand to the back of your neck and kissed you.

It made your stomach turn, how quickly addictive his mouth was. You tasted yourself on his lips and the intimacy of it melted your insides. 

Cooper’s hands dragged over every inch of you, squeezing at your hips and waist and ass, as if desperate to memorize the exact shape and feel of you draped over his body. His fingertips trailed up your arms and pushed your Val’s top off and to the floor, then slid back up to the clip of your bra. He slipped his tongue into your mouth then, and, when you made a little noise and arched into him, made quick work of unclipping your bra and sliding it off to the floor, leaving you utterly naked in his lap. The exposure lifted goosebumps all over your body. 

Cooper’s hands slid up your stomach and cupped your breasts, thumbs brushing over the nipples, fingers squeezing with a soft kind of reverence. He felt smeared over you, buried under your nails and in your skin, the way his hands and tongue explored you. In a way, he was, and the sense that you might never be able to fully uproot him from you made your skin tingle.

Then his hands were back on your ass and squeezing, and you yelped as he stood suddenly, hoisting you up with him and forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist. He deposited you gently on the bed and watched you push yourself backward on your hands, gazing up at him with wide eyes, his own gaze lidded and locked on you as he unbuckled his belt. 

You wanted to be afraid. You wanted to want to scream and kick your legs against him. But when Cooper pushed his jeans down his legs your stomach dropped with that hot, heavy desire that settled itself wet and needy between your legs, and all you felt was how blissful it was to be wanted like this. Desperately, aching and adoring. How he wanted you.

Cooper palmed himself over his black boxers, bottom lip bitten and eyes black as he gazed down at you, naked on his bed. “Open your legs, please.”

You hesitated, but let them fall open when he cocked his head just a little. Your cheeks felt hot knowing the wetness he’d see there. It practically dripped down your thighs, your body reacted to him so viscerally. You’d never felt such bone-deep desire for anyone—especially not alongside the inkling of fear Cooper sent trickling down your spine.

Cooper sighed, eyes locked on your pussy as he pushed his boxers down his legs. You inhaled sharply. You hadn’t really had much in the way of expectations but—Jesus Christ. He stroked himself and a fresh bolt of heat plummeted straight between your legs. 

Cooper climbed onto the bed and in a moment of apprehension you brought your legs together. It was too much. He’d be too much, you couldn’t—

His hand stopped your knee before it could touch the other. “Open,” he whispered, looking at you. “Are you nervous?”

“Yes.”

“That’s okay, honey,” he said, cupping your calf. He kissed your knee. “I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

He brought two fingers to your mouth then and traced them over your lips. “Open, please.”

You opened and he pushed them in, gentle, stroking them over your tongue. In a moment of gut-wrenching instinct you sucked them into your mouth and Cooper groaned. The sound was equally shame and pride-inducing, and while you were struggling on how to feel Cooper took his hand from your mouth and stroked himself with your saliva. “God, I’ve never been this fucking hard,” he muttered in a voice low enough you weren’t entirely sure he didn’t say it to himself.

Cooper slid his hands up your arms and interlaced his fingers with your own, kissing down your jaw and to your neck, where he nipped and sucked with an intensity you knew would leave marks. Something about the position made you feel heady and drunk, the flesh between your legs swollen and wet enough that Cooper’s cock became slick just rubbing against it. It was intimate you realized, real intimacy, not just fucking or foreplay. Both of you fully open and exposed, spread apart for each other and knowing the other.

Cooper pushed himself down your body and took one of your nipples into his mouth, eyes closed as he sucked and swirled his warm tongue around it. His bangs tickled your chest and when you brushed them out of his face you heard him huff out a tiny groan before lavishing his attention on your other breast, a hand slipping down to stroke himself. “God, you taste so fucking good,” he groaned. 

You slid your hands slowly down his back, feeling the muscles ripple beneath your palms as he moved above you. When he nipped at your earlobe you hissed and buried your nails in his skin, drawing a rumbling moan from his chest.  

“I like that,” he whispered against your lips. “You feel good, babygirl?”

Did you? You weren’t sure. Scratch your respective gory pasts and the ropes and drugs that got you into this mattress and yes, you felt good, being fawned over and touched so soft and warm by the man on top of you. But that wasn’t what happened. 

But wasn’t this the deal you made? Was it so wrong to let yourself sink into the bliss of Cooper’s mouth and hands on you?

“Stop thinking.”

“Yes,” you breathed. “It feels good.”

“Good,” Cooper rasped into your neck. His hand slipped to his cock and he pulled his knees up, pushing your legs back and spreading you further for him. “You ready for me, sweetheart?”

Yes. No. Please— please fucking what ? Your neurons were misfiring, reducing everything to the feel of Cooper’s body on you and the white-hot heat of your center. Cooper rubbed himself against you, slicking himself further, and you gasped. 

Fuck.

“Yes.”

He cupped your face with one hand, thumb dragging over your lips, his bangs hanging down and his cheeks tinged red. He kissed you, slow and deep. You felt him nudge at your entrance, then slowly, slowly, push in.

You cried out in unison, the sounds mixing with your breath between your lips. Cooper pressed his forehead against yours, gasping into your mouth as he eased deeper inside you. “Fuck,” he hissed. “Is that all right?”

You nodded, eyes screwed shut as you adjusted to his size. The drag of his cock bordered both pain and pure bliss, and each movement drew sounds from you you didn’t have the chance to decide whether or not to make.

Cooper pushed forward slowly until he bottomed out and paused, giving you a second to breathe. His body rubbed slick against yours, your chest and legs pressed close enough that his skin eventually felt as normal as your own. “You’re fucking heaven, baby,” he whispered, licking up your neck and kissing you. “Oh God. You feel good?”

Good? You didn’t even feel real. “Yes,” you gasped, sliding your arms around his neck to keep yourself steady. He slowly pulled himself half-out, then inside again, your slickness accommodating him smoothly, his eyes watching your mouth open in pleasure. The way he stared at you while he slowly fucked into you, the same obsidian eyes that had sent chills down your spine making your skin hot, made your body thrum. He looked like he could eat you alive.

“God, you’re fucking soaked,” he hissed, wincing when he thrust inside you again. You were so hot and wet he slid in and out and filled you with an ease that made your stomach clench. “Is this all for me? Is this sweet little pussy all mine?”

He hit a spot inside you that made you arch against him, swallowing the moan that pushed through your lips. “Oh, God—”

“Answer me, sweetheart,” he said, adding a filthy roll of his hips that pressed your legs further apart and made you cry out. “Come on, I know you can.”

“It’s yours,” you breathed. “It’s yours.”

The grin he gave you was positively wicked. “Not a lie, huh?”

A lie? Did it matter, if it was just dirty talk? You couldn’t wrap your head around what was the truth or not, not with your body burning up from the inside and Cooper fucking himself so deep in you, his whole body pressed to yours like he couldn’t stand any inch lingering apart from you. 

Cooper’s hand dropped between you and gently circled at your clit with soft finger pads and all thought dissolved into mind-numbing bliss. 

“Oh, good girl,” Cooper whispered, watching you, tongue running over his lips. “Look at you. Does it feel good when I stroke your pussy like that?”

He kissed you again, pushing his tongue in and licking up the roof of your mouth, and you felt consumed by him, his body on and inside every soft, wet inch of you. “Fuck, don’t stop.”

He didn’t, manipulating you with his fingers, remembering all the spots and moves that made you twitch and clench in the chair, the steady rhythm of his hips filling you with his cock over and over. The familiar bubble of pleasure began to expand in your center once more, quicker this time. You wrapped your legs around Cooper and squeezed. “Shit. ”

“Gonna cum, baby? Gonna cum all nice and tight around me, hmm? Let me hear it.” He breathed the words into your skin, grunting and gasping as his own thrusts became sloppy. “Go ahead, babygirl, I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

That was it. You gripped Cooper hard as his cock and fingers brought you over the edge, your pussy clenching around him, gasping, halting moans you’d never heard before stuttering from your throat. Cooper swore under his breath and fucked you through your orgasm, his eyes never leaving your face. He brushed your hair from your eyes and crooned in your ear. “There you go, baby. There you go. Oh, such a good girl. Doesn’t that feel nice?”

He pressed his lips to yours, thrusts quickening and drawing whimpers from you he swallowed into his mouth. “Fuck, baby, you’re gonna make me cum,” he hissed, squeezing your breast with one hand and panting. “Jesus Christ you’re so fucking good. Could I cum inside you? Would you let me?”

You nodded, a hand sliding into his hair and fisting. Truth or a lie? a little voice in your head whispered, but then Cooper gasped your name and gripped you, hips rolling into yours until they stuttered and he groaned from deep in his throat, eyes fluttering closed. He buried himself deeply inside you and sunk his teeth into your shoulder.

You close your eyes, his soft hair tufted between your knuckles and fingers pressed to his damp scalp. Cooper licked at the indentations he’d bitten into your skin, then pushed himself up and pressed his lips to yours. Slow and hot and final. A claim.

After a moment, Cooper rolled over on his back next to you. He reached over your stomach and turned you over, curling you against his side. Your cheek pressed against his chest and his hand rested on your hip, your bodies nestling easily together like you’d done it a thousand times. Two sides of the same coin he’d said. Players in the same game.

“Do you see what I mean now?” he asked hoarsely. You felt the vibration of his voice in his chest.

“Yeah.” You did. You’d never been fucked like that, let alone known like that. He’d split you open and looked around at everything and said yes, this is all mine. All mine. You saw exactly what he meant.

Cooper dragged the pad of his thumb down the dots of sweat between your breasts and sucked the heat of you off his finger. You could envision it then—what it would be like to stay and be his, only his. To spend your days between Val’s and the house and Cooper, his presence an endless drift through your life like fog, the obsidian eyes always on you no matter where he was. The coldness of his secret you would keep. The warmth of being known, possibly even loved. 

Cooper pressed his lips to your hairline. “I’ll grab something to clean you up,” he said. “Then we can make some coffee and… talk things over.”

You nodded and he pushed himself out of bed. He looked back at you, lying naked and shining and spent, and his eyes shone like black stars, like he wanted to imprint this moment of you in his memory and only think about that for the rest of his life. The expression made your skin tingle. 

Then stepped into his boxers and was gone. 

You pushed yourself up, feeling him leak out of you. Christ. Even if you weren’t on birth control, would you have let him bury himself inside you like that? You weren’t sure and didn’t want to dwell on the thought long enough to find out. You didn’t want to dwell on any thought right now. The self-flagellation that beckoned might drive you to utter insanity.

Better not to think of anything at all.

You slipped out of the bed, your toes landing on crumpled denim instead of hardwood. Cooper’s jeans. 

Cooper’s jeans with the knife in the back pocket. 

He wouldn’t have left it. 

Right?

Watching the door, you slipped a hand in the back right pocket. Your fingers closed around a thin piece of metal. 

The blade folded out easily, so smooth it sends a shudder of nausea through you. You hated how it looked in your hand. Looks like both the kids like their blades. 

You closed the knife in your palm. What else had Cooper used it for? The thought made your mouth feel sticky. Did he ever use it on someone, make them bleed? Bethany had bled so, so much that night. You didn’t know one person held that much inside them. You’d seen people in white plastic onesies scrubbing it off the walls. 

You swallowed. It won’t happen again. You made sure of that . No one else will die because of you. 

But was that enough?

You heard water running distantly and glanced up, knife in hand. Cooper left the door cracked. Were the knife and the door a trap? Or did he truly believe if you were willing to let him wring two hard orgasms out of you, he needn’t worry about an escape attempt?

Was he right?

You closed off that train of thought. A drink of water, that was what you needed. You needed a drink of water and to clean yourself up and to think. 

You pulled your clothes back on, only bothering with a few buttons on the Val’s top. You hesitated, then slipped the knife in your front pocket. It felt molten against your hip.

The hall was dark and led to a stairwell on one end. You heard Cooper humming to himself down it, the water splashing. You toed down the stairs not for his benefit, but because you always moved like that if you could—utterly silent. 

The stairs led to the foyer, where a bright orange piece of paper was taped to the door. NOTICE OF FIRE CODE VIOLATION it read in bold letters. Cooper said he was resourceful, but this was an entirely new level. He’d built his entire life around being resourceful to the Butcher.

Next to the door, a couple old brass hooks were nailed to the wall. Cooper’s honey-colored jacket hung from one of them. You stared at it, and at the bulging pocket that faced you. The water still ran in the kitchen down the hall, and you heard Cooper’s footsteps. 

Your hand was inside the pocket before you knew it. Glass clinked inside and you gingerly drew out two bottles and thin tube of plastic—a packaged syringe and two bottles labeled TAITRITOL. One had a thick foil lid and the other a capped dropper bottle. A bit of blue painter’s tape stuck to the bottom of both. 5dr on the dropper, 3ml on the other. Doses. Was this was he slipped you and the rumpled businessman?

You eyed the kitchen as you pushed the dropper bottle in your bra. Just in case you thought. Just in case. In case of what? In case you wanted to start extra trouble for yourself when Cooper spotted it and asked you what the fuck you thought you were doing with that?

But you needed something. The knife and the bottle gave you that, even if you didn’t trust yourself to have the nerve to use either. You needed at least the idea of leverage, of an upper hand. Because right now, you stood in Cooper’s safe house, on Cooper’s terms, with Cooper standing just fifty feet away. You’d learned quickly the night at the apartment that zero leverage meant doom. You owed your whole life to the leverage that you’d known your apartment better than your brother and, in some ways, known him better than himself.

The water stopped and you dropped the foil bottle and syringe back into Cooper’s pocket. You took a deep breath and walked toward the kitchen.

Cooper faced the sink, the muscles in his back moving as he set a coffee pot full of water on the counter and flicked the warm water back on to wet a washcloth. 

He didn’t hear you until you spoke a few feet behind him. “Is there a bathroom I could use?”

He snapped around, eyes wide and jaw slack. “Jesus. How long have you been there?”

“I just walked in.”

He stared at you, brows tight, glancing toward where you now knew the front door was. “You—never mind.” He smiled. “I guess just didn’t realize I’d left the bedroom door open.”

He was surprised you didn’t try to escape, you realized. There were no traps. He hadn’t meant to leave the knife in his jeans pocket, nor the bedroom door cracked.

Cooper turned off the sink and wrung out the small towel. “Here. This is for you. It’s warm.”

You took it from him and he hooked a finger in one of your belt loops, tugging you close. “Come here,” he murmured, cupping your face in the other hand and kissing you deeply. You let him. His comfort around you was leverage. Never mind how his lips made you feel delirious with pleasure.

He nipped your lip. “Go clean up now, okay?”

“Okay.”

You shut the door to the small bathroom behind you and flicked the lock. 

The girl in the mirror was a haggard thing. Dark circles underlined her pink eyes, and her hair was a fucking mess. The lips were swollen and pink from gnawing teeth and Cooper’s desperate kisses. You’d looked wan since the night at the apartment, as people didn’t hesitate to tell you, but this creature was something entirely different. 

You cleaned up between your legs and used the bathroom, then fixed your hair up best you could with your fingers. Your cheeks still glowed hot, and you rinsed them over and over with cold tap water until you felt the heat drop off. You recognized yourself more the second time you glanced at the mirror. 

Would you in a week though? In months? You didn’t even want to think about years. What would it do to you, staying in the old house that gave you nightmares and being Cooper’s plaything and secret keeper? Would it be enough to save the lives of his potential future victims, or would the weight of the knowledge snap your spine?

You dried off your face with your Val’s collar. But if you left, you lost the only person who saw you for what you were, who understood, and wanted you more because of it. Not to mention the killing spree he might embark on to punish you. The weight of that guilt would absolutely snap you in half. 

You rubbed your eyes and your arm brushed against the dropper bottle in your bra. 

There was a third option. One you hadn’t even thought of when you snatched the knife and the bottle. 

We both know you can’t overpower me. 

Not normally, you couldn’t. But if he was compromised—the same way he compromised you and the businessman from the bar. 

Knuckles rapped on the door three times and you jumped. “Doing okay in there?”

“Yes. Just cleaning up. I’ll be out in a second.”

“Okay, honey. Just checking.”

The smell of coffee pervaded your nostrils when you pushed the door open, reminding you of Val’s. It felt like fucking eons ago when you’d first walked the coffee pot over to Cooper that day at the diner. Now you stood inside (trapped inside?) his safe house with his cum still leaking out of you. Not a turn you anticipated, you thought dryly.

“Hey.” Cooper looked over from where he was reaching for two mugs in a cabinet. “I put on coffee. I don’t keep perishables here, but there’s powdered creamer and sugar. Do you want any?”

“Sure. Thanks.” The pot bubbled and hissed beneath the coffee machine. Cooper set two mugs on the table alongside an old glass jar a third full of sugar and a container of Coffee Mate. 

He wiped off his hands, then ran them through his hair. “Okay. I’m gonna hit the bathroom upstairs and get dressed. I’ll be right back. And not to, well, kill the mood, but the doors are locked and the windows are all sealed. Just so you know.”

You smiled. “Okay.”

“All right. I’ll be back.”

You heard him walk up the stairs and a door shut distantly. The pot made a drawn-out coughing sound and hissed to signal completion. 

The dropper bottle pressed against your skin.

You picked up the mugs and walked to the end of the stair, peeking up. The empty hall stared back at you. 

“Hey Cooper?” you called.

From afar: “Yeah?”

“Coffee’s done. Do you want yours like you take it at Val’s?”

You heard him laugh. “Sure. Heavy on the sugar if you don’t mind. You took a lot out of me. Thanks, sweetheart.”

Would it taste like anything? He loaded his coffee with cream and sugar, but he’d injected you with the drug, not drugged your drink. There’s a good chance he knew what it tasted like, too. He’d been doing this for years.

Your skin prickled. What would he do to you if he found out?

Was that a risk you were willing to take?

It felt like an eternity that you stood in front of the coffee machine, running it over in your mind, stomach twisting into knots. Then you heard Cooper’s footsteps move around upstairs, and you shook your head and poured the coffee.

You sat at the kitchen table, sipping from your mug and flipping through a dusty French cookbook you’d found atop the fridge, when Cooper walked down the stairs, buttoning his flannel. He’d rucked the sleeves up to his elbows and the vision of his thick forearms flexing as he buttoned made something in you tingle. You’d been right. They were capable of easily holding you down. They had.

“Thanks,” he said when you pointed to his mug by the coffee pot. 

“You might need more creamer. The powdered stuff is pretty bad.” You flipped to a page titled Ouefs en Meurette: Poached Eggs in Red Wine Sauce and grimaced.

Cooper took a sip from his mug and pulled out a chair across from you. “Not terrible. Wish I had half-and-half, though. What are you reading?”

“I found it on the fridge,” you said, taking a sip of your own coffee and pointing at the poorly angled image of burgundy-soaked egg whites. “Hungry?”

“God. No.” He pulled out a chair across from you and took another drink of his coffee, eyeing you. “How are you feeling?”

You closed the book. “Honestly?”

“That’s all I want from you.”

You shrugged a shoulder. “I’m a little nervous. And I’m confused.” You swallowed and looked to his left, at a dusty unmoving clock on the wall. “But I feel like…I made a good decision. For once in a really long time. And I don’t regret anything.”

Cooper watched you intently, sipping his coffee. 

“You’re right,” you said. “I’m not the same person I was. I’m not the same as anyone anymore. And I do feel like you see me for who I’ve become, just like I see you.”

Cooper blinked slowly. “I do.” His brow furrowed and he looked down at the table, blinking hard, then back up at you. “I see—I—see—what’s happening?”

Your heart pounded in your chest as his face contorted with confusion, slowly, with long, disoriented blinks. 

Then his eyes widened and locked on you. Cavernous. Realizing.

Then livid.

He slammed his palms on the table and bolted upright, mug crashing to the floor. You rushed to your feet, skin thrumming, your chair clattering backward behind you.

Cooper’s eyes blazed, but his body faltered. “You—”

“Don’t come near me.” You flicked the knife out from your pocket and pointed it at him. “Stay there. We played fair. I won. You lost.”

His face went red, but when he took a step he stumbled, leaning heavy onto the table for balance. It screeched when it shifted against the wood floor. You skirted around it, keeping a barrier between you. Could he see the way the blade trembled in your grasp?

Cooper looked around him with an incredulous expression, then locked back on you. “No,” he said, voice hoarse. “You'll never have this again. No one will ever know you like I do. You are just like me.”

“We see each other, but I am nothing like you,” you said, your eyes burning, a hand on the table to keep you steady. “And I am getting out of this fucking town forever.”

Cooper’s eyes narrowed and he attempted to round the table, but swayed into a wall instead, clutching in and watching you with those gleaming obsidian animal eyes.

“No,” he hissed. “You’re mine. I’ll tie you up again, forever if I have to. You can't leave. I won't let you.”

“No, Cooper. You won't. It's over."

His body shook with the effort of keeping himself upright. His eyes glittered, and a drop streaked down from one of them. He was crying.

“Why?” he whispered. “You said—you said.”

The lump in your throat made your eyes feel hot and wet. But not for him. 

“He killed my best friend, Cooper. I can’t forgive that. Not for him, and not for anyone like him. Not for you.”

Cooper’s mouth opened and closed, but then he stumbled to his knees and slumped against the old dishwasher. 

Time to go, a little voice whispered in your head.

And you ran.

Cooper had told the truth. The door was locked, and there wasn’t a key in his jacket. The windows were sealed. You ran through rooms, gasping, heaving and shoving at each door and window that refused to budge. A hot, thrumming pulse in your throat picked up and stung at your eyes, but you tried to ignore it. You couldn’t panic. Not yet.

You passed the stark bedroom where you’d woken up and saw the chair in the middle of it, sliced bits of rope discarded on the floor around it. Would he be so quick to cut you free if he got you tied up again?

Another bedroom sat at the end of the hall, this one full of weathered furniture—a bed with a faded comforter, a rug hidden beneath a thick layer of dust, a chipped nightstand with a lamp on it.

A lamp.

Your heart skipped. The shade was an old flower print, but the heavy-looking metal base had the same bulbous decorative shape as the one in your old room. At the apartment. The one that was now blood-spattered and locked away in a police evidence room in Georgia.

“It’s over for me,” he croaked, voice not quite his own. “But we came in this world together. We’re going out together.”

“Stop,” you gasped. Your hands squeezed deathly tight on the lamp, bloodless. “Stop it, you’re scaring me, you—”

“Don’t be scared.” His black eyes shone like an animal’s. 

“You’re sick. This isn’t you. Let me help you,” you pleaded. “Please, let me—”

A crash sounded downstairs. “POLICE! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!”

And you knew, you knew that your sweet baby brother, just eleven minutes younger, would turn and look, even before he did.

And when he did, you smashed the lamp into his skull.

Your hands shook as you put the knife in your pocket and picked up the lamp. It was even heavier than the one in your room. You pulled off the shade and flipped it upside down in your grip, the familiar, unsteady weight sending a bout of nausea through you.

It’s time to go. It’s time to go.

You took the lamp down the stairs and hoisted it in front of a window near the front door. Your arms trembled, but you aimed and swung hard. 

THUNK. 

The lamp bounced off the glass and almost ricocheted into your teeth. Your breath picked up. 

THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

Then— THUNK-kkkkkk.

A hairline crack in the glass. Relief flooded your body like sunshine. “Yes, yes .”

THUNK. The crack spiderwebbed across the glass, fueling your exhausted muscles to swing the lamp again and again.THUNK. The cracks spread from frame to frame to frame to frame.

“Come on, come—ah! ”

Fingers wrapped around your ankle and yanked, bringing you crashing to the floor. Your head knocked against the windowsill and pain exploded above your eye. The lamp fell from your grasp and clattered to the floor to your right. You landed on your side and wheezed, the breath knocked out of you, blood dripping into your right eye.

His voice was a growl behind you. “Come here, come here.”

You scrambled to stand but Cooper was too fast, dragging you back down and pinning your wrist to the ground. He slung a leg over your hips and straddled you, both arms locking your hands above your head. You gasped when you felt hard plastic digging into your wrists and tightening painfully. Zipties.

“No, no, Cooper, stop, stop, STOP PLEASE—” You were screaming, shrieking, kicking your legs out and writhing beneath him. You’d been so close, you’d been so fucking close.

“No,” he growled, sliding off you and grabbing you by your ties before you could scramble to your feet, stumbling a little but catching himself and beginning to drag you toward the stairs by your wrists. 

“No. I’m taking you up here, and you will stay here as long as it takes until you stop fighting me. I’ll keep you here, with me, because you are MINE.”

You kicked and screamed, sobs pushing their way up your throat, tears spilling over and mixing with the blood on your face. Cooper gripped the hand rail hard to steady himself against your thrashing.

It’s time to go. 

Crying wouldn’t help you. Cooper was strong, but he was still fighting off the sedative. You had to be smart.

You gulped and looked around. His ankles were out of your reach as they stepped up the stairs, you couldn’t trip him. Your feet knocked against the iron rods that ascended from each stair to the railing. It’s time to go.

You twisted and hooked your leg between two rails, gasping in pain when he yanked you and you stuck fast, and for the second time in your life, you knew what was going to happen a moment before it did. 

Cooper jerked and swayed backward, caught off balance by your dead weight stuck fast. When he did, for that split second, you yanked your arms down with every ounce of strength in your body.

Like slow motion, he jolted, twisted, and fell, releasing you and crashing down to the bottom of the stairs. Motionless.

It boiled up from your stomach, and you screamed. You buried your face in your hands and screamed until your throat was raw and the thing had run its course. You’d screamed the same way when you almost tripped over Bethany, glassy eyed and bled out on your kitchen floor. It was uncontrollable; an animal scream.

Time to go.

Cooper didn’t move, and you didn’t stop to check his lungs when you stepped by him. You stumbled back toward the window, whimpering, wiping the blood from your vision with your bicep. It stained the windowsill a brick color where you’d gashed it. The lamp lay a few feet away.

You lifted it with your lashed wrists, heaved once, and swung.

The glass shattered.

You dropped the lamp and heaved yourself up and over the windowsill, gritting your teeth against the shards stuck in the window frame that scraped cuts into your skin. You stumbled when you landed but scrambled to your feet, walking, then breaking into a run. 

Time to go.

You looked around wildly. You were in a suburb. A normal, cookie-cutter suburb. It was dark out. You’d have to start pounding in doors and screaming, just like your brother.

Then, down the street, you heard the hum of a car engine approaching. Lights glowed around a corner.

You ran into the street, right in the blazing LED lights that had doomed you just hours ago. You raised your bound hands in front of you. 

“Help me,” you cried. “Please help me.”

The car, a white SUV, braked with a squeal. You put your hands on its hood, sliding your palms along it as you approached the passenger’s seat window, so it wouldn’t screech away.

The passenger window rolled down with a fluid hum, revealing a horrified, white face goggling at you from the driver’s seat.

You’d never been happier to see fucking Shannon in your life.

“Oh my God, what the—”

You yanked open the door and clambered into the passenger’s seat, pulling it shut behind you and pressing the lock.

Shannon gawked at you. "I-"

“Call the police." You stared at the house, body humming, fishing the knife from your pocket and gripping it tightly. "Tell them you've found the Butcher.”

-

“Sorry. This is the last piece.”

You winced as the blond EMT plucked the last shard of glass from your arm and dropped it into the little metal tin beside you. 

“There we go. I’m just going to clean the area off now and apply an antibiotic.” She gently tilted your head with a gloved hand, narrowing her eyes at the bandage above your eye. “Lucky for you, it looks like that guy is slowing down on the bleeding. You’ll probably get away without stitches.”

You nodded and sipped water from the bottle she’d handed you, feeling tiny in the navy EMS jacket her NFL linebacker of a partner had draped around your shoulders. Red and blue lights lit up the neighborhood, and bedroom lamps had flickered on in multiple homes around the block. Curious families huddled together on their doorsteps and you were thankful for the coverage of the oversized zip-up.

An officer next to you had taken your statement when she arrived, as the SWAT team rolled up and began surrounding the house. Yes, Cooper had abducted you. No, you didn’t know why. Yes, you’d sustained a few minor injuries in the process. No, he hadn’t done anything serious besides tie you to a chair and talk to you. You’d had a conversation with him and he undid your bonds, trusting you, you supposed, and that was when you made your escape attempt. It was all so confusing, officer. You barely knew the man.

Shannon stood next to a police officer a couple yards away from you, who patted her on the shoulder as she wrung her hands together and gestured wildly, white as a ghost in the moonlight. To her credit, she’d screeched her SUV down the street and phoned the police as soon as you’d asked. Maybe you’d bring her a casserole.

You watched the house you’d broken out of from the back of the unlit ambulance, hidden in shadows at the edge of the scene. Officers in black tactical uniforms surrounded the lawn, guns pointed at the door. Atop a van to your left, a man with a sniper rifle laid on his stomach, squinting into his scope. You were pretty sure they’d stationed one in a house across the street, too, his barrel poking out of a bedroom window.

A team of no less than ten had broken into the house minutes before, after a man with a megaphone and an FBI jacket commanded Cooper to exit with his hands up three times over. 

You bit your lip. Hadn’t it been minutes already? Shouldn’t they have found him by now?

A silent police car with its lights on suddenly pulled up and to a halt behind the ambulance. A woman with a blond bob cut nearly tore out of the passenger’s seat and was quickly pushed back by two police officers.

You recognized her from the fall festival and dropped your chin to your chest in horror. Rachel. Cooper’s wife. The mother of his children. You shrunk deeper into the jacket as the EMT applied antibiotic ointment to your arm, praying no one would point you out to her.

In horribly perfect timing, shouts suddenly erupted from the house. You heard yells and sounds of a scuffle, then silence. Rachel moaned like she was about to be sick.

Static erupted from the walkie-talkie of the officer standing a few feet from you. 

“10-4, we’re clear at the house. We have a suspect in custody.”

“Roger that. Suspect walking.”

Your mouth went dry. Dark figures began to emerge from the front door and you clocked Cooper in a second. They’d chained his hands and feet together, and he looked at the ground with an expression carved from stone.

“Oh God,” Rachel gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth and faltering against an officer. “Oh God, Cooper, no, oh God— ”

Two SWAT officers cracked open the back of a blocky tactical van, lit up from the inside with fluorescent lights that poured out onto the street. Cooper looked up then, his eyes flitting back and forth, the only movement on his otherwise impassive face. When he saw Rachel his jaw tightened and he looked away.

Then his eyes found you.

And no matter how much you’d deny it and how deeply you’d hold the secret, you still felt that split-second tug in your stomach, the one that drew you to him that first day, despite it accompanying hair-prickle on the back of your neck. Two sides of the same coin. Two players in the same game.

Cooper’s eyes bored into you as the officers led him to the glaring SWAT van. Your whole body held taut and humming, but you held his gaze as they backed him into the single seat inside and chained him to metal loops on the floor. You saw his eyes flit around just slightly over you, as if he was memorizing this moment, burning it into his mind forever. His last image of you.

The officers stepped out of the van and Cooper tilted his head back just slightly, shaking his bangs out of his face, and looking at you down the bridge of his nose. Then, just before the officers slammed the doors shut, his right hand rose next to his knees and flashed you a split second finger wave.

See you soon, he mouthed.

-

10 months later.

You make good on your promise to get the fuck out of your hometown. You text your parents a link to an online list of Philadelphia real estate agents with I’m moving away. Do it yourself. Then you block the numbers and replace your SIM card.

You find an affordable rental cottage up in the northeast, near forests and mountains and a coastline. The drive is full of beautiful fall foliage and the mornings teem with fog. A tiny old lady charges you next to nothing per month for you to stay there and fix it up. 

“It was my great-grandfather’s hunting cabin back in the day,” she says, dropping an ancient set of keys in your hand when you stop by her tiny brick home. “I’d like to see it looking nice again.”

It takes months of painting and sanding and refinishing and patching and too many drafty winter nights tucked away under three comforters, but you finally fix the place up into something cozy and green and entirely your own. You have a bookshelf and a kitchen and a porch you like to drink coffee on, plus a gray cat that followed you home one day curling up around your ankles. You bake in your kitchen and start a tiny herb garden on your windowsill and porch. You think about tilling part of your backyard and expanding the garden to grow almost everything you need.

You get a job at a local library and talk to your boss about potentially finishing your degree. There’s plenty of resources online, she says, and offers to help you get funding. She prints out information for you and staples it all together, neat and trim, and you pore over it at night by candlelight with a mug of tea.

You spend a chunk of your first paycheck that doesn’t go straight to the hardware store on a large, high-quality framed print of you and Bethany in college, curled up on your apartment’s raggedy couch together. She’s laughing, her head tipped back like it always did, and you’re gazing at her with a grin on your face you don’t know if you could make anymore. It makes you cry sometimes when you look at it, but you hang it on your wall anyway.

You sleep with nightmares, but they ebb away more and more with time. You grind coffee beans in the morning and buy bread from farmer’s markets. You try and fail to make sourdough, then try again. You officially adopt the gray cat and pay for its vet bills. You name it Val. 

You enroll in online classes. You talk to people at the library help desk and they remember your name. You see live music after your closing shifts. You wake up to watch the sunrise from your porch. You read the newspaper every Sunday and buy a coffee to go with it.

One morning, a stark black headline greets you.

PHILADELPHIA BUTCHER ESCAPES PRISON.

Beneath, a printed color photo of Cooper’s mugshot takes up half the page. 

You take the long way home that day, winding through the woods, and think.

Two weeks later, you’re baking popovers in your green-cabinet kitchen when three raps sound at your door. 

Your stomach tingles. You don’t take visitors. 

You place the popovers on a potholder and tug off your oven mitts. Your tablet charges on the counter and you pick it up and swipe through your cameras, occasionally zooming in. A green lock at the top right of the screen indicates everything’s active—the cameras, the motion sensors, the lights, the automatic locks, the microphones. The handful of techy booby traps the old veteran at the hardware store was near giddy to help you set up. 

You pull open the drawer beneath the utensils and lift the dish towels folded neatly there, reaching instead for the Glock tucked equally neatly beneath them. You know it’s loaded—all of them are—but check anyway. Then you release the safety.

“You’re a good shot,” the old veteran said when you’d removed your ear protectors. He’d volunteered to show you around the local shooting range—a buddy owned it. A buddy owned everything in a town this small.

He looked at the bullet hole-peppered cardboard cutout and laughed. “Thinkin’ of an old boyfriend or something?”

“Or something,” you smiled. “Can we go again?”

You unlock the front door with a press to your tablet. You lift the gun in a fluid, practiced motion your muscles are well accustomed to. On your forearms, a few tiny, thin scars shine from where you’d cut yourself climbing out of Cooper’s window almost a year ago. You trace over them often and think.

“Come in,” you call.

The door swings open slow. His hair is buzzed and his facial hair overgrown, but you recognize him as easily as you’d recognize yourself. He looks up and those obsidian eyes lock onto you and the gun leveled at his face.

“Hi Cooper.”

THE END