Thirteen

by Scarlett Finn

  “I have a bunch of these set up in my apartment,” she said, and twisted to look at the push pins she had spread on the carpet. “They’re not meant to kill anyone, they’re meant to slow them down, to surprise them and hopefully make them call out to warn me that they’re there.” Standing up, she linked her fingers back to back behind her. “I have trip wires that trigger strobes too; they’re disorientating.” Opening her arms, she showed him her outfit. “I sleep in shorts and tanks when it’s warm. Sweats and hoodies when it’s cold.” Standing back, she nodded at the sneakers on the floor. “I have shoes at both sides of the bed and if it’s a bad night, I sleep wearing them.”

  He hadn’t stepped over the tripwire, but rested a shoulder on the wall. “Sweet—”

  Pulling the blanket back on the bed, she showed that she had a wall of pillows on either side, making a trench in the middle. “I sleep flat between the pillows, so if someone comes in, they don’t know if I’m alone or exactly where I am if they want to attack while I’m asleep.” Driving her hands under the pillows, she started to pull out her weapons. “I have pepper spray, knives, daggers, rape alarms, screwdrivers… I used to have a hammer, but it scared me, I don’t know why… I have a Taser at home… couldn’t bring that on the flight though… I collect things wherever I am and use them… There’s broken glass on the windowsills,” she said, looking over her shoulder toward the window. Climbing off the other side of the bed, she went to the curtain and pulled it back to show the pressure sensors on the floor beneath them. “And I have alarms on all the window frames even though the windows don’t open…” She pointed upward. “I hide cameras in the smoke detectors or the air conditioner. They transmit to my cell and I check them before I come into the room. I have four cell phones in this room, all programmed with speed-dial and speech recognition to dial 9-1-1 with the right command… and as soon as you leave this room I’ll set up more alarms and traps behind the door… I hate doors.” Nodding to the vent on the ceiling, she smiled. “I put glue seals around the vents and tape razor blades in the slats… You want to know why I went to dinner early the first night we were here? Because I have to set all this up while it’s daylight. It has to be done before the night. It has to… and it takes a long time for me to put everything together and rig all the traps… I’m not the most dexterous person.”

  Sorrow welled in his intent expression. “Ev—”

  “You want to know what’s really sad though?” she asked, crawling over the bed to bypass the pins scattered on the floor at the end. Going to him, she stopped beside the corner he was leaning on. “She trusted him. He wasn’t even a stranger. I do all this…” She turned to sweep her arm around at the room before she looked at him again. “As if it somehow protects me. But my sister wasn’t killed by an intruder. He wasn’t a psychopathic serial killer. She wasn’t just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn’t satisfying a compulsion brought on by an illness. Do you want to know why he killed her?”

  “Why?” Oak asked, but when he tried to touch her face, she swatted his hand away.

  Angry, bitter, and unfulfilled, she whispered. “Because he could.”

  “Evie,” he said and straightened up.

  She shook her head. “That was what he said, that was his reason. The head doctors talked to him, dozens of them, none of them found anything wrong with him. He’s never apologized. He shows no remorse. He did it because she trusted him… because she let him get close enough to hurt her… He didn’t hate her.”

  “He didn’t love her.”

  “No,” she agreed. Her gaze drifted to the pins on the floor. “But can you imagine that moment… the moment when he had his hands around her throat… Beth knew what was happening. She knew her killer. She looked into his eyes as she took her last breath… That was the last thing she ever saw… She saw him enjoy it.”

  Oak put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, kissing her hair. Evie didn’t unfold her arms, her shoulder bumped his chest and she didn’t fight him, but she didn’t encourage him either.

  Whenever she thought about Beth and that night it felt surreal. It was so long ago, but there were still so many things about that night, about what happened, that made no sense to her.

  “You put him in jail,” Oak said. “You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore and wherever Beth is, she’s looking down on you proud of what you did.”

  Gemmell’s sentence was life, though he was still going through the various appeals processes. But it wasn’t really him she feared. “Walking in… it took me a minute to realize what I was seeing,” she said. “I… As soon as I realized Beth was… dead, I… I started to grieve, like that very first second, I tried to pick her up. I tried to… I didn’t even realize it was him, I didn’t even see him… I was surprised… taken off guard…”

  “That’s what you fear,” he said, sliding his hand over her shoulder into her hair, around to the opposite side of her neck; all the time, keeping his mouth in her locks. “You fear being taken by surprise… that’s the point of all this. You’re trying to prepare for any possible eventuality.”

  “Yes,” she said, knowing that was the point. Evie also prepared for fire and flood, and other types of emergency too. Though her compulsions and anxieties only flared at night for some reason. Twisting, she pushed him, pulling his hand away from her to put some space between them. “But it was the relationship I obsessed about for years… not even the sex, there was no sexual assault. I don’t have sexual hang ups, it’s the trust… the bond of their relationship…that’s what caused me to keep seeing Noel, and to join MatchMate. She trusted him. My sister trusted the man who murdered her.” It was impossible to convey how incredible and heartbreaking that truth was to her. So many people didn’t get it. “Imagine the one person in your life who’s supposed to love you and share your life with you… imagine that person being the one who turns on you. I mean… how does someone even tell who is going to turn like that? How can you tell if your trust in your lover… the man you love… how can you tell if that’s misplaced? How do you know if you’ve gotten it wrong?” Something made her look at his hands and a slow urge made her pick them up. “Could these hands kill me?”

  Shock shot through him. “No!” he said and tried to pull away, but she grabbed his wrists, digging her nails in deep as she gripped him tight. “Evie! Stop it! There’s no goddamn way!”

  Moving closer, she raised them to her neck, but he kept his hands in fists. “Hold me.”

  “No,” he said, his stern eyes weren’t angry, but his worry was severe. “I would never hurt you, Evie. I promise you, there’s no way that—”

  “Prove it,” she said. “Put your hands around my throat.”

  The tilt of his head suggested pain, and it was intensified when his eyes tapered. “Sweet, I won’t hurt you.”

  “What if I fall in love with you and then one day you decide you want to know what it’s like?”

  “Evie,” he whispered in a pant. “I already love you and I would tear apart any person who thought about hurting you.” Although she still had hold of them, he lifted his hands and let his fists graze her cheeks. “And I don’t want to be in any world that doesn’t have you in it.”

  “You can’t leave Taylor,” she said, panicked by the gravity of his statement; it reminded her of what her mother had done. “Promise me, Oak. You’d never hurt yourself? Would you? Not for me. Not for anyone.”

  “Sweet,” he said, still stroking her; his fingers loosened a little. “I’m going to protect you with my life, and Taylor too… I won’t ever leave you. I won’t leave either of you… And I won’t ever hurt you.”

  There was something safe about him. Probably some part of her that considered him the epitome of safe simply because he was the guy responsible for all the safety measures in place at MatchMate.

  “I’m terrified of getting it wrong, Oak,” she admitted in a single exhale.

  Her eyes were warming. The last thing she wanted to do was
cry in front of him again. Evie was supposed to be putting her life together. She’d been grieving for years, faced so many demons and conquered every one. But like she’d said to him at speed-dating, she had to force herself to do what was difficult even if it meant she was unsafe. It was the only way to take a positive from a negative, to give her fear productivity. She had to tell the truth even though the idea of being exposed made her heart beat in her throat.

  “Don’t ever fear me, Sweet,” he said, skimming a hand up to brush the hair from her temple. “I’m not capable of hurting someone who’s so precious to me.”

  “I can’t commit myself to you… not while I’m this fucked up.”

  He smiled. “I’ll wait. I’m sorry if I rushed you, but… I want to know this stuff. I want to help you. I want to be the guy you let in.”

  “It doesn’t scare you?”

  “It scares me that you think I might ever hurt you,” he said. “But we’ll take our time and you’ll see…” As he scanned the room behind her, she didn’t see any indication that he was repulsed or freaked, but he could be a good actor. “I don’t want to take any of this away from you. I would like it if you trusted me to take care of you and protect you, but if this is what you need…” There wasn’t a hint of hesitation when he made eye contact with her. “I’d sleep with an axe hanging an inch above my throat if it made you feel safer.”

  Her sinuses began to sting—it was so weird that such a disturbing statement struck her as so romantic. “You would?”

  “I’m not a threat to you,” he said, finally opening his hands all the way to hold her face. “But if you need to treat me like one, I understand why… And I know you don’t need any guy to take care of you financially, but… I have the means to provide you with anything you need, and if you want twenty-four-hour security guards around you, you’ll get them, and they’ll be the fucking best. My girl only gets the best. They’ll be at your disposal a hundred percent. They’ll take their orders from you and if you ever feel like I need to be put on my ass—”

  “Why would you want to be with someone like me?” she asked. Oak was a catch, he could have an easy woman. “You could have a woman who’ll stay home and bake cookies and squeeze out your kids… I’m so… complicated.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  Sighing, she resigned herself to it. “You’re really saying that, aren’t you?”

  Grinning, he nodded and lowered to kiss her. “Yep, sorry, Thirteen, it’s a sad, unavoidable truth. It’s not a dream you’re going to wake up from. I am actually your guy now. It’s completely real.”

  “I’m going to a MatchMate coaching session on Saturday,” she said. “Maybe they’ll teach me the best way to let you down gently.”

  Teasing her lips with a kiss, he touched her tongue with his, only to withdraw. “I’ll check the curriculum, make sure that’s not on there.”

  “You know, you talk about me not needing a guy to look after me financially, but now that we’re having sex, you should be waiving my MatchMate membership fees.”

  “I will have them take the debit from my account,” he said, kissing one cheek then the other. He kissed the end of her nose, the bridge between her eyes, her forehead, then grazed his lips down her hairline to her temple.

  “You’re not getting laid, Oh.”

  His lips stopped on her cheek and he inched back to look at her. “I’m not?”

  Smiling, she shook her head and gave his chest a shove. “Out.”

  Stepping over her tripwire, she shoved him another couple of times to get him to the door. “But I thought that maybe—”

  “I know what you thought,” she said, reaching around him to open the door. “Call my cell in thirteen minutes and I’ll talk to you until you come.”

  “Phone sex?” he asked and tried to kiss her again, but she ducked. “Thirteen minutes?”

  “Yes,” she said, pushing him out the door. “Go, Oakley Orion.”

  Bending his knees, he made one last attempt. “I love you.”

  Laughing, she nodded while closing the door. “Uh huh, great. Thirteen minutes.”

  He was still there in the hallway, with his hands on opposite sides of the doorframe as she closed the door in his face and locked it. Resting back against it, Evie didn’t know if she should laugh or curse. Maybe a bit of both.

  Something about Oakley made her tell stories, ones she’d kept to herself for a long time. But there was something cathartic about confessing to him.

  Oakley was either going to cure her… or kill her.

  seventeen

  Oak hadn’t seen enough of Evie over the last few days.

  Somehow they’d managed to get to Wednesday and back to the office. Though how they’d managed it was another story. Returning back from Washington the previous day had been a cacophony of farce, but they’d made it and after a night of rest were back to the grind.

  Catching up with work was frantic, he’d had constant calls, emails were piling up, and everyone needed a minute of his time.

  Monday, the last day of the convention, had been all work. He’d hoped to see her at the farewell party, and well he had… on stage with Taylor. Turned out that karaoke was a feature of the last night. He’d been stunned to a stop when he first heard her singing. His woman’s voice was incredible.

  It had taken another few drinks before Taylor would get up with her, but they eventually sang a duet. Taylor had wanted to sing Stand By Your Man. When he’d vetoed the song and glared at his sister, Evie had leaned in to tell him in a sing-song voice that she was struggling to keep her clothes on.

  Although he was getting better at playing to her vixen nature, it still surprised and aroused him.

  Conversation had moved on to Evie’s impressive vocal range, though she shrugged off the compliments and dragged Ian up to sing a duet from Grease, which led to Ian and Kody singing Greased Lightning, giving Evie the opportunity to pull Taylor onto the stage so they could offer backing and slither up and down the guys.

  Yep, the MatchMate crew had been drunk and he’d loved it. At least, he had until Lana tried to take his hand. Lana didn’t get on stage or sing, and she seemed to think their mutual refusal gave them some kind of bond.

  Oak wouldn’t get up to sing, no matter how much they tried to beg him, but someone had to stay semi-sober. He certainly wasn’t trying to show any solidarity with the only other person left at the table.

  After some whispering, Evie went to sing again, dedicating her song to him, and he’d held his breath expecting to hear Ring My Bell or something equally salacious. Instead she sang Bitch.

  Yep, his woman had a sense of humor.

  Yesterday, the journey home, had been about luggage and boarding passes. Someone lost a purse. Then they lost Kody altogether and the flight almost had to be delayed. It turned into a headfuck of a day when their flight was diverted because of a mechanical issue and they didn’t get back to the city until after dark.

  So getting to Wednesday had been a bit of a trial, but they’d made it. Though he still hadn’t managed to see Evie and this day was starting to get away from him too. Before anything else got in his way, Oak left his own office to make a beeline for hers. He found Evie leaning over her desk, muttering a song and swaying like maybe she was thinking about the party.

  Skirting the door, he closed it as quietly as he could and leaned against it for a second before creeping forward. Sliding one arm around her waist, he ducked to kiss the side of her neck. She increased her volume a fraction and didn’t push him away or object, she actually turned into his arms, pulled herself close and started dancing with him as she sang.

  Really? Wow, ok.

  He didn’t mind if she wanted to dance with him, though he’d prefer to do more of the smooching variety. Before he got the chance to make a move, her office door opened, and Taylor swung in.

  “Oh, Evie,” Taylor said and laughed. Evie kept singing and left him to go to Taylor. Taking the binder away from his sister to put
it on the filer at the door, Evie wrapped both arms around Taylor and took his sister into a cheek-to-cheek number. “We had mimosas at lunch.”

  “Shh,” Evie said, touching Taylor’s lips. “You said it was a secret.”

  That explained Evie’s mood and Taylor’s glow. “You got drunk on company time?” he said, but sank down to sit against the edge of her desk wearing a smile.

  Evie kissed Taylor’s cheek. “I still love you, Tay, sweetie. But if you’re going to tell anyone about drinking on company time, it shouldn’t be the boss.”

  “Oak doesn’t mind, as long as you’re with me,” Taylor said, running her fingers through Evie’s hair. “And you’re leaving early today anyway.”

  Evie took her arms from around Taylor and turned the watch on her wrist so she could read the time. “Shit, yes, I am, and I am going to be late.”

  “Are you coming over to mine tonight?” Taylor asked.

  Evie halted her rushed journey to her desk, thought for a second and spun, though she did it so fast that her heel caught and she lost her balance. Thank God someone wasn’t drunk, because Oak’s sober reflexes let him lunge over to catch her before she went down.

  Both women seemed to think it was hilarious. They were snorting and laughing; Evie put a demure hand to her chest and tucked herself in close to him.

  “Oh, Mr. Orion, my hero,” Evie said, tossing her head back and making no attempt to take her weight. “Whatever would I do without you?”

  Taylor was laughing so loud that people who walked past the office were peeking inside to see what was going on.

  “I think I should drive both of you home,” Oak said. They didn’t just have a mimosa or two at lunch, they were hammered. “Tay, go get your purse.”

  “I don’t want to go home!” Taylor whined and sagged. “Don’t be a party pooper.”

  “Tay, it’s three in the afternoon,” he said. “Not really party time.”

  “Any time is party time,” Evie said and after stroking his torso a couple of times, she did a double take. “Why am I still in your arms?” Although she asked the question, she didn’t move away, instead she winked at Taylor. “I think he works out.”