Deja Who (Insighter #1)(73)

“Promise?”

He held his hand up in the Boy Scouts salute. “I swear.”

Then she was drawing him back to her, taking his hands, guiding him, touching him, stroking him, and she was whispering the same thing over and over and he groaned and shuddered and when she helped him inside her he made out the words she was saying—“I’m so sorry, I love you”—over and over, and when she arched beneath him and shivered all over, his own orgasm swamped his brain and he was slurring, “I love you, I love you, Leah” all the way down into exhausted, sated sleep.





FORTY-SIX


He itched, a constant burning itch, and hated himself and hated the people around him. They had everything and he had next to nothing; they thought he was scum, and he hated that sometimes he thought they might be right.

He knew how to get rid of the itch and the maddening thoughts and feelings that came with the itch and she was coming toward him, some bitch in nice clothes with mousy brown hair and shiny black eyes, kind of a dumb bitch, too, walking like her shit didn’t stink, walking down his alley like her shit didn’t stink.

Easiest thing in the world to step up to her. He liked this part, though the first time he did it he threw up afterward. He liked when their eyes changed and they realized their safe comfortable boring lives weren’t safe or, as long as they were in his alley, comfortable. He liked how at first they pretended they didn’t notice he was in their way, and he liked how they looked when they couldn’t pretend anymore.

He stepped out, blocked her. The alley was wide, but she couldn’t slip past him without getting stuck. He waited for her steps to falter, her expression to go from determinedly not seeing him on purpose to not being able to look away from him.

“Give it up.”

She stopped. Put her hands on her hips. Shook her head like she was amused but disappointed at the same time, and what the fuck was that about? “I honestly don’t know how I should react to this.”

He blinked and scratched. “Just gimme.” Best to keep the transaction short and simple. No one was gonna fall in love here. Her face wasn’t changing but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take what she had.

“Normally I’d impugn your manhood and dare you to shiv me—that’s the term, yes? shiv?—and then we’d grapple and I wouldn’t especially care if you killed me.”

“I’m not gonna kill you!” Shocked in spite of himself. He did not need that kind of heat, ever. Mugged at knifepoint was as far as he was willing to go, and it took years to work up to that. “Just give me your fucking purse, okay?”

She ignored him and kept talking like he hadn’t interrupted. “But I have something of a new lease on life this week. God, I hear myself saying it and ugh. New lease. Ugh.”

“Gimme!”

“It’s not like I would miss the forty bucks,” his victim was speculating. “But it’s the principle of the thing, do you understand? Nobody ever calls you on your shit. So life after life you just take-take-take and then die alone.”

“What?”

“I know! Awful. But you can break the cycle, you know.” She sighed. “Aaaaand I just heard myself again. It seems I am unable to stop spouting clichés. I really hope that particular Archer effect wears off.”

“You just—”

“You think I hear it? Of course I hear it. I recognize it and the worst part is, I am unwilling to stop the romance clichés. And perhaps unable.”

Okay, fuck this shit, and fuck this crazypants bitch. He swiped the knife at her and she sidestepped. “No-no-no. Not like that.” She mimed his action. “I had all the time in the world to move, you silly man. Like this.” He jerked back and avoided her hand, but not the invisible knife she was swinging at him. If it had been a real knife, his guts would be hanging around his ankles. Why isn’t she crying or screaming? Why am I standing here letting her teach me Mugging at Knifepoint?

“You’re fuckin’ weird.”

“Yes, I am! Good of you to notice and comment. And in these few seconds you have stupidly given me, I have decided. So we can get on with it now.” She gestured at him, bending at the waist in what his amazed eyes reported to his brain was a short, polite bow. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Last chance.”

“It’s not, though.” She smiled, big and wide like a kid eyeballing a hot-fudge sundae. She was kind of almost pretty when she did that, which made him want to stick her more. “It’s not my last chance at all. Which I find singularly wonderful.”

Enough was fuckin’ enough. He swiped again, copying the motion she showed him. But it went wrong, like this whole encounter had gone wrong from the second he blocked her path.

She somehow stepped inside his swing and then his wrist hurt and then his balls exploded into two white-hot suns of agony and the sidewalk jumped up and hit him on the back of the head and when he woke up in police custody he counted himself lucky to be alive.

Fuckin’ weirdos! The city wasn’t safe anymore.





FORTY-SEVEN


“What . . . is this?”

“C’mon, baby! Let’s ride.”

Leah blinked and took in Archer and, odder, the gigantic silver car he was leaning against. “What is this? You promised me a date the likes of which I had never seen. I was skeptical.”