Perversion (Perversion Trilogy #1)(38)

I roll my eyes. “Well, when you put it that way,” I repeat my words from the other night. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”

Grim shakes his head. “It is. This could have ended very differently. If you were anyone else. If you were with The Immortals or worse, Los Muertos…” He shakes his head like he doesn’t want to think about it. “You’d be dead right now.”

His words are a twisted dagger in my chest and fuel to keep up the lies.

“Well, good for me that I’m just good ole Emma Jean, up to her same old tricks,” I say clasping my hands together on my lap and looking out onto the water.

“I take it that you and Gabby are behind the casino cons.”

“Uh…no?” I don’t even try to sound convincing. I have to give him something so he feels like he got one over on me. Manipulation is a give and take. This is my give.

He laughs, and it pains me that I can’t laugh right along with him. He’s beautiful when he laughs. He pulls the locket out of his jacket and hands it to me. “Here.”

“No, I told you I would give it back someday, and I finally got a chance.”

“It isn’t that someday yet,” he says.

I take it and rub my thumb over the cold metal and instantly feel comfort. I lift it to my neck and close the clasp, sighing in relief.

“You know, I never asked you about your mother. What happened to her?” I ask. “She was so beautiful. You have her eyes.”

Grim flexes his fingers. “We lived a few towns over, but she drove to Lacking every day for work. She was killed. Got caught in a drive by shooting on her way through town, heading home from her shift at the casino.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer. I don’t want to ask the next question that comes out of my mouth, but I have to know. “Did you ever find out who was responsible?”

His jaw tightens as he grinds out the words I know are coming but don’t want to hear. “Los Muertos.”

Silence passes between us and so does that magnetic current raising every hair on my arms. I’m trapped between a life I can’t live and a death I don’t want.

“I looked for you, you know,” he says, breaking the silence. “I even went to your Aunt Ruby’s house. She was as useless as you made her out to be and more.”

His words pierce straight through my heart. I feel sick. Guilty. And surprised. He knew my records were sealed, but that could be figured out with one phone call.

“You looked for me?” I ask with genuine surprise. I turn toward him. “For how long?”

Grim’s gaze meets mine. “After my last letter came back to me?” He pauses. “Every single fucking day.”

“Every day?” I practically yell. “Every day for how long, Grim?” I don’t know why I’ve raised my voice. I’m half-surprised and a whole lot angry, but I know it’s not at him.

“Five years,” he admits. “Right up until you stumbled into my window the other night and I found out it was you. The hair threw me off at first. That and the fact that you’ve…grown up.” His Adam’s apple bobs in his neck behind his tattoos. “I like your hair now. But I loved your crazy curls, too.”

“I think you and Gabby might be the only people who’ve ever said that to me.” I smooth down the hair falling over my shoulder. “I straighten it to blend in better when I run scams. The curls kind of stand out.”

I also straighten it to blend in better around Los Muertos so I won’t be bothered. I would dye my entire body the color of a brick wall covered in graffiti if I could.

“Yeah, that’s what I liked about it. But you can straighten it all you want. You, Emma Jean Parish, will always stand out.”

My throat tightens. I’m cringing on the inside with every word that comes out of my mouth. “I mean, I guess I’ve thought about you a couple of times over the years.”

“Bullshit.” He points to the locket in my hand. “You wearing that around your neck five years later tells me otherwise.” He drags his gaze from the locket to my lips, then to my eyes. “The look on your fucking face tells me otherwise. You’re a good liar, but now that I know it’s you, I see it all over your face. I feel it. Your words say one thing and the rest of you says another.”

Yeah, I’m starting to get that.

“The look on my face?” I ask, feeling myself heating from the inside out. I’m suddenly angry at him for making me feel this way, at myself for too much to fucking list, and at the fucking world because why after all this time does Grim come back into my life now? When we’re these people. “What kind of look is it that you think you see?”

His eyes travel back to my mouth. His tongue darts out, wetting his bottom lip. “Like you felt this thing between us as much as I did when we met. Like you can feel it now. Although, now, it’s stronger. Different.” His voice turns low. Rough. “Like you want to know what it feels like for me to kiss you. What my bare skin would feel like pressed against yours. How if it feels like this just sitting next to you, how would it feel if I was inside you. How hard I could make you come.”

My nipples stiffen. My mind is awash with the picture he’s just painted of something I desperately want to moan yes to. I shake my head adamantly and pretend my lower stomach isn’t clenching at his words. That everything in me hasn’t tightened and contracted and answered him without the lie I tell him.