Out of Love(57)

His boots scuffed along the dirty garage floor, inching closer to me. I stumbled back a few steps, almost dropping the pizza box.

“Gotta hand it to him … you’re a pretty little thing. You get those beach blond locks from your mom or dad?” He reached for my head, my shoulder, my hair … I didn’t know. I just knew no man was ever going to take advantage of me again.

“Fuck!” he growled when I grabbed his arm, pulling him closer to me so I could land my knee in his groin while simultaneously planting my elbow in his face.

With the pizza box on the ground, I squared my body and readied for a fight, fists up to protect my head.

“Jesus … I’m not fucking going to fight you, you scrawny little bitch.” He took several steps away from me, pinching his bleeding nose. “Slade teach you that?” He pulled a hankie out of his back pocket to wipe the blood.

I shook my head.

“Your dad?”

I shook my head.

Then he got this look on his face, an eerie knowing kind of expression, and he smiled. “Nice meeting you, Livy Knight.” He turned and walked to the white sedan parked across the street.

Once he drove away, I rubbed my elbow and pushed back the tears as my shaky hands retrieved the pizza box (upside down) from the ground. I hurried into the house, opting to get my stuff out of the back of the Jeep when Slade returned … from wherever the hell he went to.

“Asshole,” I mumbled, peeling a piece of pizza from the lid of the cardboard box and setting it on a plate just as the back door opened and Jericho rushed me, tail wagging, tongue out.

I squatted down and hugged him before scratching behind his ears. “Where were you when I needed you?” As I slowly stood, Jericho trotted into the living room, and Slade eyed me suspiciously as he tossed his keys onto the counter. “Where were you?”

“Working. Why?”

He’d “been working” many times since I’d met him, but his job revelation made me pause with his confession. Slade was an assassin. So if he was working …

“So you just …” My gaze averted to my plate. I thought I could handle the truth, and I wasn’t giving up, but it was going to take some getting used to before I could smile and say, “Hey, honey, how was your day?”

“Livy, it’s not …” he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “There’s more to it than pulling a trigger. I spend most of my time scoping things out. Locations. The target’s movements. Routines.”

I cleared my throat and brought the piece of mangled pizza to my mouth. “So you didn’t just kill someone?”

“What did you mean when you told Jericho he wasn’t here when you needed him?”

Smooth subject change.

“Your friend Abe was in the garage when I got here.”

“Abe?” He narrowed his eyes.

“So you don’t know him?”

He shook his head, eyes still squinted. “No. I know him. I just don’t understand why he was here. What did he say?”

“He said a lot of not so awesome things. But the highlights are … I shouldn’t move in with you, fucking is fine, but I should ‘crawl back to my own bed’ when we’re done.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Who is he? Because he’s creepy, and he tried to touch me, so I had to drop the damn pizza box on the ground, and now it’s ruined, and—”

“Touch you? What do you mean?” He slid off his jean jacket and tossed it on the chair before grabbing my wrist and taking a bite of my pizza.

“I mean this strange, intimidating man who knew my name reached for my head. I think he was trying to touch my hair because he’d just made mention of it. And I reacted. I kneed him in the groin and planted my elbow in his face.”

Slade stopped mid-chew, eyes making a more thorough inspection of me. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He scared me, but he didn’t end up laying a hand on me. He just left, but not before asking me if you taught me to do what I did to him.”

Slade’s face remained tense and contemplative. “Did you make him bleed?”

I nodded.

He cupped the back of my head and kissed my forehead. “Good girl.”

Taking in a slow breath, I wore my bravest mask. I didn’t want him or Jessica or anyone to know how close I was to shitting myself and falling into a heap of helplessness like I did the night at the convenience store.

After we ate what we could of the pizza and carried in the few boxes of my clothes and other belongings, I took a bath while he perched in bed studying for a test. I couldn’t see him, but we could easily hear each other.

“You changed the subject earlier,” I said, sliding a loofa over my shoulder.

“What’s that?”

“Earlier, when I asked you about Abe, about your friendship … how you know him, you evaded me.”

“He’s …” A pregnant pause held the air, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was contemplating answering me or manufacturing a lie. “My uncle.”

A lie.

Uncle Abe?

I didn’t buy it.

“Your mom’s brother or your dad’s brother?”