“No…” Niko shuts the door behind us. “It’s a stray and I don’t know how the fuck it keeps getting into my house.”
“Aw.” I lean down and pat its silky mane, picking it up when it meows and purrs against my neck.
“Meraki, it could have worms. Put the fucking thing down.”
I swear the cat stares at him with its beady orange eyes. Oh no, the cat is definitely staying…
“The cat is staying. Can you show me where I’m sleeping so I can hopefully shut my eyes for one thousand years?” I place the cat onto the floor when Niko doesn’t stop glaring at it, afraid he might do something to actually harm the cat—I no longer know who this man is—
“Yeah.” He leads me up the marble stairs. I don’t know if I want to look out the glass windows that panel upstairs and down on the left, or to the right where art hangs delicately on the walls. I choose outside. The hallway is much the same. It’s lined against glass-paneled walls before it takes a drastic turn to the left and we’re down a long corridor with doors leading off.
Niko opens one. “There’s a bathroom and everything you’ll need in here, including clothes and all that girly shit.”
The smell hits me first, like wood burned with perfume embers, fresh but not intoxicating. I take a tentative step inside and the light above gently illuminates. I hold my breath. Super king-size bed, a set of drawers, a long walk-in closet, and a door where I’m guessing the bathroom leads off of. There’s a large gas fireplace that’s at the foot of the bed and a giant TV that decorates above it, which makes sense for the lounge chair that’s on the side of my bed.
“Niko, I need you to explain all of this.” I almost missed the bay window and sun seat that’s built into it with princess-style curtains wrapping over the edges. “Seriously, explain it.”
“I’ll tell you everything in the morning, after you’ve seen my doctor.” His voice is gentle, probably the softest I’ve heard since he came riding back into my life. “Right now, I want you to go chill. Light some candles or something, use that scented shit that’s on the side of the tub that looks like a rock of crack, and put on some music.”
I don’t answer, my mouth wide and eyes completely on him. On this man who I thought I knew but don’t at all. It’s the first time I realize he’s wearing his MC cut over a white shirt that has bloodstains on the sleeves. His black jeans have big darkened patches as if they’re stained there too.
“I’m serious, Mer.” His brows pull inward, and it used to be my undoing when I was younger. To see him bare his vulnerability would tilt me off my axis, which was ridiculous.
“Okay.” I manage to say through a deep sigh. I make my way toward the bathroom, desperate to do everything he just told me. “You can—” I turn to see him no longer there and the door closed. I stare for a few seconds. Who is this man?
“The boy left after his usual two-hour session. I think there was a part of me who wanted—no—thought I could save him. Not that I had any maternal instincts, but I think that was why I came into the job I chose. Not because I wanted to help people, but because I thought I could see past the monsters they hold on to and think I could teach them how to live with them instead of removing them completely from their lives. I continued to see the boy, right up until his thirteenth birthday, and then that was when I realized he was exactly who I thought he was when he walked into my office as a child, and that he was the exception to my rule. His monsters absolutely needed to be retracted. He wanted to hurt people, and I don’t mean hurt them on a surface level. He wanted to hurt them brutally and he took great pleasure in doing it. The older he got, the more he started to open up to me until he was finally spilling all his secrets into the palm of my hand. Two things happened during his last session. One, I realized that the girl he had eating out of the palm of his hand was in grave danger, and two, I knew her.”
I tap the pause button, rolling onto my stomach and breathing in the silence for the first time in—I don’t know how long. Birds are chirping, fighting over food, and there’s a slight gust of wind that whips through the lace curtain, hugging me around my thighs.
After my bath last night, I patched up my wounds enough to know that I won’t need to see a doctor. My belly still throbs with pain, and my nose still hurts to touch, but thankfully it isn’t broken.