I planned on wearing them the following day too, when I was grossly hungover. At least the murderer had the grace to kill on a Friday, when I didn’t have work the next day.
He was leaning against his truck, his attractive face hard underneath his own glasses. They glinted with the quickly disappearing light of the Californian evening. His arms were crossed over his chest, one booted foot crossed over his ankle. He pushed off the truck the moment my heeled and bloodstained shoe hit the asphalt.
He was in my space the second the car door closed behind me.
I didn’t blink.
Or maybe I did, but luckily my sunglasses disguised it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked before he could speak.
His jaw hardened as his presence whirled around me like a hurricane. His scent assaulted me with the brutal and cruel reminder that came with it.
“What am I doing here?” he repeated.
I nodded once. “Yes. Here. Being my apartment. Where I live. Where you, being my ex… whatever, should not be. Under any circumstances,” I said firmly.
His glasses moved slightly with the eye twitch I knew came when he was furious. I’d seen it exactly twice.
Once after the whole shooting thing at Gwen and Cade’s anniversary. Once after the car bomb and then the subsequent metaphorical bomb that shattered whatever we had and left it in pieces.
Good things were not associated with that eye twitch, no matter how hot he looked doing it.
“Why are you only here now, three fucking hours after you left to come here, is the more apt fucking question,” he clipped, his voice low but still somehow a roar, the accent harsh around the words in a way that happened when he was furious. “You leave a fuckin’ murder scene and go missing, Snow. You think that’s okay?”
I pursed my lips against the storm inside me at his irrational anger. “I wasn’t missing. I was working. Have you been taking dramatics classes now that you’re in Hollywood?” I asked evenly. “If so, they’re paying off. Money well spent.”
He stepped forward, a gesture that had parts of me wanting to meet his hard muscled body and run from it at the same time.
I flattened myself against my car as the logical part of me, bent on survival and sanity, won out.
He didn’t stop, just kept it so that either of his hands rested on the top of my car, much like that time, lifetimes ago, outside the coffee shop.
“I know you weren’t missing, Snow,” he murmured, his voice velvet. “I know that, instead of coming home to your apartment that is protected by a keycard entry and a passable lock system, you went to your offices which border the most crime-ridden part of Westwood and filed a story on a murder that most likely has ties to shit that could get you tangled right in the shit storm I’ve been trying to fuckin’ negotiate for the past six months.” The veins in his arms pulsed as his voice rose past the deadly but quiet velvet to a near roar.
I didn’t flinch in the face of his anger. I wasn’t afraid of him. Or rather, I wasn’t afraid of this part of him. In fact, I would have preferred if this was the only part. Then I wouldn’t have anything to fear from him.
But this was only the smallest part of him, and there were things like crunchy peanut butter and bungee jumping and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And the stillness and the chaos.
Because of that, I had more to fear from him than the man reeking of Old Spice who liked to slit women’s throats.
I jerked my chin up, against the anger and everything else. “You stalking me, Keltan? From what I hear, that’s a crime. I do have a police officer who seems very intent on helping me out. His card is right in my bag, in fact. Do I need to call him?” My voice was no longer flat; it was teasing, poking the bear.
Silence yawned from my words as Keltan regarded me, fury rolling off him in waves. His hand moved from the top of the car to push my sunglasses up onto my head. The waning light meant I didn’t squint at the unfiltered daylight. It did mean I had to school my expression quickly since my heavy shades weren’t there to cloak them. Though I didn’t have to cloak much; I was pissed the hell off, and I wanted to make sure Keltan saw that.
“Did your manners go the way of your sanity?” I asked. “Stalking me means you’ve gone off the deep end, and manhandling some of my favorite and most expensive sunglasses means any decorum you had is gone too.”
He pushed his own on his head so those swirling chocolate irises were visible and inviting to get lost in. Luckily pure fury worked well to keep my feet on the ground.