“No, I won’t leave you.”
He moves, picking me up. I let out a small scream of surprise as he puts me into his lap. I rest my head on his shoulder, my fingertips tracing his jawline while my eyes plead with him to give me answers.
“Yes, I have a set of skills I no longer use,” he tells me as he pulls me in closer to him, keeping a firm hold on me.
“It looks like you’re using them on my apartment,” I remind him.
“I would say I’m sorry but it would be a lie. I’m only sorry it upsets you.” I purse my lips to keep from smiling. “I’ve never worried over someone before. I thought I was doing what was best for you. That I was helping to keep you safe. Since the moment I saw you in that cafeteria, I knew that you were mine. That it would be an honor to love you and protect you for all the days of my life.” His response is a mix of naïve, possessive and sweet at the same time. Daman and I clearly come from two different worlds. Maybe that’s why we work so well together.
“What did you do before college?” He always said before he did random jobs. Daman wasn’t one for talking a ton. I knew there was something different about him. I think I filled in some holes about his past in my mind on my own that I’m finding out aren’t factually correct.
I thought maybe he was a contractor or someone who couldn’t find a job so they hopped from one thing to another, picking up any odd jobs they could. But he never found what he wanted so he came back to school. The time for filling in the blanks for him on my own is over. Now I need him to tell me his story so we can decide how to move forward. He’s going to have to give me the words.
“I was a-” He pauses for a moment. I wait. “I was a hitman.” My eyebrows lift. I had a feeling it was going to be something like this. I thought he’d say spy, but he just threw hitman right out there. As though running around killing people was just another day at the office for him. “I’m retired,” he adds in quickly. “I didn’t set those cameras up to kill you so it doesn’t count.” A laugh bursts from me. I don’t know if it’s a real one or if I’m becoming hysterical.
I drop my head to his chest as more laughter comes from me. This is crazy. I’m in love with a hitman. A killer. Maybe my dad was right. I am naïve. Daman is too, though. Just in a different kind of way.
For some reason that thought makes me feel a bit better about our situation. My heart aches, thinking about what led him down such a path. A retired hitman at the age of twenty-five. How does a hitman even retire? Do they have a 401k? My mind is running wild with so many questions until I feel Daman’s hand rub along my back. My laughter quickly fades away. I lean my head back a little, kissing his neck. He sucks in a breath.
“Reassure me,” I tell him.
“I do not regret the people I killed. In fact, knowing now that you’re in this world, I’m happy they do not share this earth with you.”
“That’s really sweet in a messed-up way.” I sigh against his neck. His nose drifts across the top of my head. He does it when I sleep, too. Always breathing me in. “Daman, would you use your skills for me?” I pull back, dropping my head to look up at him.
“I’d do anything you ever ask of me,” he says instantly.
“Check all the cameras. My best friend lives in that apartment.”
“I will do it now.” His nose flares. I can tell he’s trying to fight his anger. “But I think it’s you he’s after.”
Chapter Seventeen
Daman
“How come we’re going to follow him? I thought that little metal thing I stuck under his fender was a GPS tracker,” Quinn asks. Her leather-gloved hands are wrapped around a pair of binoculars which she has trained on the front door.
“It is, but it’s always better to have eyes on your mark. A tracker can fool you. He could lend the car to a friend or it could’ve gotten towed.”
She lowers the binoculars. “Oh, I didn’t think of those things.”
I take them from her. “Why would you? You were learning other, important things.”
“Is there some hitman school you can go to?”
“No. It’s mostly trial and error except if you mess up, things can turn out bad for you.” A familiar frame walks out of the front of the apartment. I drop the binoculars into Quinn’s lap. “He’s moving.”