Slay Bells Ring

Chapter Twelve – Kane

Holly spends the rest of the day sullen and morose. I think the thought of this Howard being the man responsible for all that’s gone wrong in her life weighs on her and is more than she can take. It doesn’t help that she’s pretty much confined to the sofa bed; anytime she stands, she has to be careful where she puts her weight as she walks, otherwise her feet hurt her too much.

It’s a lot. After losing her parents, I’m sure this is another blow with an almost similar weight.

The weirdest thing is, it bothers me, seeing her like this. It bugs the shit out of me knowing there’s nothing I can do right now other than wait for the next hitman to pick that lock and walk through that door.

Caring is not something I’m used to. I mean, I shouldn’t give a shit about any of it. Truly, it’s not my problem. Her issues aren’t mine, yet it fucking pains me to know she’s hurting. How messed up is that?

I try to keep myself busy throughout the day. I keep the fire going, clean the place as best I can with what I have, and try to occupy Holly’s mind with other things. I find a few old romance books that I deposit onto her sofa bed—old as in the ones with the cliché covers of a bare-chested man holding onto a woman who’s completely undone and clinging onto him for dear life.

Holly rolls her eyes when I first give them to her, but after a while she’s nose-deep in one of them. She might make fun of them all she wants, but at least they’ll help keep her mind off her current situation.

I should feel shitty, not having anything to drink today, but as the day wears on, I feel great. Moving around helped out my back after a night on that pull-out, and keeping busy really gives me some focus. Helping Holly isn’t my problem, but I want to help her. I want it to be my problem. I feel responsible for her.

I want… God, I’d be a liar if I said laying with her last night didn’t make me want other things. Wrong things, things I shouldn’t even dream of because I have no right to.

Her body did fit perfectly against mine, didn’t it?

It must be early afternoon when I do some workouts. My shoulder is sore where I got shot; it really makes where Holly stabbed me feel like nothing more than a scratch. Still, need to keep the blood pumping and my body in tip-top shape.

Holly’s halfway through one of the books when she starts blushing and giggling. I get off the floor after doing some push-ups and stretch my arms as I watch her from the corner of the room. “What is it?”

Behind her hand, Holly’s voice is muffled but full of glee when she says, “The hero is in chains in some dungeon, and the main woman snuck into the castle to save him, all by herself. But instead of rushing to get out, she… uh—”

I have the feeling I know where this is going, but I think I’d like to hear her say it. “She what?”

“She has sex with him before she gets him out of the chains.” Holly has to hide her entire face when she says it, as if she’s trying to keep me from noticing the intense blush on her cheeks. It’s actually kind of adorable. Who knew my little killer would get so flustered by a book?

It hits me a few seconds later. My little killer. My . The thought just slipped out, formed on its own, and the even stranger part is the thought doesn’t sound wrong.

In an effort to not linger on it, I say dryly, “Maybe I shouldn’t have given you those books after all. They might be a little too adult for you.” I walk over to the pull-out and act like I’m going to yank the book she’s holding away from her, but she jerks back and holds the book against her chest, like I’d have to rip it out of her fingers.

Holly stares up at me with a defiant expression. “I’m not a child, Kane. I can read about sex. I can read about as much sex as I want—” She pauses as she must think over what she’s saying. “Not that I’m saying I read a lot about sex, but I could if I want to.”

The corners of my mouth quirk upward. “Whatever you say.” I walk away from her, mostly to put distance between us. I sit down at the kitchen table.

Turns out, when you have nothing to do but pass the time, time crawls by slowly. It also means you have the time to think about things you shouldn’t, things that you normally wouldn’t. The whole my little killer thing rings in my head the rest of the day. The thought echoes and bounces around in my head over and over until I can’t think straight, and it makes me want to pull my hair out.

She’s not mine. She’ll never be mine. I’m not a man who is unable to constrain his urges, but I have the feeling the more time I spend with her, the harder it’ll be. Hell, just look at what happened last night. I don’t know how I wound up so close to her. It was a mistake.

It sure as hell felt nice, but it was a mistake all the same.

God, I could really use a drink to help me forget all about Holly fucking Cooper and her problems. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be her pet fucking hitman by the time this shit’s done.

The day drags on. The afternoon turns to evening, and then evening turns to dusk. The snowfall outside makes the nighttime world look brighter than it should be. I don’t know if we’ll have company tonight, but best be prepared regardless.

I instruct Holly to pretend to sleep on her pull-out bed, and I take the chair I propped against the door and move it to the corner of the kitchen, away from the door and any windows if we have company. I’ll be in the shadows, ready to pounce before they realize I’m there. I keep Holly’s knife on my lap, ready to use it.

Not to kill, but to injure. To maim. To subdue into submission. It’ll be difficult not to simply kill the hitman—when your blood’s pumping and you’re in the thick of a fight, the last thing you want to do is hold back—but it’s absolutely necessary to find out who hired him.

Frankly, my money’s on this Howard fellow. Never met the man. Don’t know who he is, but he has everything to gain from her death, just as he had everything to gain from the assassination of Holly’s parents.

But the hard truth is we won’t know for sure until we have proof.

I don’t know how deep we are into the night when Holly speaks from her bed: “Kane?” Her voice is different, softer, less sure, hesitant in a way she’s not usually. Her tone reminds me of when she admitted she was afraid to die.

“Yes?” I ask from my dark corner in the kitchen.

“I know this isn’t your problem. You don’t have to do any of this for me, so… um, I just want you to know that I appreciate your help. It doesn’t change what you did, but thank you.”

To think, it’s only the second time she’s thanked me, but unlike the first time, this one has heart behind it. And unlike the first time, when my adrenaline was pumping so hard it was difficult to hear her over the rush, I hear every single word. I hear the genuine appreciation in her voice, and it becomes ten times harder to sit there by myself, to simply wait for our next guest.

What I want to do… fuck, I want to go to that sofa bed and lay down with her again, as uncomfortable as it is. I want to pull her close and tell her everything’s going to be okay. The world and all its horrors could try to come through that door and I wouldn’t let a single one inside.

“You don’t have to thank me,” I tell her. “Now, it’s best if we don’t talk. Wouldn’t want anyone hearing us.”

Holly doesn’t argue with me, nor does she say another word. Together, we wait.

We wait and wait and wait. We spend all night waiting, even a few hours of early dawn waiting. We wait until the sun bounces off the snow and illuminates the inside of the cabin. I guess last night wasn’t the night.

I decide to call it. I get up, stretch, and crack my back. I drag my chair back to the door and prop it beneath the handle. “No guests last night. We should try to get some rest today so we’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tonight.”

Holly sits up and glares at me. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Who says that?”

“I do, I guess. Didn’t know you’d take offense to it.”

“I didn’t take offense,” Holly says, watching me as I walk around the kitchen. “It’s just lame, okay?”

“Whatever. You know what I mean. We need to eat and sleep. What do you want?” Holly tells me what she’d rather eat—some cereal—and I bring it to her. We are getting down to the wire, food-wise. As it is, I’m starving half the time, but we’re sharing rations here. Until we’re ready to leave this cabin, whatever she brought is all we have.

I sit in the recliner as I eat, and I try not to look at Holly too much. Looking at her, watching her; I’m a man on a mission, but something about her is making me weaker by the hour. I came to this cabin knowing I was weak, weak enough to want to end it all, but when it comes to Holly, it’s something else. A different kind of weakness. Impossible to explain.

We eat slowly, both of us. Neither of us say a word. After we’re done eating, I help her to the bathroom and then back to the sofa bed. Having her lean on me like a crutch is something I’m used to by now, but her touch does nothing to soothe my senses. If anything, it makes everything I’m trying to fight worse.

It’s wrong. It’s inappropriate. She’s not my little killer.

I let her get comfy first, and then I lower my body to the uncomfortable as fuck, spring-filled bed. I lay where I started out the last time we were here, on this pull-out together. The only difference now is it’s daytime, the inside of the cabin is bright, and I’m a thousand times more aware of the girl laying less than two feet away.

I stare at the ceiling of the cabin for what feels like an eternity. I don’t dare turn my head and look at Holly instead; if I see her peaceful, sound asleep, it’ll be too much.

As it turns out, she’s as awake as I am, because I hear her whisper, “I can’t sleep. I don’t feel tired, which is weird. We’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours, and it isn’t like I’m loaded up on caffeine. I just… I feel wide-awake.”

I don’t say anything, but I hear Holly roll over to her side, and though I don’t look at her, I can feel her stare on me as she says, “You’re awake too. I see your eyes are open, Kane.”

I’m struggling. I’m struggling with so many different things, and I know it’ll be a mistake, but I turn my head and meet her stare. I don’t say a single word. I don’t have to. Something passes between us, something I can’t describe, and I’m suddenly filled with the urge to do something I shouldn’t.

I know exactly what would tire us both out.

Every muscle in my body is telling me to do something I shouldn’t, something that would change everything. Hell, if I tried what my body wants, maybe Holly really would go through with it and kill me. In doing so, she’d do us both a favor.

But, no. Her life is in danger. I can’t make things worse—or, at least, I can’t make them worse than they already are.

It takes literally everything inside, me scraping the bottom of the barrel of self-restraint, to sit up and pull away from her. I swing my legs onto the edge of the pull-out and heave a sigh. I flex my hands as I stare at them, willing myself to snap the fuck out of it.

Holly sits up behind me. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

The last thing I should do is meet those green eyes right now, those eyes that haunted me all these years. But the key difference, what sets them apart from the wide, innocent, terrified eyes that haunted my fucking dreams is that they’re no longer set in a child’s face.

She’s twenty-three. She’s a woman, yes, but she’s still fifteen years younger than me. That’s… I mean, that would be a hell of a difference, even if I wasn’t her parents’ killer.

“Kane,” she whispers my name, and in the next moment I feel a warm, tentative hand on my arm, like she’s trying to get my attention. It’s both the way she says my name and the way she touches me that make the willpower propping me up crumble.

I’m measured in turning to face her, and when I do I lock stares with her, instantly swallowed up by the emerald color of her eyes as her hand falls off my arm. Right then, when I look at her, I don’t have a flashback to that night. I’m not staring into the eyes of a terrified child; I’m gazing into the eyes of a beautiful woman who needs me.

My shoulder is tight where I got shot, but that doesn’t stop me from lifting my hand to her face. I run the backs of my fingers down along her cheek, and Holly doesn’t pull away. She sucks in a breath, flutters those eyelashes at me, and lets me touch her.

“Little killer,” I whisper, my fingers near her chin now, “you should really stop looking at me like that.”

She swallows hard, and then her lips part. “Like what?”

I’m not a man who’s good with his words. I can’t write poetry or wax poetic about all of the emotions at war inside me, but I can name one of them: desire. Searing, hot desire that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

I want to kiss her. Fuck, I want to do so much more than that. I can’t remember a time when I wanted someone this badly. All that death, all that killing, all my self-destruction… it brought me here, right where I’m meant to be.

Something in me breaks. I don’t say a word, but I do respond by leaning into her and lowering my mouth to hers. My eyes close the moment those soft, sweet lips meet mine, and goddamn it all to hell, they feel even better than I imagined.

God help me. I thought I was a lost man before, but that’s nothing compared to the way I lose myself in her.