The Danger You Know

by Lily White

Gazing back up, I see that he is still watching me, a single brow arched as if waiting for me to apologize, or thank him, or something.

  “I’m having a bad day,” I finally say.

  “It doesn’t give you an excuse not to pay attention to your surroundings. You never know what’s going on around you.”

  He says this like he knows me, like he’s complaining. And, even though he isn’t wrong to assume I am oblivious ninety-nine percent of the time, it still angers me that he thinks he can lecture me like a child.

  “You don’t know me.”

  His mouth twitches, the corner of his lips curling as if this whole thing is funny. “Am I wrong?”

  No. But I won’t admit it.

  Not that I have to. His lips curl more, his eyes pinning mine with the knowledge that he’s called it perfectly.

  “I didn’t think so,” he says, his words soft as if speaking to himself instead of me.

  His eyes move to scan the sidewalk, tipping up to glance at the sky.

  It is an overcast day, the clouds heavy with rain, wind blowing the branches of the trees lining the streets, dried leaves shuffling down the sidewalk to be crushed underfoot by the people milling about.

  I should walk away. Should tell him I have places to be that are more pleasant than his grumpy ass, but I stand in place, studying him.

  The man has black hair, so dark it is missing the common blue undertones. His hair is more like a void, a place where color can’t exist, where light is swallowed. It isn’t short, but not long either. A perfect cut for his face, the type you can run your hands through. It draws the eye to his features.

  What beautiful features they are, all sharp angles and strong jaw. There is a stark quality in the lines of it. Nothing soft or pliable. I have an overwhelming urge to run my palm along the scruff of his cheek just to know if it’s as rough as it looks.

  And his mouth. No matter how he holds it, I see cruelty in those lips, the kind that forces tears from your eyes or makes you scream.

  I regret leaving my camera in the car. My fingers itch for the shutter button. I want to photograph his face just like it is. A candid shot when he isn’t looking at me, but is instead viewing the world around him.

  He doesn’t miss a thing. I’m not sure why I know that, I just do.

  Grey eyes flick back to me, and I jump in surprise, feeling busted for staring.

  “Why are you having a bad day?”

  I don’t want to answer him, thinking he might lecture me for being careless. Oddly, I find my lips parting, honesty pouring out of me because I can’t hide anything. Not from him.

  “My car was towed. It had my phone and purse inside it. I’m stuck here with no way to get home.”

  Lightning shoots across the sky, the crack of it a flash in his eyes as if his anger conjured it. But then the sky opens, a curtain of rain finally pouring to flood the sidewalk and street.

  People run, some diving into stores and other businesses to escape the downpour. Others rush to climb in their cars. The man grabs my arm and drags me to a small covered doorway, the space barely big enough for both of us to fit, my clothes already soaked by the time we reach it.

  He turns to face me since we can’t stand side by side and both be under the awning, his arm braced against the door above my head, his chest too close to my face. I crane my neck to look up at him, the rain so thick it feels like only he and I exist in the world at that moment.

  My teeth lock on my bottom lip, and his gaze drops down to my mouth, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes.

  I make the mistake of breathing, as if that can be called a mistake, but it is around him. He smells so incredibly good, his scent intoxicating, yet familiar in some way I can’t understand.

  “I’m getting engaged,” I blurt, unsure why I say that, why it sounds like a confession ... or a plea.

  For what?

  The lapel of his jacket brushes my cheek. I shiver in place, telling myself it’s the chill of being soaked and not his proximity.

  His lips part, eyes searching my face as if he is memorizing every detail about it.

  “You aren’t looking at me like a woman who’s getting engaged to the love of her life.”

  He’s not...

  I blink, shaking off the instant response, the thoughts in my head that are the old Adeline, not this new version I am determined to be. The responsible version. The grown up Adeline that doesn’t kiss strangers and screw up her life seeking something she’ll never find.

  Grant is a good man. Smart. Practical. Well established. He comes from an equally good family. I will be well taken care of, and he anchors me in place, keeps me from making stupid decisions. I love him, I swear, but it feels more like I am trying to convince myself of this rather than believing it.

  The man leans forward, and my breath catches, his eyes trapping mine, his expression unreadable.

  Voice soft against the crash of rain behind him, he says, “If I were the man you planned to marry and I caught you looking at another man the way you’re looking at me now, I would be upset. I might want to kill him.”

  The air rattles out of my lungs. “Looking at you how?”

  He leans closer, his breath a wash of heat against my lips. “You tell me.”

  A drop of rain drips from the ends of his hair to slide down the line of his neck, my eyes chasing that drop, fascinated with how it rolls over golden skin.

  My stare shoots up to see he is watching me intently.

  “I - I don’t know-“

  He leans in so far I think our mouths will touch, but then he pulls a phone from his pocket, brings it to his ear, rattles off the intersection closest to us, and I realize he is calling a cab.

  The rain stops as well, gone as quickly as it started, and he steps away, reaching into his pocket again and pulling out a wad of bills. Peeling a fifty off the top, he hands it to me.

  “This should get you home. The cab will be here in a few minutes. And next time you’re stranded in the middle of a city, don’t tell a stranger. You never know how he might take advantage of that information.”

  With a bent finger, he taps the bottom of my chin. Then he turns and walks off, the sidewalk glimmering with rain, entirely vacant except for him.

  My heart pounds as if trying to break free of my chest to chase after a man who hasn’t given me his name.

  Moments later, I see a flash of yellow in my peripheral vision. It takes effort to pull my gaze from him to look at the cab. When I turn back, he is gone.

  A hollow feeling takes over, something I haven’t allowed myself to feel in a long time. But it is there, as cold and desolate as ever. Haunting, if there can be a better word for it.

  And while I want to stay in that doorway to see if he’ll come back, I know I have places to be.

  I force one foot in front of the other toward the cab. My future husband waits for me. It is a night to celebrate my next step into the life I need.

  So why do I want to take a step back?

  Regardless, I get in the cab and return home. I call Grant from a landline and explain what happened with my car. He tells me he’ll take care of it, that I should only worry about getting ready for tonight.

  He is reliable like that. Dependable. Unlike me. But that’s what I thought I needed. I thought he could be everything that was missing in me. That he could force me to grow up and let go of magical thinking.

  Reality is so ugly compared to the fantasy we carry in our thoughts. It’s rash and unforgiving, so terribly boring and mundane that it’s painful to exist at times.

  At least, to me, it is.

  And maybe that’s because I’ve had a taste of conscious dreams. I’ve walked between the curtain of being awake and being asleep, and I’ve learned to love it there. To make peace with it.

  Other people consider the experience disturbing when it happens once or twice in their life. But I’ve suffered it for so long that the in-between has become my kingdom, and the person that waits for me there is alw
ays large and overbearing. He is dark and disturbing. And he makes my heart beat like it never does when I’m awake.

  He terrifies me.

  And I love him for it.

  Love that he stands over me...watching.

  But he is also diaphanous, and I can never hold onto him no matter how hard I grip.

  I often wake crying.

  But none of that can matter, right? Fantasies are for children, and I have to grow up at some point.

  Grant can help with that. He is helping, and I am a selfish brat for feeling what I felt today when the rain was falling so hard that I couldn’t see the world around me as a fantasy came to life.

  It can’t matter.

  I am getting married.

  So why does it feel like I can’t breathe?

  Ari

  June 12, 2019

  There’s really no reason I am who I am.

  Most people, when learning that a man is a killer, when hearing that he has the ability to brutally and callously end the life of another, hope to delve into his past and find that he suffered some type of misfortune that can easily explain a switch being flipped in his mind that changed him from what is considered normal into what is essentially a monster.

  They look for an explainable formula, a convenient checklist of events or influences that make the promise that not every person has it in them to be so heartless or cruel.

  Trauma is often a likely excuse, a pretty wrapping that can be smoothed over and tied with ribbon to help soften or even cage the psyche of a man who lacks empathy or guilt. It helps make the monster more palatable, even if his crimes are still horrendous. It helps soothe the minds of those who wonder if they could also be in a place where they kill without concern for the value of another life.

  I have no such trauma. No youthful symptoms that should have shed light on who I would become. No warning signs that were ignored and led me into a career where I kill for money...or that trapped me in an obsession that had completely taken over my life.

  I came from a middle income family, parents that never divorced. I was an only child, spoiled because of it. I had pets that lived happily into old age. I was never bullied. I didn’t endure poverty, or hatred, or really want for anything.

  Essentially, my life was ridiculously normal, textbook maybe for average America. I didn’t suffer, and I didn’t cause others to suffer. Maybe a better description for my life would be that it was utterly boring.

  And maybe that’s the clue people missed.

  Despite having what I needed, something essential was absent. Not at first. I’d lived the first ten years of my life completely content. I’d done what all little boys do: played, explored, behaved in all the ways I was taught.

  But then it was like the world shifted one day, and I woke up with a part of me that was so bleak and hollow, it ached to be filled with something I couldn’t name. A piece was missing, as if it had fallen away when I slept that night and rolled under the bed or into the crack of a floor board, never to be found.

  It needed to be filled.

  As I grew older, I experimented. Partying, sex, sports, academics, hobbies, you name it. I tried everything, but was never able to fully satisfy the beast.

  Until I found the value of easy money.

  It was an accident that I even stumbled into the life. One job. One night where the inscrutable man I worked for at the time mentioned he had a side project for me. How he knew I’d accept without telling the police of his offer, I don’t know. Maybe like attracts like, or recognizes it, at least. But the offer was made:

  If this man dies, this amount will be in your bank account.

  My hand didn’t shake the first time, which is often how you hear of it. I didn’t care to ask details. I simply did what I was asked, and the money appeared in my account, easy as that.

  And through the years, I’ve honed my skill. My name spread through networks. I made a career out of something most would consider horrifying, and I have no issues sleeping because of it.

  It filled that hollow part inside me for a period of time, at least until the night I killed Liam Kane.

  That night, the hollow part was ripped open worse than ever. I turned around at the sound of a voice and knew I was empty.

  Seeing Adeline for the first time in her white nightgown, hovering over the body of her father, had stolen the delusion that I was sane and whole.

  Because I wasn’t.

  Not when it came to her.

  An obsession with the young woman took hold.

  Now I stand here, almost six years later, to see her in white again, except this time she is in the arms of another.

  If I didn’t know better, I would swear Grant Cabot chose the venue especially for me. As if he intended to rub my nose in it. As if I hadn’t allowed this day to happen when I chose to let go of what had been mine all along.

  St. Margaret Cathedral. A gothic revival style church that is garish and imposing...and just happened to be the first place you see when looking out the windows of my penthouse.

  What the dumbass doesn’t know is that if it weren’t for me, he would never have found Adeline.

  The elevator to my penthouse dings just before the familiar gravel of Lincoln’s deep voice echoes through the open space.

  “I smell pussy.”

  Not bothering to look over at Lincoln as he strolls into the living room, I grin.

  “A woman hasn’t stepped foot inside this place since I bought it six years ago.”

  “Then it must be you. Would you like some tissues to blot your swollen eyes?”

  With a forearm braced against the sheet glass of the bank of windows that stand floor to ceiling to give me a view of my kingdom below, I stare down at the church where Adeline is getting married.

  Wearing a pair of black slacks and a white dress shirt left unbuttoned, I hold a snifter of cognac in my hand to drink away the day I knew would come.

  “She didn’t choose the venue,” I say, ignoring Lincoln’s taunt. “Something so large and flashy isn’t her. Adeline loves silently, privately. He must have forced her into it.”

  “Or they made a decision together because that’s what couples do.”

  No. She never would have agreed.

  I know Adeline.

  Know every odd thought and idiosyncrasy.

  She is a woman who fights against the norm. One who should be lifted above the heads of the mediocre, but is instead pulled down and buried for daring to walk to the beat of her own drum.

  “He’ll change her, and whether for the worse or better, I’m not sure.”

  A sound of placid agreement. “Maybe he’ll finally tame that wild streak inside her.”

  Eyes narrowed on the church, I still. “That’s what I like about her.”

  “Or want for yourself,” he suggests, the words hanging in the air as a challenge. “You did the right thing by staying away. Don’t fuck it up now.”

  A spark of anger snaps through me. My eyes shoot to Lincoln.

  “At what point did I invite you here or ask for your opinion?”

  He smirks from where he had settled on the large leather sofa, uninvited I might add, his arms stretched across the back as if he owns the place.

  Had it been any other couch, any other penthouse, maybe he would. Messing with a man like Lincoln is a lesson in stupidity. His height and build on their own are enough to make any man think twice, but he has the constant promise of a quick death staring out from behind intelligent brown eyes, the color of them as dark as his hair.

  “I had a feeling you needed company. That and I wouldn’t miss the little monster getting married. I feel like, with as much as you and I have babysat her in the past six years, we should be the ones walking her down the aisle.” He pauses. “Or maybe not. In the mood you’re in, you’d shoot her husband before she had the chance to say I do.”

  “Too public a venue,” I muse.

  He chuckles before a deep breath blows over his lips.

&nbs
p; “She’s gone, Ari. Someone else’s problem. You can stop watching her. It’s time to let go.”

  As if on cue, the cathedral bells ring their haunting melody, an announcement to the city that Adeline Kane is officially a wife.

  My eyes turn back to the church. The front doors fly open, and the wedding party spills out to lead the bride and groom to their waiting car. They toss birdseed instead of confetti, some swirling wands dipped in soap to release bubbles that reflect the grey skies above their heads.

  It reminds me of a day I can’t allow myself to regret, a day when I could have kissed her and stolen her away.

  I’m getting engaged...

  Her voice whispers in my ear, the memory forcing my hand to clench.

  Why had she said that to me? And why did it sound like she was daring me to do something about it?

  Another deep sigh sounds behind me.

  “The way I see it, you have three things you need to do immediately.”

  My brow arches, but I don’t ask. He tells me anyway.

  “First, you can turn off this fucking music. Either you enjoy listening to dying cats, or you’re trying to depress me so much I put a gun in my mouth to make it end.”

  My lips curl. He’s right. Damien Rice’s Cheers Darlin’ is playing now. Not that I’d intended to listen to a song so on point it was almost cruel. I’d just turned on a playlist Adeline often listened to during the past few years in order to fill the silence.

  Twisting around, I grab the remote to the stereo and shut the shit off.

  “Thank you. Now what you need to do is get rid of the shrine you’ve turned your penthouse into. To say this is creepy as fuck is an understatement.”

  I turn, my eyes sweeping over the piano in the center of the room, the polished cello in its stand in a nearby corner.

  Beyond that were the photographs, a series of shots I knew Adeline had worked on for weeks. Each one is a window into her mind, the fortune I paid for them a small price for the true value of the shots.

  Lincoln studies the photos as well, his voice drifting into my thoughts. “I’ll admit she’s talented. Although, just as creepy as you.”

  Settling my gaze on one particular photo, the corner of my mouth curls.