Sterling (4 page)

I looked down the length of his weathered jeans to his bare feet and his posture relaxed with a near hint of a smile.

Grabbing a pair of scissors, I held them out defensively. Who are you?”

“Adam,” he politely replied.

I was three seconds from going batshit after catching my reflection again.

“You don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

It was the kind of thing you would idly say to someone. But it was the way he said it—the conviction in his tone told me that his words were a fact that no one should doubt.

“Take all the time you need. I have food ready when you’re hungry. This is my home and I brought you here, remember?”

“How come I’m not at a hospital?”

It was a stupid question, because there was no trace of a wound on my neck.

“If you want me to take you, I will.” He closed the door without another word and left me to spend more quality time questioning my sanity.

The sound of my hands brushing along my arms caught the attention of the man standing in the kitchen by the sink. He shut the water off and turned around, wiping his large hands on a tiny white dishtowel.

“Sit, I’ll bring you a plate of food.”

He gestured to the oval table surrounded by flimsy chairs with metal legs. It reminded me of something I saw in an Ikea magazine once. The chairs were curiously small for a man of his size and stature. I wrapped my fingers around the back of one as I watched him set down a plate of sausages and toast.

“How long have I been here?”

“Three days.”

“What? That’ can’t be,” I whispered in disbelief.

A heavy finger wagged at my chair as he went back to pull something from the fridge. “Maybe you need to sit down and eat first.”

I eased into the chair looking around at the small home. The kitchen was closed off with a row of cabinets that served as a divider between rooms. I faced the sink and stove, the fridge was further to my left.

His approach was slow and calculated as he leaned forward to set a cold glass of juice on the table before taking the chair across from me. Our proximity was closer than I cared for so I scooted back. The sausages captivated my attention, taunting me to take a bite and he reached out nudging them forward.

“Take all you want.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I mumbled.

One sausage was devoured in roughly five ravenous chews and one giant swallow. He leaned forward on the table with his fingers laced together loosely and his head tilted. I didn’t feel threatened by his demeanor but I was still on edge. While he took me in and fed me, I still knew nothing about this man named Adam. Our eyes met and he lowered his gaze to allow me privacy to eat. But I could see a smile play across his features as he considered what I said.

After three swallows of juice and another two sausage patties, I eased off when my stomach did a somersault. It was delicious going down but I didn’t want it to come back up for an encore.

“How did I get clean?”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “I waited a day but you didn’t wake up, it wasn’t right to leave you like that.” He ruffled his fingers through his hair with a look of embarrassment before his eyes hardened “Who were you running from?”

Before I could think of what to say, he continued with the interrogation.

“Whose blood was it?”

I touched my unscarred neck “What do you mean whose was it?” I didn’t like the accusation, or the fact I couldn’t appropriately explain how it was mine and yet I had no injuries. “Why don’t we start with introductions before inquisitions? I’m Zoë Merrick.”

“Adam Razor.”

“I’ve been here the whole time?”

Adam scratched his chin and looked like he was considering whether or not it was a good idea. “I carried you here.”

Which as it happens was a fifteen-minute walk.
I didn’t say anything about it, but that’s a long walk to have to carry someone in your arms.

“I assumed you slept because you were in shock since I didn’t find any injuries, so I didn’t call a doctor.”

Adam waited three days for me to wake up. On the second day he washed off the blood when something peculiar caught his eye. Adam described waves of movement beneath my skin and to the touch it burned, so he rushed to get a wet cloth from the bathroom. He admitted that he was very close to taking me to the hospital and I didn’t blame him. But after hearing the full story, I was relieved he didn’t, or else I might be in some government lab in Virginia being studied like a science monkey.

Adam stepped out of the room for no more than twenty seconds. When he returned, my hair had changed from fire to coal. Over the course of twenty-four hours, he observed my body undergoing a gradual transformation.

Now of course, this was a little game of share and tell. Adam gave information in hopes that I would shed some light on where I came from and what happened. Honestly? How the hell do you explain to someone you were murdered and yet, you aren’t dead? I couldn’t even explain it to myself. So instead, I said nothing. Adam was no idiot and while he wanted the full story, he saw my unease discussing it so he didn’t press. I went into the living room and sat down on the leather sofa.

“Do you want to call anyone?”

“Who?” I frowned. “My voice isn’t even the same.” I pushed up a brow in thought before tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “You don’t decorate much,” I observed.

Outside of a chair, which Adam sat in on my right, the only other things in the room were a television, coffee table and a bag of birdseed in the adjacent sunroom.

“You know what I think? That you’re avoiding the topic.”

I straightened my back and peered at him through my lashes.

“Do you live alone?” I asked, ignoring his statement.

“Mm hmm.”

“How long have you been out here? It’s kind of…country.” My eyes focused on the woods only a few feet from the outside of the windows.

“Two years. And there’s nothing wrong with country.”

I snapped my head around. By the looks of things, I would have thought he moved in a few months ago.
Talk about the basic necessities.

“I don’t need much. Do you want me to drive you home?” His eyes narrowed a fraction waiting for my answer.

I couldn’t go home.
He
might be there. Whoever he was. I didn’t have my keys and I couldn’t even go to Sunny for help because she would think I was some crazy lunatic pretending to be her friend.

A friend she thought was missing…or dead. I scratched my wrist nervously and bit my lip.

Adam disappeared into the bedroom for a few seconds before returning. “I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got that’ll fit.” A pair of sweats landed on my lap and Adam ran a distracted finger over the top of the leather chair. “What I’ll do is go pick up a few things for you and you’ll stay with me. I can’t have you wandering around in my trousers, people will talk.”

I smiled with gratitude at his humor.

“You would do that?”

“I’ll be back,” he said, twirling a seat of keys in his fingers as he went towards the door. I didn’t feel like going on a shopping spree, but I also didn’t feel like being left alone.

“Wait, I’ll go too!”

I shot up out of my seat and rushed forward when my legs wobbled. Adam cleared five feet of space between us in a heartbeat as he reached out and caught my fall. When I stood upright and backed away from him, something didn’t make sense. My legs felt strange and clumsy.

“How tall are you?”

“What?” Adam’s face crinkled.

“How tall are you?” I repeated.

“6’2”.

“Can’t be,” I whispered to myself. I remembered in the field how much taller than me he seemed, I might have measured up to his shoulders.

Adam stood motionless as I moved closer; our bodies were just fingertips apart. A smile crept across my face as I leaned forward and bumped his chin with my nose.

“You need a shave.” I smiled. I moved in closer to be sure of the height, sliding the edge of my foot against his.

There’s no way I’d measure up against a guy over six feet tall. I just couldn’t believe something like this was possible; wouldn’t my bones hurt from growing? On the upside, I didn’t need to worry about wearing heels anymore. My eyes centered on his parted mouth and I wondered what my transformation looked like.

His hand slipped around my waist, barely touching—but it was there.

Adam’s breath grazed my cheek with an unsteady rhythm. Our bodies didn’t touch, but it was as if I could feel his energy in the unmistakable friction of heat that was swelling between us. I became dizzy from it. His fingers brushed through that soft, short brown hair which had a slight wave, and he blew out a breath stepping back.

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay, so we got our first awkward moment out of the way.”
To say the least
.

“I’m not so sure that was our first.” His fingers worked at tucking his shirt into his jeans and I noticed that men shouldn’t look that good in something so casual.

“It seems like it’s not just my looks, but I’m also taller than I was before.”

His gaze dropped to the pile of sweats on the floor. “Get dressed if you want to go.” He turned around and I slid my legs one at a time into the sweats pulling the string tight.

I snorted as I grabbed the sides of the pants pulling them wide.

“I’ve got a pair of Bermuda shorts in there somewhere, if you’d rather.” His beguiling eyebrows rose as he peered over his shoulder.

“I think these will strip enough dignity from me, don’t you think?”

“Spandex?”

“Ok, this conversation is officially straying into the ‘things I really don’t want to know about Adam’ territory.”

Adam’s grin was broad and handsome with a subtle tilt of the chin and I felt a prick of heat flush my cheeks. Adam didn’t smile with teeth; he gave a sexy pressed lip smile that crinkled his eyes in a provocative and yet charming way.

I walked past him towards the door. “Let’s go Razor.”

“Adam,” he corrected.

Adam may have had smoldering good looks but gave me the impression he was normally a very serious guy. Too serious, if you ask me.

“I’m calling you Razor.”

“Why’s that?” I heard the sound of his hand rubbing against the back of his neck before I noticed he was doing it.

“You’re sharp, you can figure it out.” He groaned at my pun and despite how bad it was I delighted in every bit of it. I needed a moment to feel normal again.

***

We bobbled down the dark road in Adam’s beat up Land Rover circa 1980 that looked like it had been driven straight to Egypt and back—without a car wash at that. Strange noises rattled from the engine whenever the car rolled to a stop.

“Are you sure there’s not a squirrel in there?”

“I might say the same about your hair,” he teased in the dark interior. My smile faded as I touched my tangled strands and his hand fell across my shoulder.

“Sorry, I can be a mean bastard.”

After a minute, he cleared his throat and turned into the parking lot. “I only use the car for long trips, otherwise I foot it out here. Everything a man needs is within walking distance and I prefer the exercise.”

The engine shut off and a tapping noise from beneath the hood filled the silence.

“You see? Her heart still beats for only me.”

I smiled and shifted my gaze out the window. Just as my fingertips touched the handle of the door, something in the darkness just beyond the parking lot moved. The hairs on my arm rose and it felt like waves of electricity were caressing me. I had never felt anything quite like it before. But just as quick as I felt it, the feeling suddenly disappeared.

“Something’s wrong,” Adam noticed. Not a question, but a statement.

“No, I just got a chill.”

Adam shifted in my direction with his left hand pressed against the dash. “Bullshit. Tell me what’s wrong.” His eyes flicked out towards the bus stop. “Did you see something?”

Shaking my head I pushed him back and relaxed my voice. “I changed my mind about going inside. I just wanted to…well I didn’t want to be left alone in your house. I’m not fit to be seen in public. All I need is a toothbrush and—”

“I’m on it. Keep the doors locked.”

Before I could finish, he was breezing through the automatic doors.

I didn’t know Adam, but I liked the feeling that he wanted to protect me. I never had siblings and always wished that I had an older brother. I wanted someone to protect me and approve of my boyfriends; beating them up if they were a jerk. I used to hear Sunny roll her eyes when she spoke of the long car trips she took with her brother, Kane. How he would pinch her relentlessly until she’d cry out and then she would get the spanking. She called childhood ‘survival of the fittest’. Sunny would say I was lucky that I didn’t have to grow up with a sibling.

But was I? I didn’t feel lucky. I wanted to have someone I could always count on to look out for me. Maybe if I did, I wouldn’t have gotten in so much trouble with Brandon. I only had my mom and she wasn’t the most loving woman. Sometimes I wondered if she just feared losing me and being left all alone.