Page 103 of Problematic

My body wanted the tower. Healers. Guards. Clean rooms. Orders. Control.

The bond wanted Liv. My instincts wanted Liv. Which meant I was much worse off than I had assumed. I couldn’t think straight, not that that was particularly new for me. I was fucked in the head, but my decision-making abilities were truly decimated right now.

By the time I reached Harlow Street, dawn had bruised the edges of the sky. The road swayed under the tires. I parked crooked against the curb, her curb, directly in front of her apartment, and sat there, breathing hard, one hand pressed to my side.

Blood slipped between my fingers, trickling down my side and pooling on the seat. “Fine,” I told the mirror on the visor. “This is fine.” It was, by any reasonable standard, several miles past fine and currently sprinting toward catastrophic.

I opened the door and nearly fell into the street.

The mask sat on the passenger seat where I had ripped it off somewhere outside the city because breathing through blood had become irritating. My face reflected faintly in the dark window. Too pale. Eyes too red. Mouth cut. Hair matted against my forehead.

If she saw me, the bond would finish.

Choice. Choice mattered. I had built a whole stupid moral crisis around it. I grabbed the mask. My fingers wouldn’t work. For one humiliating second, I sat on the curb beside my stolen car and fought a leather strap and failed twice.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Come on, you useless bastard.”

The mask slid into place crooked. I fixed it with my good hand, breath shaking, vision tunneling. Close enough. Good enough. Better than stealing this choice from her because I couldn’t keep my organs in their assigned locations.

My breath came in ragged gasps.

Hallway. I left a streak of blood on the wall where I nearly fell.

Her door, and the hall tipped.

I caught the doorframe with my bloody hand, smearing red across the blue paint. The ward hissed against my palm, confused, furious, trying to decide if I counted as danger.

I had crossed the South with murder in my hands and bullets in my body, but the sound of her moving inside her apartment nearly put me down.

I reached for the wall, missed, and forced one last breath through my teeth.

“Little Flower,” I rasped.

Then I hit her door with a hard, ugly thud and slid down to the floor, one hand still pressed to the wound in my side, my mask barely holding, my blood spreading dark beneath me.

The last thing I heard before the hall went black was the lock turning.

Chapter 17

Liv

Four days without a rose. Four days without a note. Four days without a masked man outside my window, ruining my sleep and my dignity.

The camera sat on my bookshelf, pointed at the wall. I had called in sick, ignored Sam’s increasingly aggressive messages, and let Kalon leave soup outside my door.

Except colds did not make my skin feel too tight. Colds did not make my dreams filthy enough to wake up soaked and furious. Colds did not make me sit on my couch at five in the morning, clutching a paperback to my mouth, wondering if my stalker had gotten bored, died, or found a more emotionally stable victim.

“Congratulations,” I whispered into the book. “You have abandonment issues for a criminal.”

Something hit my door. A dull, heavy thud. My heart stopped so hard I felt stupid for surviving it.

I sat frozen on the couch, bare legs tucked beneath my oversized shirt, book clutched to my chest. Another sound scraped from the hall. Fabric dragging over tile. A groan, faint enough to make my blood go cold.

I grabbed the closest weapon. A ceramic dragon mug. Apparently, in an emergency, I chose whimsy.

“Please do not be a severed head,” I whispered as I crossed the room. “Please do not be a severed head. Please do not be a severed head.”

I slid the chain free and opened the door. My masked man collapsed across the threshold. Blood covered him. Too much. His coat hung torn at the shoulder and ribs, black fabric soaked darker, one gloved hand braced weakly against the floor like he had tried to hold himself up and failed.