Page 58 of Problematic

Living room.

Kitchen.

Door.

Hallway.

I stared at the feed for an extra beat and felt that warm, ugly satisfaction settle under my ribs, the kind that didn’t care about morality or legality, the kind that only cared about proximity.

This is a hobby, Vale would say.

I don’t have hobbies, I told myself.

Then I checked the living room feed again.

Hobbies, I learned, were simply things you did repeatedly because they made the noise in your head go quiet.

Fuck. This was a hobby.

Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of the blanket, a small, repetitive movement people made when their brains were trying to convince their bodies they weren’t in danger. Something twisted in my gut, because she was scared, and I had done that. Not on purpose. Not the way people assumed. But intent didn’t change outcome.

I’d meant for it to be reassuring. See, no one can hurt you because I’m already here. I handled it. The city has teeth, and I own them.

The problem was reassurance from me looked a lot like a threat. To her, it didn’t read as protection. It read as, hey, there’s a psycho watching you, he’s absolutely killing people, and you’re next.

Damn.

Liv shifted on the couch, drawing her knees closer as she curled in on herself, and the camera caught too much. The soft curve of her thigh under fabric. The line of her calf. The way her hoodie bunched at her waist when she moved. My eyes snagged on her mouth, and I started thinking about the shape of it around words she hadn’t said to me yet. How it would feel if she smiled at me. If she laughed. If she said my name like she meant it.

My gaze dipped again. Her legs tucked tight. The tension in her body. The softness of her.

I breathed out through my nose.

My dick was hard.

Great. Nothing like getting turned on by the consequences of your own terrible decisions.

I leaned back in my chair. “Get it together,” I muttered.

Liv’s eyes flicked toward the door like she’d heard something that wasn’t there, and my stomach dropped.

I didn’t want her afraid. I wanted her looking at the roses like they were a dare, not a warning.

I turned to see Vale lean against the doorframe of my office with his arms crossed and that expression on his face that meant he was deciding whether his loyalty outweighed committing homicide, and the only reason he hadn’t picked homicide was because my payroll hit on time and I kept him alive, which in his world counted as affection.

I turned back to my feeds, because they held my attention like an addiction, and the sight of Kalon in my living room kept scraping at something territorial and mean inside my ribs.

“Spit it out,” I said, shoving a weapons manifest aside like it had personally insulted me.

“You went back,” he said.

I didn’t answer fast enough, because on the screen Kalon was shifting closer and Liv wasn’t moving away, and my jaw tightened hard enough I felt another small pop.

Vale exhaled through his nose like he’d already counted.

“Three times,” he added. “In forty-eight hours.”

“You scared her,” he said.