I scooped my phone from the desk and texted Aly, unable to help myself. Please don’t drive home like this. I know you said you needed space, but let me come and get you. Or at least take an Uber.
On-screen, she checked her phone, staring at it woodenly. I didn’t like this.
I’m taking an Uber, she wrote back, with none of her usual vitriol about me watching her. Maybe she’d finally accepted my continuous oversight, but I didn’t think that would keep her from ribbing me under normal circumstances.
One of her co-workers, a trim black woman I’d seen Aly chat with so often that they must have been good friends, put an arm around Aly’s shoulders and spoke to her. I wished I could hear what she said. Her expression was full of understanding and empathy. Had Aly lost a patient while I’d been learning about Brad’s past crimes? I knew that hit her especially hard.
Their conversation was brief, ending in a long hug. Aly turned from her coworker afterward and headed toward the door. I used the cameras to follow her the whole way out of the hospital, and by the time her Uber started to pull away from a side door, I’d made up my mind. I was done with space. I’d given Aly the days she asked for, stopping myself every time I picked up the phone to text her.
I’d hoped our reunion would be sexual in nature, but she clearly shouldn’t be alone right now, and despite the fact that I was still hard, sex was the last thing on my mind. She needed comfort, companionship. Someone to listen to her or hold her while she cried.
I left my mask behind in favor of a balaclava. I had a feeling it would be a long morning, and I didn’t want to be stuck inside a plastic shell the entire time.
Tyler would be up soon, so I texted him about needing to get out of the apartment, grabbed my keys and backpack, and headed out.
For the first time since I’d started watching her, Aly left the hospital when she was supposed to, so the sun wasn’t up yet, and I had the roads almost entirely to myself. Even so, she lived closer to the hospital than I did to her, and her front door camera showed her beating me there by several minutes.
I parked around the corner, out of sight, and doubled back on foot. It was freezing. The news had warned that we were in for a polar vortex, but this was the first one of the year, and I’d forgotten just how cold it could get. My breath hung in the air around me, and although I didn’t need it yet, I pulled on my balaclava to keep the frost from my skin. Fuck this weather.
I didn’t bother turning Aly’s cameras off since my face was covered, and I didn’t bother knocking either, using the key I’d made to let myself in the front door. Fred came running right up to me, his tail held high and mouth wide open as he sang me the song of his people.
I shrugged out of my jacket and scooped him off the floor before heading into the house. “We need to work on your social skills, buddy. Imagine if Mommy and Daddy acted like you and ran in here screaming every time we got home.”
The sound of my voice brought me up short. My unmodulated voice. Shit. In my haste to leave the apartment, I’d forgotten the modulator was stitched into my mask. What a rookie move. I wasn’t going back to get it – now that I was here, only Aly ordering me to leave would get me out – so I’d have to find some other way to talk to her because I was done with the texting thing, and I was pretty sure she was too.
As I approached Aly’s room, I heard her shower running. I had a few minutes.
“How’s this?” I asked a purring Fred, dropping my voice as low as I comfortably could. “I am Batman.”
Fred half-slitted his eyes and dug his claws into my jacket, kneading it, so I assumed he approved.
I nuzzled him through the face mask and set him back down as I made a beeline toward the kitchen. Some people lost their appetite when upset, so I didn’t want to make Aly another elaborate breakfast only to have it go to waste. I especially didn’t love the idea of frying more bacon. It brought up memories of when Dad got an ingenious idea for how to dispose of his latest victim during a now infamous Fourth of July neighborhood cookout. I’d been vegan since, and even now, almost twenty years later, the smell of sizzling meat still made me want to puke.
What might Aly want instead of food? Wine, or maybe a nice soothing tea? I’d get both ready. That way, she would have her choice.
The shower cut off shortly after the tea finished steeping, and I scooped the mug and wine up and headed toward her bedroom. She was dressed in a thick white bathrobe, combing her hair with her back to me when I walked in.
“I didn’t know what you wanted, so I brought – ARGH!”
She whipped around and threw the brush at my head, and I burned the shit out of my hand with scalding-hot tea as I ducked it.
“Fuck!” Aly and I both yelled before speaking over each other.
“You can’t just sneak up on me like that!”
“I thought you heard me.”
I set the wine and tea on her bureau and turned to go rinse my scalded skin in the kitchen.
Aly was hot on my heels. “What’s up with your voice? What are you, the scary mask version of Batman?”
“Maskman?” I shot back. “I like it.”
“I hope you like the sound of ringing, too, because I’m getting you a collar with a bell on it so you can’t sneak up on me again.”
Despite my pain, I grinned. “Kinky.”
“Goddamn it,” Aly muttered.
I clamped my lips shut to hold in my laughter.
“Here, let me look at it,” she said when we reached the sink.
I turned the faucet on cold and spared a glance at my angry-looking skin before lifting my gaze to watch Aly’s brows pull together as she took my hand in hers. She gave my latest injury a quick, professional once-over, shifted the faucet from cold to lukewarm, and guided my hand beneath the water.
“It’s not too bad,” she said. “And at least it wasn’t the hand I stabbed.”
I wanted to reach out and smooth the line between her brows, but seeing her slightly upset was better than no emotion at all. “Yeah, much better that I lose the use of both of them than just the one.”
She shook her head and muttered something unintelligible that sounded slightly threatening, and I was glad she couldn’t see how wide I was grinning. Women tended not to like it when people found their dark moods cute, and I was betting Aly was no exception. But I couldn’t help it. She was adorable, especially because after watching her with Brad, I knew she was all bark and no bite with me.
“Nice touch with the blue contacts, by the way,” she said, glancing up at me. “But I can see a line of brown around them.”
Damn it. I knew I should have gotten a custom-fitted pair.
Her eyes didn’t stay on me for long, just enough to shoot me a look of reproach for continuing with this duplicity before dropping back down. We fell quiet while she watched the water move over my hand, and I took the time to drink her in. Her wet hair left damp patches on her bathrobe, and her eyes were a little bloodshot like she’d cried in the shower. The skin beneath them was slightly bruised, a telltale sign of exhaustion, and watching the life start to drain from her expression again made me want to scoop her up and never let her go.
“You’re here,” she said, so low I almost missed the words.
I slipped my hand from hers and pulled her into a hug. “You needed me.”
She rose to her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around my neck, and buried her face in my chest, taking such a deep breath that her sides pressed into my biceps. She started to tremble as she exhaled, and I gave into my need to hold her, dropping my hands to her thighs and hefting her up. Her long legs wrapped around my waist, arms tightening on my shoulders as she hid her face in my neck.