Page 5 of Butterfly
I don’t know, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth when it’s offered so… cleanly.
Offered… stolen. Semantics.
I only get a few sidelong glances as I make my way to the room number marked on Donovan’s license. I don’t know anything about hockey, but I thought the players made more than… whatever these apartments cost. There isn’t even a guard at the front desk.
If I didn’t have clients around the world who were purchasing my art, I’d probably be living somewhere this cheap too. Or in the dorms. Just that thought makes me shudder.
If I had to live in one of those cramped spaces with a roommate, I’d end up painting my walls with their blood in under a week, and it wouldn’t even be for the love of art.
I don’t like being examined. I don’t like being touched. I don’t likepeople.
I don’t like people, but I do like the cool hush of silence when I unlock the door and step into Donovan’s apartment, quietly shutting it behind me. The small worry that he might have a roommate dissipates when I realize there’s only one bedroom and the apartment is empty.
It’s a pretty plain space, with white walls and gray carpet. To the left of the front door is the kitchen, open to the rest of the apartment. It gives a modern look, design-wise, but the appliances are all older, pristine white slowly going yellow with age.
His living room isn’t much better. It’s just a large gray sofa, a coffee table, and a TV on a stand. Tucked on one of the shelves below the TV is a PlayStation and a handful of games stacked in a neat little tower. Standing starkly against his white walls—and the only splash of color in the room—is a set of three frames, perfectly aligned, with Japanese posters for some Godzilla movies.
How… odd.
As much as I want to rifle through his living room and kitchen, I’m too tempted by the plain white door to my left.
It has to be his bedroom.
I push it open, pausing to see if he has a girlfriend or something waiting for him.
Empty.
Perfectly empty.
No one is here to see me as I walk across the room and carelessly flop back onto his bed. It’ssmall, but the scent of him instantly filters up and into my nose. Soft citrus with an earthy undertone. It’s…
Ridiculously nice, really.
My head lolls to the side almost lazily, and I take in the room around me. When I thoughthockey player, I imagined he’d be messy—typical jock behavior that existed in every school I’d been in while I was hopping from foster family to foster family growing up.
But everything here is neat—orderly, really. The bed I’m lying on is perfectly made, the dark blue comforter tucked in neatly under his pillows. His desk has a wooden caddy to organize his pens and paper clips. There isn’t a scrap of trash on the floor.
Is Donovan more of a psychopath than I am? I push myself reluctantly from his bed, not bothering to smooth out the sheets, and move to his desk.
I’m careful when I snoop through the papers, taking a picture of the practice schedule he has printed out with a small smirk. He’s making this too easy.
I really should just kill him and be done with it… but instead, I reach out and pick up a picture he has on his desk. He stands out in stark contrast to the man he has his arm around—all red hair and freckles compared to the man’s dark eyes and dark hair—and his smile looks real.
Genuine.
I haven’t seen him smile like that.
Frowning, I pocket the picture frame and turn to his closet. When I open the door, I’m blasted by a rainbow of colors… all perfectly organized from light to dark.
Other than the Godzilla posters on his living room wall, Donovan’s place could be a showroom to convince the locals that these apartments are actually nice.
It’s… ridiculous. I should leave. I picked a boring man with a boring home, and the crimson fire of his red hair and hisridiculousfreckles were just there to throw me off.
But I don’t leave. I turn back to the closet in front of me.
Maybe it’s a bad idea, but I can’t help myself when I step forward and start carefully rifling through his clothes. I want his attention, and if I know anything about big, pretty boys like Donovan Myers, I know seeing me in his clothes is either going to piss him off and give me an excuse to finish what I started…
Or he’s going to like it.
