Page 53 of Vandal Unbound

Just as I sit up in bed and turn the lamp on, my already ajar door is pushed open. And Vandal fills the entire doorframe.

“You did not just break into my house,” I whisper in hushed tones.

He steps in farther, and I notice he’s doing his best to not make more noise. He’s almost tiptoeing in those heavy boots of his. And he takes great care to slide the door fully shut.

“I leave that ajar so I can hear Elsie if she needs me,” I say quietly.

Vandal doesn’t say a word. Instead, he moves over to me and sits on the side of the bed. “Sorry I woke you.”

I shake my head and almost splutter. “You let yourself into my house. That’s not normal, Vandal.”

“I didn’t want to wake Elsie by knocking too loud.”

At least there is a modicum of logic to his choices. “I appreciate…the sentiment. But it doesn’t mean you can just pick the lock and walk on in.”

“Wanted to check you were okay,” he says. His breath smells of strong minty toothpaste, and his hair is damp in places, like he recently washed it. But his eyes are as red as the last time I saw him.

I glance at my phone and check the time. “It’s two in the morning. I was absolutely okay because I was fast asleep like I was supposed to be before my phone started buzzing.”

Vandal takes my phone and puts it back on the side table. As he moves, the strap of my tank top slides off my shoulder. Vandal watches as it falls, then gently reaches for it, and his fingers brush against my skin as he lazily returns it to my shoulder.

It’s hard to hide the trail of goose bumps that emerge.

“Why did you need to check I was okay right now?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I heard from Knox that Maren was worried about you today.”

“So much for making new friends,” I say.

Vandal slides his hand beneath mine, palm down. The move means we’re not really holding hands, but mine covers his large tanned one. There is ink creeping to his knuckles where the lettersIOMCsit.

“What do you mean?”

“Girl code. I thought I was making a new friend in Maren. But if she’s gonna run back to Knox and report everything involving me so that it gets back to you…and that means you show up at my house in the middle of the night…then I’m?—”

“Breathe, Daze,” Vandal says.

I take a deep breath as I’m told. “I thought better of Maren.”

Vandal shakes his head. “That’s not what happened. You need some backstory. Two men came after Maren recently. They thought she was mixed up in something she wasn’t. But it didn’t stop them from coming after her. My guess, without speaking to her, is that her decision to tell Knox about the two men has to do with that. Plus, Knox runs this town.”

His words are enough for me to bank the volley of allegations I was about to make about Maren’s character. “So, how did that go from being a private conversation between a woman and her partner to you sitting here?”

Vandal looks around my bedroom. It’s not much, but I’ve managed to make it comfortable. It’s not like I ran here with nothing. We have our clothes, the majority of our belongings. There are home touches such as my bedding, which is crisp and white.

And it’s clean.

“Knox heard you were there too and told me it threw you.”

I’m grateful I didn’t tell Maren I recognized the tattoo. I made a call in the moment to disappear back to the apartment. I guess the way I feigned a headache was unconvincing.

My head spins with all the possible answers and outcomes. So I think on my feet. I can undo what I say at some point in the future.

“I thought they could be the men from the apartment down the corridor. They got evicted, and I didn’t want trouble.”

Vandal’s shoulders immediately relax. “Were they?”

I shake my head. “No. They weren’t. I haven’t seen those men since they were kicked out, so I’m hoping they’ve moved along and gone to another town.”