On the Way Home by Skye Warren Page A

feet away. His body gleamed in the sunlight, sweat dripping down his neck, his arms. His body was a contrast of beauty and roughness, of taut muscles and fading bruises he must have gotten overseas. He’d been beaten and shot at over there, but he probably felt safe back on American soil. Only, he wasn’t.
    I had to look away. I blinked into the sunlight, which streamed through the tree above me and around the roof of my house. The Victorian was old and falling down in parts, and I couldn’t love it more. When things broke, I patched it up the best I could. I had been been struggling to save up money, but it wasn’t nearly enough to hire contractors or even handymen.
    That’s it. The money. I wondered how much it would take to buy Dmitri off.
    Immediately I dismissed that as the stupidest idea I’d ever had. No amount of money was going to keep Dmitri from going after Clint, especially if he knew the guy was staying at my house. And if I waited too long, Dmitri would send someone sniffing around and find him here. I couldn’t sit around waiting for that to happen.
    But what if I showed up and convinced Dmitri that I never got Clint to give me the time of day? I could say the guy went home with a friend from the army. I didn’t know who and I didn’t know where. At least that would give Clint a fighting chance to get away. And as for getting my sister back… maybe Dmitri would take the money. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to pay off Caro’s debts.
    I’d sure as hell rather do it with my life savings than with Clint’s life.
    * * *
    I slept uneasy that night, alternating between glaring at the open bedroom door and squeezing my eyes shut against what I had to do tomorrow. My body was curled into a ball in the center of my bed. Even completely still, I felt dizzy with the weight of my guilt. Whenever I reached out, I found sheets so empty and chilled they left me numb, as if I were floating on a slate of ice with only cold water around me.
    There was no one to blame but myself for my current lonely state. I had suggested that we sleep apart tonight, him in his guest room and me in my room. Being the gentleman, he had readily agreed.
    I loved and hated that he was a gentleman.
    Eventually I slipped into an uneasy dreamscape, a dark and shadowy place in my subconscious. There was a large city with gold pavement and emerald walls. And fire, angry and wild in front of me. Dmitri’s slimy voice boomed around me, demanding the broom of passenger 34B as payment so I could return home. But all I found in the witch’s fortress was Clint wearing that crooked smile of his. And when I returned to the Emerald City, when I pulled back the curtain—
    I woke up in bed, drenched with sweat and panting. My heart beat a million times a minute as I tried to calm down.
    The dream had been stupid and obvious, but it managed to solidify my feelings on the matter. I wasn’t going to bring Clint to Dmitri. I wasn’t going to watch him melt as if he were some kind of witch, because he wasn’t. That was the most fucked-up part of all, how sweet he was. How trusting, even though he’d clearly seen the worst humanity had to offer. I’d seen the same things, only I knew better than to trust strangers, even if they had a pretty smile and a white house with a wraparound porch.
    Monsters came in all shapes and sizes. They wore custom designer suits and stewardess uniforms. They gave you a job as a stripper or went down on you to help you sleep, but those were just part of the lure. Because when you had learned to trust the monster, when you let your guard down, that’s when you got eaten.
    When I woke up again, it was morning.
    Sun streamed through my white sheer curtains, and birds sang outside my window. I had loved the quaintness of the house when I first moved in. It had felt like a memory I’d never had, a chance to rewrite history. Only now the sweet, homey feeling felt perverse, even grotesque. The universe knew exactly