Monster in His Eyes(50)

My mother's not going to take this in stride.

She's going to think the city corrupted me.

And maybe it has, but I'm happy that way. I can't step in the same river  twice, but that's okay, because there are more rivers out there,  unchartered water, that I'll get to explore with the man of my dreams.





The sky is still dark. It's so early it barely constitutes 'tomorrow' or  'morning' when Naz reappears at the dorm. He once more makes it up to  my room without anyone signing him in, slipping right past the flimsy  security of the dorm, reminding me how unsafe a place like this can be.  Santino's death lingers on the back of my mind, knowing there's a killer  roaming around putting me on edge.

Maybe moving in with Naz is the best idea. At least with him, I'm safe. Nobody is stupid enough to mess with him.

He knocks on the door of the dorm room before dawn, rousing both Melody  and me from sleep. We locked the door last night for probably the first  time all semester. Melody merely rolls over, throwing her blanket over  her head with a groan as I flick on the light and open the door. Naz  strolls in, dressed as usual, a pair of black gloves on his hands.

Groggily, I rub my eyes as I survey him. "Is it cold out or something?"

He raises an eyebrow in question. "Why?"

"You're wearing gloves," I point out.

"No," he says, glancing down at his hands, before turning away from me  and surveying my things. I finished packing last night, everything  shoved into boxes except for my pillow and blanket. "This should all fit  in the car, but if not, we can come back for it later."

"Okay."

I flop back down on my bed, yawning, and watch as he stacks boxes and picks them up, heading out the door.                       
       
           



       

It takes him less than ten minutes on his own to take everything  downstairs to the Mercedes, parked in a coveted spot right along the  curb. He has it all crammed in and loaded before I even get around to  sliding on my shoes. I tell him I'll meet him at the car as I snatch the  blanket off of Melody's head and shove her over to sit down.

"What?" she groans, half-asleep. She elbows me as she tries to grab her blanket.

"I'm leaving," I say. "Wanted to say goodbye."

"Later, hooker," she says. "See you later, not goodbye."

"See you later," I say, throwing the blanket back over her head. I stand back up and head for the door.

"So just chill," she calls out. "'Till the next episode."

Rolling my eyes, I head out, finding Naz waiting downstairs with the  passenger door open for me. I get in, some anxiety brewing in my stomach  when he climbs in beside me.

"You ready to go home?" he asks as he starts the car.

Home. Such a simple word, but the connotation of it makes something  inside of me soar. I've never really felt like I was standing on stable  ground, like there was somewhere I could call home permanently. My life  has always been a series of temporaries: new towns, new people, new  schools, and new houses. New everything. The world around me fluctuated,  so many variables in my word problem of life to ever figure out the  answer of who I am.

But Naz is my new constant.

My permanent.

He makes it easier to find my answer, to find my place.

My home.

"Yeah," I say, offering him a small smile. "I'm ready."

I'm quiet on the drive to Brooklyn, quiet when we pull up to the house,  quiet as we head inside. We unload my things, taking them up to his  room …  our room …  for me to unpack.

"Should I … ?" I hesitate, looking at the massive dresser. "Can I … ?"

"Whatever you want," he says, answering my unasked questions. "What's mine is yours, Karissa."

There's an extra closet in here, half of the drawers in his dresser  empty, like it was all waiting for me to move in all along. Naz lingers  in the room while I unpack before excusing himself when his phone rings.  He comes back a few minutes later, pausing in the doorway. "I have some  work to take care of …  I'll be back around noon. Settle in, get  comfortable … "

"I will."

He strolls over, kissing me, a smile tugging his lips. "I'm happy you're here."

"I'm happy to be here," I whisper, but he's already gone before the words are from my lips.

I finish unpacking, almost everything I own belonging in the bedroom,  before I head downstairs to the den. I take the few DVDs and books I own  and put them on his shelves, mixed in with his. When I'm finished, I  glance at the time. Barely ten o'clock in the morning. I have at least  two hours until Naz gets back, so I do what any self-respecting woman  would do when left all alone with her guy's belongings for the first  time.

I snoop.

I've seen what Naz has on the surface, but I dig deeper, wanting to see  more of the man, the parts of him that are tucked away. I rifle through  shelves and cabinets, even searching his junk drawer in the kitchen,  before heading back to the bedroom and turning to his things.

You can tell a lot about a person by what they keep hidden in their  underwear drawer. It's their private spot, the one place they don't  expect anyone to touch out of decency. It's where I always hid my love  letters, my birth control when I got it at sixteen without my mother's  consent, the vibrator I bought on my eighteenth birthday …  but Naz's  drawer is a ghost town.

What a letdown.

I shut the drawer, glancing in the others to find nothing out of the  ordinary, before heading to his closet. I count a dozen black suits, not  including the one he's wearing and whatever's dirty, but he has a good  bit of other clothes. I wish he'd wear the others more often. I'm  checking out his tie collection, most solid colors, when my eyes drift  to the shelf on the top of the closet.

A silver metal case, no bigger than a shoebox, sits in the corner.  Curious, I reach up on my tiptoes and pull it down, nearly dropping it  as soon as I get my hands on it. It's heavy. I can hear stuff jingling  around inside. There's a lock on the box, but I haven't found any keys  during my search that would open it.

Scowling, I shake the box, trying to figure out what's inside, before straining my muscles to shove it back up on the shelf.

Another letdown.

Giving up, I head out of the bedroom, looking in closets and scarcely  furnished guest rooms, before heading back downstairs. Every other room  is exactly as expected …  nothing but laundry stuff in the laundry room, a  spare room full of exercise equipment, and the massive garage is full  of tools, old faded stains on the concrete.                       
       
           



       

I find a door leading down into what I assume is the basement, a musky,  dank odor wafting out of it. There's no light switch, and the stairs are  flimsy, the little bit of light filtering down from behind me  illuminating tons of cobwebs, so I don't dare go down there.

No thanks.

It's twelve o'clock on the dot when I hear the front door open. I'm  sitting on the couch in the den, my feet tucked beneath me as I flip  through channels on the television. Naz walks in, letting out a deep  sigh as he flops down beside me. He looks older than when he left just  hours ago, the bags beneath his eyes heavier, a weariness in his face  that hints at exhaustion.

"You look tired," I say, settling on some cooking show.

"I am," he says. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

"Take a nap."

"I'm not a toddler."

I shrug. "I take naps."

"Yeah, well, it's beauty sleep for the beautiful," he says, looking at me, "but there's no rest for the wicked."

I roll my eyes. "I wouldn't call myself beautiful."

"I would."

"I wouldn't call you wicked, either."

"I would."

"Regardless," I say, "if you're tired, you should go to sleep."

"Yeah, I should," he admits, although he makes no move to go upstairs,  settling in on the couch as he kicks his shoes off. "You find anything  interesting today?"

My brow furrows. "When?"

"When you went through my stuff."

My heart seems to stop for a second as I turn to him. "Why do you think I went through your stuff?"

"Because you're human," he says. "It's normal to be curious, and you're a smart woman …  I'd expect no less."

I'm not sure what to say. He doesn't sound upset in the least, but his  matter-of-fact tone, pegging my actions from the start like he knows me  better than I know myself, still unnerves me. "No, I didn't find  anything."

"Figured you wouldn't," he said. "Nowhere near as interesting as what I found in your drawers in the dorm."