Return of the Reaper novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Elmwood Avenue

Noelle lived on the second floor of a brick house on Elmwood Avenue.

The apartment was small and warm and smelled of coffee and green plants.

She sat him on a kitchen chair under a hanging lamp and cut away the ruined shirt with trauma shears.

"Hold the edge of the table," she said.

He held it.

She took out eleven stitches and put in eleven new ones, and he watched her do it.

Her glasses had slid down her nose.

A strand of hair had come loose from the top knot and was stuck to her cheek.

When she tied off the last stitch, she smoothed the dressing flat with her palm.

She left her hand there.

It was a quarter to six in the morning, and gray light was coming through the window over the sink.

"There," she said. "You'll live."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. You've been apologizing to everybody since the stairwell. To Lila, to Abel, to the man you killed."

"I'm not apologizing to you."

"Good." She looked up. "Don't."

Her hand was still flat on his ribs, warm through the dressing.

He could feel his pulse under it.

"Noelle."

"What?"

"I killed someone six hours ago."

"I know."

"I'm not clean."

"I've been up for twenty-two hours."

"I walked into a building full of armed men with a six-year-old's hand in mine." Her voice was low and rough. "I don't want clean. I want to stop shaking."

He stood.

The chair scraped back, and she stood with him, because her hand had never left his body.

They were very close.

She was a head shorter than he was, and she tipped her face up with her chin set.

"Doyle," she said. "Before this goes any further, I need to tell you something about Anna."

He waited.

She opened her mouth.

Then she shook her head, once, and her eyes went to his mouth.

"Never mind," she said. "After."

She went up on her toes and kissed him.

It was not gentle.

She tasted like coffee and cold air.

Her fingers fisted in what was left of his shirt, and she kissed him.

He kissed her back with a sound he hadn't known he still had in him.

His hands found her hips and pulled her against him.

She made a small noise, and her glasses bumped his face.

She tore them off and threw them onto the table.

"Bed," she said against his mouth.

"Your hands are shaking."

"So are yours. Bed."

The bedroom was dim and cool, with a quilt thrown back and a window full of pale sky.

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