Milo sat in the chair and listened to the girl get incredibly sick. There would be a round of vomit, a pause, and then another. He’d gotten past his own revulsion into a strange emotion that was unfamiliar to him. It took some attention to understand this tightness in his chest, this twisting in his guts. He was worried about her. He was worried that she was so sick. Not because he’d have to take her to a hospital and someone there would point a finger towards him as involved in various murders over the years. Not because she was a risk. Because she was a person, and she sounded terrible, and he… he liked her.

 

This was just as much of a goddamn problem as watching her sleep and thinking that she was pretty. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t be this person. Not for himself, and certainly not for her.

 

But when he heard shaky footsteps on the tiles, heard the sink running, he got up and went to the door, knocking gently. For no reason, he assured himself. Certainly not because he wanted to be sure she was alright.

 

“Tess?”

 

It took her a long moment to answer, and he wasn’t completely sure his heart was beating in the space of her silence. When she did finally answer with a, “yes,” her voice was shaky.

 

He rattled the doorknob, but it was locked. He had a long moment of something not entirely unlike fear. His instinctive response was to slam his shoulder into the door; the cheap wood would give quickly, and he’d be in the bathroom and finding out exactly what was happening before he had time to get any more worried. He wasn’t wasting his time pretending he wasn’t worried. Whether he likes it or not, he cared what happened next. His mind was giving him all sorts of concerning images about what a desperate person could do in a bathroom if they felt they had nothing else to lose, and although he’d never once gotten the sense that Tess was the kind of girl who would take extreme actions, she was also one hell of an actress.

 

“Tess, honey?” He almost gagged on the word, but wasn’t that the kind of thing men said when they needed women to do something?

 

He heard her snort on the other side of the door, and the fear morphed into rage in his belly. He slammed his fist against the door once, hard enough to rattle it in the frame.

 

“Tess, goddamnit, open this door now. What the fuck are you doing in there?”

 

“Fuck off,” she said back, and the rage spiraled higher, but before it had a chance to coalesce into anything that was blotting out his vision, he heard the lock turning. She pulled the door open, and she had that same loose smile she always wore on her face. She’d worn that expression plenty of times in the last few weeks; when she was about to suck his cock, when he was balls deep in her cunt, when he was fucking her tits because she was too worn out everywhere else. He’d seen it with many different variations already, and he’d gotten a pretty good sense of which ones were totally fake, and which ones were more real.

 

The one she wore now wasn’t even a good copy of one of the fakes.

 

“Hey, Daddy,” she said, leaning all her weight into one hip.

 

That pose made him growl more often than not, but this time it was so exaggerated he held himself back. Of all the things he’d seen Tess be, off-kilter wasn’t one of them. He’d surprised her in the bath, a total stranger, and fucked him without a word of warning, and he still hadn’t seen her calm falter. But now, she had clearly been scrubbing tears off her face. Her eyes were too bright and her pupils way too wide. If he’d had her here less time, he would have suspected she was on drugs. But there was no way she could be getting high here, and way too much time had passed for her to be detoxing now.

 

“Tess,” he said, and then surprised himself for the millionth time just today. “Come here.”

 

She went to slink into his arms, but instead of that, he took her hand, guiding her over to the bed. She sat down, clearly still trying to pose for him, her face a pretty mask of seduction. He reached over to the end of the bed and managed to hook his shirt off the end of the bed where he’d thrown it last night. He draped it around her shoulders and tried to keep his expression just as calm and cool as it could be.

 

He took a moment to organize his thoughts. It helped that, after a moment of hesitation, the poised little slut expression faded off her face, and she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the shirt, hugging it around herself.

 

“Look,” he said, finally. “I know I said that thing about earning your keep. But if you’re sick – I don’t want to get sick any more than you want to be sick. I have shit to do, and I can’t do it with my head over the can, you know?” He tried to laugh; she didn’t share the expression. “Is there something going on?” he asked, after a long and quiet moment.

 

Milo watched as Tess folded in on herself, her arms wrapping tight around her middle. “Something is,” she said. “I thought—Man, I feel like such a bitch, and I hate myself a little. The thing is… when you yanked me out of Toro’s place so fast, I didn’t have time to grab anything, you know? I was basically naked, no shoes, you had to go get me everything I’ve got, right? And I just… I didn’t think. And we haven’t… When we’ve fucked, you haven’t…”

 

He got it. He got it at that moment, and he had to put up a hand to stop her from talking so that he could take a moment to figure out what the fuck he was even thinking. Bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed hard against the growing knot in his stomach.

 

Two thoughts were present, crystal clear and full of sharp edges.

 

One: this girl was pregnant. Because of him.

 

Two: He was absolutely not a father. He would never be a father. He was a killer. A killer wasn’t a father.

 

He tried to think of something to say. Distantly, he was aware of Tess collapsing just a little bit more, of fresh streaks of tears rolling down her cheeks. He wanted that to stop like nothing he’d ever wanted before. His brain was locked up hard, though, and all the words were gone.

 

“I’ll get rid of it,” she said, and once the words started, they flowed out fast. “If you just take me to a clinic. I won’t fight, I won’t argue, I swear. I’ll do whatever you want. I just—Please don’t leave me here. Please. Toro took care of me for long enough that the other men – and women – in the city will treat me like poison, just in case he finds out and gets pissed that I’m on someone else’s arm. I’ll be a vulnerability to them. I won’t even be able to get a job dancing again. And that’s if anyone even wanted me, knocked up and stretch marked and my tits all—” She made a gesture at her chest, and suddenly, Milo wanted that. All of that. The idea of a beautiful woman swollen with his baby. He’d never thought of it before, not ever, and he’d never understood men who craved it, but suddenly, fucking her like this was the sexiest thing he’d ever considered. He’d claimed her in the most primal way, made her his, and that was a connection that…

 

He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have it. He was a goddamn killer, and why did he have to keep reminding himself of that? Why was he in this room, fucking this woman instead of doing the work he needed to do to track down Toro and sort out this goddamn mess, and thus keep his reputation and livelihood? Why was he having bullshit fantasies about being a man who could settle down with his pretty wife and raise a kid?

 

But that wasn’t the same as needing her to do what she was talking about. Not if she didn’t want to. If she weren’t up for this, he wouldn’t force her – that was a hundred thousand kinds of wrong – but if she wanted it…

 

“Slow down, Tess,” he said, and she looked up at him through a haze of tears. He slid just a little closer to her on the bed, reaching out to lightly touch the back of her hand with his fingers. One thing he’d always been good at was mimicry; it was how he got close to people when he had to do it, when the long-distance kill wasn’t an option. He could mimic a man who was good at being loving. Maybe he’d even figure out how to do it eventually. If he ever had the chance. If he ever got to retire from this life, this nightmare, this horror show that had seemed like such a good life until a month ago.

 

She turned her hand over and grabbed on to his fingers. He liked that. He liked that way more than he should have done. There was hope in her eyes, and it killed him to see.

 

He took another long, slow breath. “What do you want?”

 

She blinked at him like it was a question she’d never considered. “What?”

 

“Do you want to… terminate this? Or do you want to keep it?”

 

Her laugh was harsh and grating. “That’s rich, Milo. A pregnant whore. A dancer with a baby at home. Come on.” She shook her head. “However, if I had a kid, you can bet your ass its life would be better than mine.”

 

“What if you could give it that better life?”

 

She absolutely froze. “What are you saying, Milo?”

 

The problem was that he wasn’t sure at all.