Nefarious ➛ Theo Raeken [2]

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Clarissa Bane could hear the sound of footsteps falling down the stairs from behind her, the creaking indicating who it was. It felt like a flashback to four months ago when she had listened to the man attempt to creep out of the house and away from her wrath.

She was sitting in the same chair, her coffee cup in front of her, but she was staring out the window instead of at the table in front of her.

"You're up early." Jordan Parrish commented softly as he walked into the room, his uniform pressed and neat on his body. He bypassed the table where she was sitting, his eyes straight on the coffee maker that was spitting out the liquid that kept them all going in the past few weeks.

"Couldn't sleep." Clarissa replied to the older man, eyeing his nervousness as he poured him a cup of coffee. It was surprising as the older man had stopped flinching each time she had walked into the room and his guild ridden looks had decreased in frequency. She would never admit to him when he asked that she had shaken herself awake from a nightmare and had been sitting at the table for four hours though.

Time heals wounds and the wound that he had helped inflict upon her had taken the longest time to heal.

"Why do you look like I'm going to cut off your arm and feed it to Lydia's dog?" Clarissa questioned slowly, her eyes narrowed at the older man as she observed him. She took a slow drink of her coffee and watched the older man's hand flinch subtly at the sound of her voice. "You've just now gotten back into my good graces Parrish, I wouldn't mess that up."

Clarissa watched Jordan Parrish gulp down a steaming cup of coffee, barely flinching as the scalding liquid slipped down his throat. She didn't know if it was the fact that he was using the coffee to avoid her question or his hellhound abilities that allowed him to ignore the heat from the liquid, but she knew that the older man was hiding something.

"Evie asked me to move in." Jordan Parrish looked shocked after the words spewed from his mouth like word vomit. "I didn't know how you would take it."

Clarissa raised an eyebrow at the older man, a chuckle escaping her lips at the fact that he was nervous to live in a house with six teenagers and his witch girlfriend.

"I told you a long time ago that I didn't care what you did with your free time." Clarissa waved off the man carefully and took another long sip of her coffee. "Just don't hurt Evie because then I would have to intervene. Evie took us in out of the kindness of her heart and she cares too deeply about people. You break her heart, and I will make sure that yours no longer has a place inside of your chest."

"I wouldn't hurt her." Jordan Parrish, despite all the pain and misery he had helped inflict upon her, was a decent guy. She couldn't imagine Evie with anyone else and hoped that the witch married the hellhound one day. If not, she would lock them in a room together until they decided to take their vows. She would even get certified online and scream the vows through the locked door if that was what it took to ensure Evie's happiness was intact. "Some days you look at me like you still blame me for what happened, so I just wanted to make sure that you were okay with it before I brought all my stuff in here. Eve said she had been teaching you how to light things on fire and I really can't afford to replace everything that I own"

"You're the adults here." Clarissa commented lowly, even though she was an adult legally. Sometimes she still felt like a child though, especially when she had to consider that her actions impacted the others. "Besides, you haven't been to your apartment in months. It might be easier to have you just stay here instead of pretending that you go home every night."

Clarissa wouldn't admit to him that she felt safer with him there, especially after Mason had told her that Parrish was the one person who could keep the Ghost Riders at bay. She wouldn't admit to him that she was scared for her family who was now in the direct path of being erased from existence. They were all Clarissa had and she couldn't imagine carrying on if something made her forget that they existed.