Chapter 16 - Kent #2
The words hit me like a physical blow. Because that's what she's asking for—not just connection, not just the intimacy we shared last night, but apprenticeship. She wants to learn not just the philosophy behind what I do, but the practice of it.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you deserve better than becoming what I am."
Her face changes, anger giving way to something colder, more calculating.
"And what are you, exactly? Because from where I'm sitting, you're someone who stopped a monster that the system protected.
Someone who saw through my father's performance when everyone else was fooled.
Someone who delivered justice when no one else would. "
"I'm someone who ruins everything he touches."
The admission comes out rawer than I intended, carrying weight from years of careful isolation, of building walls between myself and anything that might matter.
Because that's what I do—I destroy things.
Corrupt cops, abusive husbands, predators who've escaped consequences.
The common thread isn't justice, it's destruction.
And now I've aimed that destruction at the most important person in my life.
"You didn't ruin me," she says softly. "You saved me. How don’t you see that? You gave me justice when no one else would. You helped me understand that survival isn't the same as living."
But I did ruin her. Maybe not in ways she can see yet, but irrevocably.
"You're just a girl," I repeat, like the number itself will convince her. "You should be worried about prom and graduation and college roommates. Not corresponding with killers and learning about the philosophy of necessary violence."
"But I'm not worried about those things. I'm worried about you walking away from the only honest relationship either of us has ever had because you think you know what's best for me."
The accusation stings because it's accurate. I am making this decision for both of us, without consulting her, based on my assessment of what her future should look like. It's exactly the kind of paternalistic control that she's spent her life fighting against.
But that doesn't make it wrong.
"Sometimes adults have to make difficult decisions to protect people they care about," I say, hating how condescending the words sound even as I speak them.
Her face goes white, then red, fury replacing hurt with lightning speed. "Adults? You're going to pull rank on me now? After everything we've shared, after last night, you're going to treat me like a child who doesn't know her own mind?"
"You are a child. Legally, emotionally, developmentally—"
"Fuck you."
The words crack like a whip, cutting through my explanations with surgical precision.
Because she's right to be furious. I'm doing exactly what every other adult in her life has done—making decisions for her, dismissing her autonomy, treating her like someone who needs protection rather than someone who deserves choice.
But I can't stop. Can't let the rightness of her anger change the wrongness of what continuing this would do to both of us.
"I'm trying to protect you," I say.
"From what? From happiness? From feeling understood? From having someone in my life who sees me clearly and isn't afraid of what he sees?"
From becoming like me. From carrying the weight of violence on your conscience. From learning that love and destruction can occupy the same space in a human heart. From discovering that the line between justice and revenge is thinner than you think, and easier to cross than you imagine.
"From making choices you'll regret when you're older and understand what you gave up."
She stares at me for a long moment, green eyes bright with unshed tears and building rage. "You mean choices you'll regret. Because you're the one who's afraid, Kent. You're the one who can't handle what this means."
The observation hits deeper than I want to admit.
Because she's not wrong—I am afraid. Terrified of what happens when someone matters enough to compromise the careful distance that's kept me functional.
Terrified of watching her transform from someone who survived a monster into someone who chooses to become one.
Most of all, terrified that she's right about us, that what we have is worth the risks, worth the complications, worth the destruction it might bring to both our carefully constructed lives.
Fear doesn't change facts. And the facts are simple: she's seventeen, I'm a killer, and mixing those two realities creates something that will poison everything good about who she's becoming.
"Maybe I am afraid," I admit. "But that doesn't change what's right."
"Right according to who? Society? The same society that protected my father while he terrorized his family? The same system that would have let him continue hurting people if you hadn't intervened?"
She's attacking my argument from every angle, using the logic I have discovered her propensity for through months of correspondence. Because I have learned her—through letters and philosophical discussions and careful analysis of why violence sometimes becomes necessary.
Now she's using those tools against me.
And she's winning.
But winning an argument doesn't change the fundamental mathematics of our situation. She's seventeen. I'm twenty-four. She's building a life. I'm on a fucking clock.
I get up from the bed, needing distance to think clearly.
The hotel room feels smaller in daylight, shabby in ways the darkness disguised. Worn carpet, faded wallpaper, the kind of place where people make decisions they'll spend years regretting.
Perfect setting for what I'm about to do.
"Where are you going?" Delilah asks, pulling the sheet tighter around herself.
"Getting dressed. We both need to get dressed.
You need to go home." I retrieve my clothes from where they were scattered across the floor last night, evidence of how completely I lost control.
My hands shake slightly as I pull on my pants, muscle memory from years of careful discipline warring with the emotional chaos she's created in my chest.
She watches me dress with growing alarm, green eyes tracking every movement like she's trying to decode what my body language means for her future. She is brilliant. That’s why she can do better.
More. She deserves distance from the worst thing that happened to her, not for it to become the essence of who she is. Not the way I have.
"Kent, talk to me. What's going on in your head?"
Everything. Too much. The weight of what I've done, what continuing this would mean, what walking away will cost both of us. But mostly, I'm thinking about the mathematical precision of destruction—how one wrong choice can cascade into irreversible damage.
I've spent two years learning to compartmentalize violence, to separate necessary killing from personal emotion. The same skills that keep me functional when I'm carving confessions from monsters can be applied here. Clinical assessment. Objective analysis. Emotional distance.
She deserves a normal life. College roommates who worry about midterms instead of body counts. Boyfriends who've never killed anyone, who can take her to dinner without scanning every exit. A future built on something other than shared darkness and the philosophy of necessary violence.
I'm too old for her. Not just chronologically, but experientially.
She's lived through one kind of trauma and thinks it's prepared her for everything else.
I've chosen trauma repeatedly, refined it into methodology, turned it into something approaching art.
The distance between those experiences isn't measured in years—it's measured in bodies.
I'm too damaged. Two years of systematic killing has changed something fundamental about how I process human connection.
I see everyone as either predator or prey, threat or asset.
Even Delilah, especially Delilah, gets filtered through that framework.
The fact that I can categorize someone I care about as useful to my emotional stability proves how fucked up my thinking has become.
Most importantly, I'm too dangerous. Not because I'd ever hurt her directly, but because being connected to me makes her a target.
Law enforcement, rival predators, anyone who might want leverage against the Carver—they'd use her to get to me.
And I can't protect her while maintaining the anonymity that keeps me operational.
The math is simple: staying together destroys both our futures. Walking away destroys only mine.
Easy choice.
"I'm thinking about what comes next," I say, buttoning my shirt with mechanical precision. "For both of us."
"And you've decided that without talking to me."
The accusation stings because it's accurate. I am making this decision unilaterally, based on calculations she's not privy to. But some decisions are too important to be made democratically, especially when one person lacks the experience to understand all the variables.
"I'm thinking about your college applications," I continue, ignoring her objection. "Your plans to study psychology, maybe criminal justice. The life you're building with your aunt, the relationships you'll form with people who don't carry the weight we carry."
"I don't want those relationships. I want this one."
"You think you do. Right now, in this moment, you think this is what you want. But you're seventeen years old and you've never experienced normal. How can you choose abnormal when you don't know what you're rejecting?"
She's quiet for a long moment, and I can see her processing my argument, looking for flaws in the logic. When she speaks, her voice is steadier than I expected.