Chapter 8 #2
She ghosts people. Clients. Yoga instructors. Every man she's dated in the last six months. The second anything requires emotional vulnerability or follow-through, she vanishes. Runs away. Disappears like she never existed in the first place.
She lies to herself constantly. Attends support groups she doesn't belong to.
Performs normalcy for strangers. Pretends she wants vanilla relationships with nice guys when her entire creative output is rape fantasies and psychological torture.
She's a walking contradiction who refuses to admit what she actually needs.
She's a coward. Wrote Call of the Labyrinth and never published it. Signed up for the auction and then tried to pretend she didn't want it. Entered the maze and then ran away when I gave her exactly what she asked for.
I stop typing.
My jaw aches from clenching.
She ran away when you murdered someone in front of her, you absolute psychopath.
I delete that last line about the maze. That one's not fair. That one's on me.
I stare at the list.
Everything I wrote is true. Objectively, factually accurate.
She's a mess. A beautiful, brilliant, infuriating fucking mess.
And I'm sitting in a parking lot across from a gym making notes about her flaws like some kind of deranged consultant trying to talk himself out of a merger.
The problem is… I don't want to admit this but I have to. The problem is… I don't see a way forward without her.
My list grows, but this ones goes under the heading, Things I Can't Control Anymore.
Can't focus worth shit. I used to deliver surgical presentations at board meetings. Now I'm checking my phone every thirty seconds like some lovesick teenager waiting for a text that never comes.
Sleep's fucked. I used to run on five hours, sharp as a blade. Now I'm lucky if I get three, and those are full of her face, her voice, her new platinum fucking hair.
Surveillance has become my second job. I've got tactical teams deployed like she's a head of state. Three different shifts. Round-the-clock coverage. This is not normal behavior, even for me.
Haven't balanced the scales in months. Volk broke me. No, Caleb. Scarletta watching you kill him and then rejecting you, broke you.
How did this happen?
How?
How did I get here?
I scoff out loud, that's how ridiculous this question is.
Scarletta put me here.
I lean back in the driver's seat, letting my head hit the headrest.
Okay. Fine. Let's do this properly.
Let's make a real fucking list.
Why Scarletta Mae Desmond has hijacked my brain…
She has matching damage.
Every woman I've ever been with fell into one of two categories. The ones who got scared when they saw what I actually wanted, or the ones who tried to fix me like I was some kind of charity project.
My one real ex girlfriend saw my monster and looked at me like I was diseased. Like I needed therapy, and Jesus, and probably a lobotomy.
The submissives at the clubs played their roles. But underneath, I could see the judgment. The calculation. How much extra am I getting paid for this freaky shit?
Scarletta wrote Call of the fucking Labyrinth.
She didn't just tolerate darkness—she cultivated it. Nurtured it. Spent months inside Lyra's head while she got hunted and violated by actual monsters with fur-covered cocks.
That's not someone performing kink. That's someone who lives in the same shadows I do.
I stare at the blank space under my pathetic list.
She craves what I need to give.
My fingers hover over the keys.
This isn't... fuck. This isn't her tolerating my shit. Isn't her playing along because that's what good subs do. Isn't performance art for my benefit.
She needs it.
Forty-seven goddamn stories. Every single protagonist the same—begging to be owned, broken down, rebuilt by someone who sees straight through to the ugly parts. She wrote it over, and over, and over again.
The desperation for someone who doesn't love you despite the darkness but because of it.
That's not research. That's not creative exploration.
That's a manifesto written in a thousand different scenarios, screaming the same truth: I need this, I need this, I need this.
She needs dominance the exact same way I need to give it.
Not endured or accommodated.
Necessary.
Which means she doesn't pity me.
That's the big one, isn't it? The one that fucking matters.
Most women who enter my game see what I actually am and look at me like I'm broken. Like I'm damaged goods that need fixing.
Scarletta saw everything and said, Yes, please. More.
The cameras in her apartment, the orchestrated scenarios, the elaborate submission frameworks—these are all things she craves.
She looked at my darkness and recognized her own reflection.
In fact, she's been writing my exact psychology for years.
Before I existed in her life.
Before she knew my name.
Every protagonist begging to be watched, stalked, owned by someone who sees through the performance. Every villain who builds elaborate scenarios just to prove the heroine wants exactly what terrifies her most.
She documented my architecture without knowing I was real.
I stop typing.
My hand moves to my chest without thinking, pressing against the shirt fabric covering ink I've carried for years.
Her face.
Every goddamn piece. Every woman bound, gagged, displayed—all wearing her features. The curve of her jaw. The vulnerable slope of her neck. Those eyes that shift between green and brown depending on the light.
I dreamed her into existence and carved her into my skin before she ever typed the words that would obsess me.
Before she became ScarletSins.
Before DarkDesires.
Before anything.
I tattooed a fantasy woman who turned out to be real.
I don't understand this.
I don't believe in fate.
I believe in data. Patterns. Probability distributions. Control over variables.
So either:
A) The universe bent probability into something statistically impossible, orchestrating our collision through mechanisms I can't comprehend or control.
Or:
B) I'm genuinely, clinically insane. My obsession with her writing triggered some psychotic break where I retroactively convinced myself the ink matches her features when it doesn't. Classic confirmation bias dressed up as destiny.
Both explanations terrify me equally.
I can't choose between them.
Don't want to.
Because if it's A, I have no control.
And if it's B, I never did.
I have no one.
Associates, employees., members of The Scales, yes.
But no one who knows me.
Scarletta does.
She's seen the worst parts of me and yes, the Maze broke us. But… it also connected us.
Which means something.
I'm not less alone, but the isolation feels less absolute.
Because she exists.
Because someone finally saw me completely.
Even if she can't stay, she exists.
The cursor blinks on the screen, waiting for me to finish the list.
But there's nothing left to say.
The list is bullshit.
All of it—the surveillance schedules, the operational assessments, the careful documentation of her flaws and my justifications. I'm not building a case. I'm not making a rational decision.
I'm trying to logic my way into something that exists beyond reason.
You can't spreadsheet your way into love. Can't risk-assess it. Can't control the variables until the outcome becomes predictable.
Love is the thing that makes you willing to burn everything down.
I lean back in the seat, letting the words form inside my head where they're real but still contained.
I love her.
Not obsession. Not possession.
Actual, genuine, terrifying love.
The kind that unmakes you completely.
The kind I have no idea how to survive.