14. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
Cassidy
He killed her. He killed Dana like she was nothing. Like she meant nothing. Bled her out into a metal bucket as she grew weaker and weaker. He’s a monster. A fucking demon.
My thoughts don’t slow, even as I allow him to hold me and whisper his love for me, over and over.
What if I didn’t fight anymore? What if I just stayed and allowed myself to become what he wants me to be? What if I fail whatever image he has of me and he kills me?
Panic rises in my throat, threatening to choke me. I can feel it crawling under my skin. He’s said he doesn’t want to hurt me, but he will. How long before he tires of me? Before he finds someone else? I thrash again, weak and wild.
“Shhh,” Noah soothes, his hands gentle but unyielding as they keep me in place. “It’s okay.”
“Fuck you,” I sob, though there’s no strength behind it now.
He holds me tighter, his warmth seeping into my bones until the chill of the rain fades away. “I know you’re scared. But I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Like you didn’t let anything happen to Dana?” My voice is muffled and thick with exhaustion.
He pauses, and I can almost hear him choosing his words carefully. “I never loved Dana. She was a mindless fuck and she became obsessive. I told her as such, and she refused to listen.” He strokes my hair like he did when we were in the cabin and everything felt safe. “She followed us up here and I couldn’t let her destroy what we’ve been building, Cassidy. You have to understand.”
Fear wars with understanding as I fight to regain control of my emotions.
“You say that now that she’d dead and there’s no one to corroborate your story,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.
“I wouldn’t lie to you. To other people, yes. But never to you.” He pulls back enough to look me in the eyes, his eyes dark in the shadows of his mask. “You’re not her simply based on the fact that I love you.”
I can’t hold his gaze. The intensity of it is overwhelming, swallowing every rational thought that tells me to get as far away from him as possible.
“I need to go home, Noah.”
“You know… I built this cabin for us. For you.” He ignores my plea.
Despite myself, I look around, taking in the high ceilings, the windows, the wooden staircase leading upstairs. The kitchen is big, much bigger than the other cabin, and it’s stocked with all the appliances I ever need. No dishwasher, but a high-end coffee machine sits gleaming on the butcher block counters.
“How did you get electricity in here?” I ask, curious.
He shrugs, “I know people who can do impossible things.”
“Like making people who piss you off, disappear?”
He laughs softly, the sound so at odds with everything I just saw that it makes my head spin. “Exactly.”
Part of me wants to be impressed—amazed even—by how far he’s gone to make this place for us. But I can’t shake the image of Dana hanging from that hook, the blood pooling beneath her like some grotesque sacrifice.
“I want to go home,” I say again, my voice gaining strength.
“This is home now.” He murmurs it against my temple.
“Please, Noah.”
“No,” he says gently but firmly. “I can keep you safe here.”
I stop fighting and let my head fall back against his chest, closing my eyes against the tears that threaten to spill over again. Maybe if I play along, if I pretend to be what he wants for a while, he’ll relax enough to slip up and give me another chance at escape.
It’s risky; if he catches on, there’s no telling how far he’ll go this time.
But what other choice do I have?
“Are you going to take off your mask or do you plan on wearing it forever?” My voice is thick with resentment and something that sounds almost like resignation.
He’s silent for a moment before reaching up and pulling it off. It drops to the floor beside us as his fingers find their way back into my hair, stroking softly.
“It’s not forever,” he whispers as I drift into a restless sleep.
But the weight of it feels endless.
I wake with the sun streaming in through the window in the ceiling and clattering in the kitchen. Noah’s shirt is off, and I can’t help but stare at the muscles bunched in his back. The smell of coffee hits me, jolting any sleep from my mind. I sit, stretching the soreness in my muscles as I slowly peel myself off the floor.
“So… you gonna show me around this place or what?” I say.
He turns, a smile beaming on his face, holding two cups of coffee. “Come, grab your cup and I’ll show you around the place.”
“Is the bedroom as comfortable as the last one?” I ask, taking my mug.
“More,” he promises. “It’s closer to the falls, so you should be able to sleep easier with the sound of nature.”
I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever sleep easy again after what I witnessed last night.
He sets his coffee down and grabs my hand. The space feels big and overwhelming, but the way he’s looking at me is soft and eager. We make our way up the stairs, and he opens the first door on the right.
The room is massive, with a king size bed covered in a thick duvet. The windows take up an entire wall, giving us views of both the falls and the field. There are closets and drawers built into every space they can fit without it looking cluttered.
It is beautiful. And terrifying.
He’s thought of everything.
I walk in a daze toward the bed, running my fingers over the fabric like it might disappear if I look away. The room is chilled, but I can’t tell if that’s from me or if he just hasn’t figured out how to keep this ridiculously large space warm yet.
“Well?” He asks.
“It’s…” I search for a word that doesn’t betray how deeply this affects me. “Nice.”
“I see you’re still holding onto that attitude,” Noah says as he leans against the doorframe.
I turn to face him, my expression guarded. “I can’t just pretend like none of this happened.”
“I’m not asking for that.” He sounds almost patient now, but there’s still an edge to his voice that makes me wary. “Come, I’ll show you the other two rooms and the bathrooms.”
We pass through the hallway, and he shows me around the rest of the cabin. The other bedrooms are slightly smaller than ours but just as meticulously crafted. One is set up as an office with a giant desk in the corner.
There’s more space here than I’ll ever need and it only serves to remind me how much of my old life I’ve left behind. How far I am from everything but him.
When we get back to the living room, he pulls me close, holding me against his bare chest. I can feel his heart pounding, echoing the frantic beat of my own. “I meant what I said, Cassidy. It’s going to be just us now. And a baby, sometime in the future. I can easily build a crib for the office room.”
He kisses my forehead, then lifts my chin with his fingers so I have no choice but to meet his eyes. They’re filled with an intensity that borders on frightening.
He loves me; there’s no doubt in my mind about that. But it’s the kind of love you don’t walk away from unscathed.
Tears threaten again, but this time they don’t spill over. Instead, they dry up and leave behind a hollow ache that I try not to dwell on as Noah presses his lips against mine—a soft promise that feels like chains wrapping around my mind.
“Let’s go grab some stuff from the other cabin and then get your things unpacked,” he says when he pulls away.
I nod numbly. “How did you build this place?”
He grabs his shirt and pulls it over his head, “I had some help. One of my cousin’s friends is a major construction contractor and he helped. I started it the day I first saw you.”
I know he means that to be endearing, but right now I’m just creeped out. Yesterday, before… before seeing Dana, it would have given me butterflies, but right now, I’m just… nothing. I feel nothing. His hand finds mine as we head towards the door.
His grip tightens as he pulls me closer, and I let him. There’s no fight left—not now, not yet—even though every nerve is screaming at me to do something other than follow him back down the trail.
Once we get back to the small cabin, I grab my journals out of my bag and sit at the table. Noah pauses to watch me for a moment before smiling that infuriating smile.
“Good girl. Write out all your feelings.”
I snort. “Yeah, so you can just invade my privacy and read them later.”
“There’s no secrets between lovers, Cassidy, you should know that by now.” He turns and heads to the room to pack.
It’s been a while since I’ve sat here and contemplated the direction of my life. Usually, I have everything so figured out. My life has become something I don’t recognize in the last week. I’m trying to hate it. To fight against it.
Especially now that I literally watched him murder a woman in cold blood.
The worst part is that I get it. Men like him… they’re a different breed. Normal people have something inside their brain that stops them from acting out their impulses.
Someone threatens you? Okay, we move on. We call the cops. We do literally anything except cause them bodily harm. But people like Noah…
He’s an anomaly.
Somehow… he’s sweet, kind, loving, has the best cock known to the planet.
But he’s also filled with this dark, brooding energy that can become explosive if rubbed the wrong way.
Hence… Dana now living with the sharks.
I’m not sure that I hate it. I certainly don’t love it.
But I understand it.
The hardest pill for me to swallow is that I wanted a man who was feral. Who went feral to protect me. Who wants me so deeply under his skin that even a minor threat against me is taken at full scale.
Now that I have that, I’m growing obsessed with it.
Seeing Dana bleed out was… a lot. It was hard. I’ve never seen anyone die before. But it was also fascinating in a sick way.
And if I find that fascinating, am I really any better than he is? I don’t think I’m capable of killing anyone, but the fact that he did, really doesn’t bother me as much as it should.
He saw a threat, and he eliminated it. I am, at the very least, neutral on it all. It’s just more that weird feeling of seeing someone die, or hang there dead, that is hard to get over. I suppose it’s not unlike killing and skinning a deer for the first time.
That initial shock.
I’m trying so hard to hold onto any semblance of who I was before I came here, but it’s like he literally walked off the pages of my journal and into my life and how the fuck do I argue with my damn self about my own fantasies?
I can’t.
And that’s why I’m struggling to just let go and give in.
Maybe if I… help him with something… cleaning or something. Get myself used to being around it. Get to know the way his mind works a little more, it will help me just jump in.
After all, I have no intentions of taking him to the police, so I’m just as guilty as he is at this point.
May as well do what I can to get used to having my dream man walking around, shirtless right now, mind you, and packing up our shit to move to a cabin he built for me.
Like, who does that?
Fuck, I’m all over the place. I want him. Need him, even.
One things for sure…
I won’t be killing anyone myself.
But if he does it to protect me… I don’t think I’ll stop him.