21. Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty
Creed
T he house is silent when I let myself in. Not the silence of absence, but the heavy hush of someone holding their breath. I toe off my boots at the threshold, leave them squared on the tile, and step onto the hardwood.
The sunroom pulls at me, a magnetic north. She’s there, exactly where I expect her, tucked into the window seat, a blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders. Her hands are empty at first, but then I see the journal, balanced on her knees, spine cracked, the pages bleeding ink onto her skin.
She’s already using it. Something about that, tugs at my heart. Whatever is left of it, anyway, it’s all hers.
I linger in the doorway. Let my shadow stretch across the floor.
She doesn’t look up. She’s writing or pretending to, the line of her mouth set, eyes locked on a sentence she’s probably not seeing.
The light is perfect. It casts her in a glow that’s almost obscene, a spotlight for the condemned.
She stiffens when I reach her, but relaxes as her eyes rise to meet mine. The blanket slips lower, exposing the sharp line of her collarbone, the tattoo healing nicely against her skin. Her fingers clutch the book a little tighter. Maybe she’s writing about me.
I kneel in front of her. I could take the chair, but I don’t. I want her to look down at me. I want her to understand, on a cellular level, that everything in this room, or in this life, is hers to command.
I don’t say anything at first. Just study her face, the microtremors at the corners of her eyes, the set of her jaw. There’s color in her cheeks, not from the cold but from some internal fire. She’s come alive since leaving the city and is more beautiful than the day I saw her.
I reach up, put a hand over hers, and slide the journal from her grip. She resists for a nanosecond, then lets it go. I set it on the table next to the mugs.
Her hands are trembling. Not the obvious, theatrical kind, just a vibration, barely detectable, like the body prepping for either flight or fight. I take them in mine, wrapping her cold fingers in my warmth, pressing down until the shaking stops.
The collar is still on. The metal plate at her throat catches the light, shining. I can see the pulse, visible and fragile, beating a hundred miles a minute
“Hi there, kitten,” I say. My voice comes out lower than I intend. Steady, but gutteral.
She breathes. Doesn’t answer.
I let the silence stretch, watching her absorb the moment. She won’t meet my eyes. Instead she looks at the space between us, the wedge of air dense with everything we haven’t said.
Tracing a thumb over the back of her hand, slow, deliberate.
“Do you want to go back?” I ask. The words are soft, almost gentle. “To the city. To your life. I’ll take you.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her body recoils at the offer, but her face is stone.
I clarify, because I don’t believe in ambiguity. “No strings. No punishment. You can leave if you want.”
Still nothing. She’s running calculations behind her eyes, weighing the reality of freedom against whatever monster she’s accepted to be who I am.
I squeeze her hands, not enough to hurt, but enough to force sensation into the moment.
“I’ll disappear if that’s what you want,” I tell her. “You’ll never see me again.”
Her breath hitches. The smallest, most perfect falter.
I keep my gaze fixed on her. I want her to see that I mean it. That I would burn myself out of her life if she said the word.
I know she won’t. But the offer has to be real, or it’s just another cage.
Her shoulders curl in, the blanket slipping further, and I see the goosebumps along her upper arm, the bruise where I bit her last night already dark at the edges.
She finally lifts her eyes to mine. The blue is bright, colder than the room, but there’s hunger there. Desire.
“Why would you let me go?” she whispers. The words catch in her throat.
I answer with truth. “Because I don’t need to keep you to own you. I just wanted you to see how much more you can be. Here. With me.”
She laughs, a sharp, broken sound, then clamps her mouth shut, as if she regrets giving me anything.
I stroke her knuckles, memorizing the texture, the pattern of scars and old calluses. She’s stronger than she looks, but I can break her with a word. That’s what I love about her.
“You’re not a prisoner,” I say.
She doesn’t buy it, not yet.
“I need you to want to stay,” I add.
She closes her eyes, lets her head fall forward until her brow touches mine. The contact is featherlight, but it fuses us together in a way that neither of us is ready to break.
I let my voice drop to a whisper, just for her. “I don’t want to lose you.”
She flinches at that. I don’t blame her. Need is a weapon, and she’s seen what happens when people get careless with it.
I don’t push. I stay on my knees, hands on hers, and wait.
Eventually, her breathing slows. The shaking in her hands fades.
She lifts her head and looks at me. For real, this time.
“What if I stay?” she asks. There’s a dare in it, but also a plea.
I answer with a smile. “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life proving you made the right choice.”
She studies me, weighing the words, looking for the catch. There isn’t one. She’ll figure that out soon enough.
The sunlight shifts, crawling up her face, turning her eyes almost silver.
She doesn’t say yes. But she doesn’t say no, either.
For now, that’s enough.
I bring her hands to my mouth, kiss the inside of her wrist, the skin so thin I can taste her pulse. She shudders, but doesn’t pull away.
Letting her go, finally, I stand. She doesn’t move, just watches as I take the empty mug, fill it from the kitchen, and bring it back to her.
I set it on the table.
If she stays, she’ll drink it.
If not, I’ll wait for the front door closing behind her.
Either way, I’m ready.
And for the first time in my life, that doesn’t scare me at all.
Sitting on the floor in front of her, I study her profile in the golden light, mapping the uncharted territory of her indecision.
She’s always been hard to read, but now she’s a locked vault, every facial muscle frozen in place.
I watch her eyes flick: to the door, to the kitchen, to the stairs. Avoiding me entirely.
My thumbs resume their orbit, tracing small circles. The texture of her skin is memorized, but still new every time I touch it. She’s my Goddess, and despite the fact I could lose her, she needs to choose this.
Choose me.
She inhales, once, a tremor that almost becomes a sob, then represses it with iron discipline. She’s a surgeon at heart; loss and hope are always commuted to the hands.
I know what she’s going to do before she does.
She breaks the connection, first with her eyes, then her hands. The disengagement is surgical, no drama, just a slow retraction, as if she can splice herself away from my need without leaving a scar. She sets her hands on the blanket, fingers splayed, and I let them go.
She stands. The motion is clean, purposeful, every joint unlocked in sequence. She leaves the blanket on the seat and the mug on the table. She doesn’t look at me as she rises, but the line of her throat is taut, the pulse visible again, fluttering like a trapped bird.
She walks toward the stairs. Her bare feet make no sound, but I can hear every step. She doesn’t pause, doesn’t hesitate, just vanishes up the spiral staircase, the hem of her shirt fluttering behind like the afterimage of a dream.
I stay kneeling.
The silence returns, but it’s not the same silence. This one is electric, charged, the kind that can only exist after the air has been vacuumed of all pretense.
My hands drop to my thighs. The skin is numb where her hands were. My jaw aches from the pressure of clenching, a stress response I haven’t had since childhood. My fists clench, unclench. I’m not a man who’s used to waiting, but I will wait for her, if it takes a century.
I look at the journal on the table, at the two mugs, at the blanket still shaped to her body. The house feels suddenly larger, like the walls have receded a hundred yards in every direction.
The sun slides along the floor, casting bars of gold that inch closer, then retreat as clouds roll past. The wind picks up, howling a little, and I think of her upstairs, alone with the decision I’ve placed in her hands. The echo of her absence is a pain I catalog, then file away for future use.
I replay every second of our exchange, analyzing for error, for missed signs. I find none.
I have given her the choice. I have made her the only variable.
There is nothing else to do but wait.
And so I do. I kneel in the sunroom, hands white-knuckled, the muscles in my thighs burning, and let the world turn around me.
I am a monument to patience, and to hope, and to the kind of love that is indistinguishable from devotion.
She will come back. Or she won’t.
Either way, I will be here, waiting.
Whether that be as a man obsessed, or as a corpse.
The wait is short. I hear her call my name, her voice filtering down the stairs as a grin stretches over my face. I know exactly what room she’s in… and exactly what I’m going to do to her once I take those stairs two at a time.
Good choice, my kitten, good choice.