Chapter Twelve - Simon #2
Moments where I’m more than the monster she thinks I am.
I know how people form bonds. I know how dependence is built—slowly, through repeated need and consistent fulfillment. I’ve used it on enemies and allies. I’ve never wanted to use it like this.
I’m already doing it.
When she runs out of clean clothes, new ones appear in a bag on the chair. Nothing flashy. Nothing suggestive. Just comfortable things in her size, things she can wear and tell herself it’s only practicality.
When her shoulders ache from tension, I notice the way she rubs her neck. The next day, I move the cushions, adjust the chair, reposition the lamp so the light’s softer. I don’t mention it. I don’t have to. She feels the difference.
Whenever the city howls outside—sirens, shouts, distant chaos—I’m there. Between her and the door. Between her and the window. Between her and anything that sounds like it might hurt her.
Bit by bit, I watch it land.
She stops jumping every time my men knock. She starts moving around the apartment without constantly checking where I am. Eden still doesn’t trust me, but she’s starting to allow my presence as a fact.
Which is exactly where I want her.
Later, as the sky darkens and the city lights up in fractured gold, she stands near the window, hands wrapped around a mug. I told one of my men to bring chamomile. She drank it without complaining. That alone feels like a victory.
She stares out at the street for a long time.
Then she says, without turning, “You can’t keep me here forever.”
I lean against the doorway, arms folded. “I know.”
She glances back, eyes narrow. “Do you?”
I say nothing. The truth is complicated. The truth is that I already know I won’t want to let her walk away. Letting her see that now would be a mistake.
“You’re keeping me locked away,” she says, voice shaking. “You have men outside, watching every move I make, and you act like it’s—what? Protection? Control? You never asked what I wanted.”
“I know what you’d say,” I reply.
“Do you?” She turns fully now, anger bright in her eyes. “What would I say?”
“That you want to leave.”
“I do want to leave, Simon.”
Her voice cracks on my name. That crack hits something inside me I don’t like.
“I want to go back to my life,” she continues, words spilling out faster now. “To my work. To my friends. To a reality where I’m not… stuck in some kind of gilded cage because a man with guns and men and power decided I walked too close to the wrong thing.”
The tremble in her voice is fear. The heat behind it is rage. Both make her cheeks flush, her chest rise and fall faster. Her hands shake around the mug. She’s exhausted and furious and scared and still standing.
“I’m not an object you can just put on a shelf because you find me interesting,” she says. “You don’t own me.”
I push off the doorway and move toward her without thinking.
She takes an instinctive step back, then stops herself, squaring her shoulders like she refuses to be chased in her own personal space.
“I don’t want to be here,” she says again, softer now. “You can’t keep me locked away just because you’ve decided it.”
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I can.”
Her breath hitches. “You’re not even trying to pretend this is for my sake anymore, are you?”
The honesty is a knife to both of us.
I look at her, really look at her—eyes bright with angry tears she refuses to let fall, fingers clenched too tight around ceramic, chest heaving. She’s shaking from fear and fury, trapped and knowing it, yet still trying to fight me with words instead of breaking down.
I step closer.
Her shoulders tense, but she holds her ground.
Her voice drops to a whisper. “Do you understand how terrifying it is to know someone like you has decided my life is his to manage?”
“Yes,” I say. “I understand it perfectly.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“It does,” I admit. “Just not in the way you want it to.”
Her hand starts to tremble harder. I reach out before she drops the mug and wrap my fingers around her wrist, steadying it. The move is deliberate. Not gentle, not harsh—controlled. Claiming.
She freezes at the touch. “Don’t,” she whispers, eyes wide.
“You’re shaking,” I say quietly. “You’re going to burn yourself.”
“You don’t get to act like you’re comforting me.”
“I’m not trying to comfort you.”
“Then what are you doing?” Her gaze searches mine desperately, like she’s hoping to find a crack she can use against me. “What do you want from me, Simon?”
More than I should. More than I’ve let myself want from anyone.
“Your attention,” I say finally. “Your honesty. Your… presence.”
She stares at me like I’ve said something obscene.
I ease the mug out of her hand and set it on the nearest surface. Then, without letting go of her wrist, I let my thumb slide just once over the pulse pounding there.
Her reaction is immediate. Eden’s breath stutters. Her pupils flare. Her shoulders twitch like she wants to pull away but can’t quite make herself move.
Heat rushes through me at the feel of her pulse under my touch—rapid, alive, responding to me. It’s intoxicating. Dangerous. Exactly what I wanted and more than I planned on feeling.
She jerks her hand back like she’s grabbed a live wire.
“Don’t touch me,” she says. The words wobble. “Don’t… don’t do that.”
I let her go, but my fingers curl slightly, remembering the shape of her wrist.
She backs up a step, then another, until her shoulder hits the wall. She’s rattled now, breathing fast, eyes locked on me with a new kind of awareness.
Not just fear. Recognition?
“You can’t keep me like this,” she says again, but the fight has changed. It’s not just about escape now. It’s about what’s flickering between us, about the way her body responds even when her mind screams at it not to.
I realize, with a clarity that settles low and heavy in my chest, that I’m not ready to let her go. Not when she looks at me like that—terrified and furious and lit up with something that feels too much like want. Not when every part of me is already adjusting my world to make space for her.
“Eden,” I say, and her name feels like a vow. “You walked into my life the night you hid behind that dumpster.”
“That wasn’t a choice.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I answer. “You’re in it now.”
Her throat works around a swallow. “So I don’t get a say in that?”
The honest answer sits on my tongue, cold and absolute.
I take a slow step back, just enough to ease the tension in the air, just enough to keep from reaching for her again and showing her exactly how badly I mean to keep her.
“Get some sleep,” I say quietly. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
She laughs once, hoarse. “You mean you’ll talk and I’ll pretend I have choices.”
I don’t argue. I just watch her.
No matter how many doors she tries to imagine open, the truth is already settled inside me.
I’m not letting her go.