Chapter 29
Despite my desire to stay far away from Ambrose, the frigid autumn nights are pushing us closer together.
My room feels too cold and empty for me to do anything more than sleep in it, so I’ve been gravitating to the fireplace downstairs, where Ambrose is always sitting in the study or the living room with a book.
Sometimes it’s his notebook propped up on his knee as he writes in it, and other times he’s lost in a novel.
I wish I could hate him still. I wish I was full of rage and resentment, but he makes it impossible to hold a grudge.
We still haven’t spoken about the kiss or his reaction afterward, but we’ve settled back into some semblance of normalcy.
We cook together, watch movies, and prepare for the impending winter.
I’ve done more research on my next victims to fulfill my end of the deal, but escaping from here seems less urgent than it did before.
Maybe I’m delusional, but the comfort I feel here is one I’ve never had the privilege of having.
Even though Ambrose gets on my every last nerve sometimes, I know I’m safe.
He’s proven to me over and over again that not only will he not harm me, but he will care for me when needed.
It’s odd feeling a sense of safety with a man who meant to kill me only a few short months ago.
Ambrose has been reading to me by the light of the fire most nights, and it’s a soothing way to escape all of my thoughts for a while.
Sometimes it’s poetry, but lately it’s often been chapters from The Count of Monte Cristo.
It’s a story of love, betrayal, power, and revenge, which makes me wonder if Ambrose chose it for a reason.
It’s a little too fitting for the current situation.
Then again, it seems he chooses every piece of literature he reads to me with intentionality.
One evening, I’m curled up on the couch and watching an old black and white movie flicker across the grainy TV screen, but I can’t focus. I’m too lost in thought as my final meeting with the angels looms over me. It’s only two weeks away.
Despite what they might have promised me and how tempting that offer may be, I’m still not sure I can go through with giving up information about Ambrose to them.
I’m not sure why, considering it’s a small piece of information weighted against the idea of me actively withholding the truth from literal angels.
But by now, I’m going to Hell anyway, so I may as well make the most of it, right?
“You remind me of her sometimes,” Ambrose says softly from his place at the other end of the couch.
From the solemn tenderness in his voice, I don’t have to ask who he means. “How so?”
“You’re always stuck in your own head, thinking about much more than you let on but staying quiet unless you feel you have something important to say.”
I shrug. “A lot of people are like that.”
“I’m not done,” he says gently. “There’s a fire inside you that you think you hide so well, but I see it burning anyway. Yet you’ve spent your life tempering that flame to appease everyone else.”
I don’t know what to say. I can only nod.
I grew up with parents who never wanted me, so I’d learned to stay quiet and out of the way.
When I found Joel, he’d shown me so much positive attention that maybe I mistook it for love.
With him, too, I found myself shrinking to fit into his view of what I should be rather than who I wanted to be.
“You’ve spent so long trying to make yourself invisible, but I see you, even when you don’t want me to. Especially when you don’t want me to,” Ambrose says.
I swallow past the knot in my throat and turn my head to face him. The guilt from considering the angels’ offer, of selling him out, sits heavy on my chest when I notice the gentleness in his eyes as he stares right back at me.
It’s the same look he had given me the night he kissed me, but it’s laced with a soft sort of sorrow.
“Is that why you brought me here?” I ask.
“Because I remind you of her?” I don’t say the next thought aloud—that I hate the idea of being a replacement for the woman he once loved simply because I resemble her in some ways.
That he might have thought he could find a hint of his past love through me rather than caring about me for who I really am.
“No. It’s not something I even realized until very recently.”
“Then why me? Why did you trick me into coming here?”
He takes a deep breath, as if considering his next words carefully.
“When I had gone to the city, I was planning on killing a man who I’d seen doing some awful things.
But I was also wandering, getting my fill of society before going back home.
It can get so lonely here sometimes. But I just happened to see you as I was walking down the street, and you sparked my interest.”
“I sparked your interest?” It seems ridiculous that I, of all the people he’d come across in a city, would stand out to him.
“Yes,” he admits. “Not because I wanted to kill you, though. You fascinated me. You were beautiful, but you seemed so intent on making yourself invisible that, ironically, I couldn’t help but notice.
I started following you out of mere curiosity, wondering what could drive you to such obvious sorrow.
But the more I watched you, the more I started to see the signs that you might end your own life, and there was nothing I could do about it. ”
The longer he speaks, the more my heart shatters. Not only because he had to see me at the lowest point in my life, but because he saw the signs when no one else did—not even my own husband.
“I was clinging to such a tiny thread of hope for so long, but it snapped so easily. At the end I started questioning whether or not you were real,” I tell him. “I thought maybe you were some angel of death there to take me away. I guess I wasn’t entirely wrong.” I manage a weak laugh.
“It broke my heart to watch you do that to yourself. I knew it was coming, which is why I used my abilities to sneak into your house the day it happened. Joel didn’t accidentally leave his badge on the counter. I put it there.”
“You didn’t,” I whisper.
He nods. “I did. I had to make a choice in that moment to either take the years of your life that you were throwing away or to give you a fighting chance.”
He saved me. I swallow past the hard knot forming in my throat and manage to whisper, “Thank you.”
There’s a beat of silence before he asks, “Why did you feel like suicide was your only option?”
Well, I guess we’re not mincing words tonight.
“Everything just felt so fucking hopeless. You saw what sort of situation I was in. My husband had promised me a beautiful life so long ago, and I got stuck with him after he slowly isolated me from everyone and everything else. I had tried to leave once and go to a shelter, but he found me, and he hurt me so badly that I couldn’t risk trying to leave and getting caught again.
It’s hard enough to leave a relationship like that in any normal circumstance, but it’s even harder when the man you’re trying to leave holds so much power and influence.
I’d already been struggling with depression for years, and it just got worse and worse until I hit my breaking point. ”
“And what about now?” He asks. “Do you still feel that way?”
I pause for a moment to consider my words.
“No. I do think there will always be that little bit of darkness—it’s not something that simply goes away—but I don’t feel as crushed by the weight of it as I did before.
It’s like a fog now that comes and goes rather than a brick wall. Life feels possible again.”
“It sounds like you’ve been dealt a bad hand in life, but I genuinely hope it’s an upward trajectory from here. It is an act of rebellion and strength to continue living in a world so intent on knocking you down.”
“Who do you target when you take lives?” I ask, because I’m suddenly desperate to change the subject and suppress the tears welling in my eyes. The topic of murder feels like the most obvious juxtaposition to the raw emotion overwhelming me.
“For a long time, I had the same sort of vengeful streak you seem to be on,” he says with a low chuckle. “Killing people who had done such vile things that I thought the world would be better off without them.”
“And now?”
“Now, I’ve slowed down on it a lot since I accumulated so many years of life in my earlier days. It’s only about once a year, and it’s rarely something I plan. I suppose I just have the tendency to gravitate toward death.”
His response makes me wonder if there’s sort of supernatural pull there, that maybe he’s drawn to death—was drawn to me—in some wild twist of fate.
We’re both silent for a long time before I say, “You didn’t have to trick me into a deal with you. I would have come with you and stayed willingly.”
He hesitates, opening his mouth as if there’s something he wants to say but can’t find the right words. But he says nothing. He simply moves to join me on the couch, pulls my body close to his, and wraps me in his arms, though there’s a tension tightening his muscles.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmurs.
Despite my reluctance to get close to him, I lean into his side and rest my head on his chest. I shouldn’t be allowing myself this sort of vulnerability around him.
I keep telling myself the same thing—that I need to keep my walls up—but he seems to break them down so easily.
My eyes close as I soak in the heat of his body and ground myself in the steady rhythm of his slow breaths.
And for a moment, I can pretend like everything is alright. Like this is a life I chose, one where I’m safe and content and loved. Nothing exists outside the two of us in this quiet, cozy cabin.
Ambrose’s tension slowly dissipates before he lifts his hand and absentmindedly runs his fingers through my hair, and the gentle gesture almost brings tears to my eyes. If only this was more than a fleeting moment; if only this was real…
It won’t last, and I know that, but pretending I chose this makes it hurt just a little bit less.