Chapter Eleven
I STAYED CROUCHED down behind that bush for a long time. I stayed while my legs cramped and my knees ached—
But convent girls were bred to endure. We’d been taught how to suffer, and we’d practiced it in prayer day and night in wildly uncomfortable old buildings that had never known any creature comforts.
I had literally spent my life preparing for this moment.
I stayed in place, tucked up under bush that had managed to grow into something thick with thorns, providing me with something like a cocoon. I pulled my dress around me and pretended it was a blanket. I curled up and hunkered down, determined to wait it out.
And absolutely certain that Jovi would make it back to me, because I could accept no other outcome.
But eventually, it began to get colder. Darker. The night was wearing on and I’d heard nothing to suggest that there was anyone on this property but me.
Despite the fact that Jovi had told me to stay put, I crept out of my little burrow.
I stopped again and again, scouring the dark for any sign of life.
In my experience, guards and other such people had a lot of nervous energy.
They paced. They smoked cigarettes and flicked them.
They were very concerned with perimeters and constantly went to recheck them.
I melted my way through the overgrowth, careful to keep my steps silent, and when I got to Jovi’s tree, I stopped and waited some more. But all I could hear was the wind, and every now and then, the faintest sound of the city far below.
If there was someone here, I reasoned, he would have to be even more still and watchful than Jovi.
This being impossible to imagine, I used the darkness to my advantage. I snuck around the side of the house to make sure there were no other cars in the drive. I checked all the balconies from the shadows below.
Then I went inside. I padded up to Jovi’s bedroom, where I’d stayed ever since that first day.
I opened up the wardrobe and breathed in the faint scent of him on his clothes, then pulled on a pair of denim so soft it was like a whisper and a sweater, because I’d started shivering.
He had showed me the stack of clothes he kept in what looked like a gym bag early on—maybe the second morning I’d been here—and told me they were all mine.
You just happened to have clothing in my size lying about, of course, I’d murmured.
I bought them for you only, baggiana, he had replied, sounding as close to outraged as I’d ever heard him.
And I had melted all over him before I’d had a chance to try any of them on.
Unsurprisingly, everything he’d chosen fit me perfectly, because Jovi paid attention to details. He’d assembled an elegant collection of very few, but very sophisticated, pieces and had told me with a frown that it was only temporary.
By that point I hadn’t wanted to ask if he’d meant it would be temporary because I would be dying soon.
I’d suspected he wouldn’t like it if I had asked.
Now I found the presence of the clothes comforting. Or maybe it was just that they shared a wardrobe with his. I hugged my arms around my own middle and tried to make sense of what I’d seen and heard.
The truth was, lovely clothes or not, I had an unpleasant pit in my stomach.
Because it seemed to me that Jovi had gone off with his horrible cousin much too easily, and I couldn’t think why he would do that.
I’d spent hours in my burrow asking myself why he would surrender himself so easily.
And the only conclusion I’d reached made me shake.
This was a man with a death wish. Hadn’t I told him so myself?
This was a man who would, I was absolutely certain, sacrifice himself to save me without a second thought. A man who would protect me with everything he had, even if it was his final act.
That asshole.
I wanted him to come back so I could kill him myself.
I wanted him, not some noble act that would leave me alone in this life without him.
When only he knew me, and where I came from, and what it meant to grow up in this dark and terrible world.
When he’d finally showed me his heart.
I wanted him.
Too many scenes played out in my head and they all made me sick. I knew exactly what men like his family were capable of. I knew what they thought was fun. What they considered a reasonable response to disloyalty.
I didn’t want to think about such things. I didn’t want to picture them happening to Jovi—or to me, if they found me after they dealt with him. But I stood in this bedroom we shared, here in this ruined old house, this graveyard of despair and loss.
I was surrounded by his ghosts and he knew their names, but all I knew was that they all died horribly. That it was likely I would, too. That all the beauty of this house couldn’t change the fact that the ghost stories told about it were right.
It was haunted. This island was haunted. And anyone who ventured near this life was tainted and ruined, and marked for their own bad end.
Though not all of them walked into that end as calmly as Jovi had.
I found myself wandering through the creaky old house the way I had that first day.
I didn’t turn on any lights, still too aware that there could be eyes on me, but the moon was bright enough outside to light my way.
I traced my fingers over the bare walls.
I stood and watched the moonlight dance across the halls.
It was so tempting to imagine that the ghosts here were Jovi, and if I loved him enough, I could free them and him and me in turn.
I didn’t know if I was relieved or embarrassed to finally admit that little tidbit to myself. So obvious. So immediate.
And probably very, very stupid, too.
Eventually I made it down into his kitchen, chased by all the images in my head that I didn’t want to see. All the things that could be happening to him right now.
I felt my knees give out beneath me and had to clutch at the counter to keep myself from sagging straight down to the floor.
At first I thought I was having some kind of heart attack. Or aneurysm. It wasn’t until my eyes started to mist over and then get wet that I realized I was crying.
I wiped at my face, astonished, but the tears didn’t stop.
Neither did the pain in my chest. Because it turned out that it was called heartbreak for a reason, and I’d had no idea.
I’d had no idea that it could hurt this much.
I’d had no idea anything could.
But I couldn’t bear the notion that he was hurting. Or that he would consider that a decent trade, because he likely imagined that his death would set me free.
I couldn’t bear this.
When I’d met him, I’d been resigned to this. I hadn’t been as scared as I thought a normal girl would have been, plucked out of her safe life and carried off by a man like Jovi. I’d already been well aware that nothing about my life was safe.
If I couldn’t have a good life, what I’d wanted was a good death. I thought that I could walk into my execution, head held high, and that would mean something.
I understood exactly what Jovi was doing, damn him.
But I hadn’t known anything yet. I hadn’t lived yet.
Tonight I didn’t think I had a single ounce of resignation in me. I didn’t want a death, good or otherwise. I wanted a life. I wanted this life, strange as it was, because I’d been so sure it was ours.
I wanted to live.
With him.
I wanted the fact that we’d met the way we had to mean something—to prove that we had always been destined to be better, to shine brighter, than the people who’d made us who we were.
God, how desperately I wanted that.
I wiped my face, again and again, until the tears released their hold on me. I tried to breathe. I tried to settle myself the way I’d always been able to before. And I was still standing there, staring into the shadows of the sink, when I heard a soft noise behind me.
In the same instant, the kitchen was flooded with light.
I whirled around, not sure what I expected. His cousin, back to finish the job? That would mean that Jovi—
I couldn’t bear it—
But it was Jovi himself.
And I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or something far more complicated.
Or maybe, despite myself, both.
I backed up and hit the counter, so I rested my hands on either side of my body as if I couldn’t decide if I wanted to launch myself into the air to sit on the countertop, or hold myself upright.
Jovi merely stood there, studying me, the way he always did.
That made the ache inside me worse.
I could feel that unbearable weight inside me. I could see all those horrific images that I’d played in my mind, all the ways they could have killed him.
Asshole, I thought again.
“Are you going to kill me now?” I asked him, because maybe he should see what it felt like to think that everything that happened between us was easy to walk away from.
Maybe he should feel as alone as I had. “I thought you went to fulfill your death wish, but maybe what you really wanted was more detailed instructions from your keeper.”
He seemed to freeze at that. Then something dark moved in his gaze, making me immediately feel terrible for lashing out at him. For trying to scare him because he’d scared me.
For treating him like the man I knew he wasn’t.
But I didn’t take it back.
“This is what I am good for,” he told me, with a certain deliberateness that made me want to run and throw myself into his arms. It made me want to press my lips to all the places he hurt, starting with his heart.
“Haven’t I said this to you before? I am a weapon.
A monster. I was made precisely for the purpose I serve.
I am the very model of efficiency and promise. ”
“So you keep saying,” I managed to reply.
He moved into the kitchen then, prowling his way toward me. Behind him, I could see the light spill out into the empty rooms of this place, all of them graceful, exquisite.
Pointless, standing empty like this.
A lot like the man he pretended he was. But I knew better.
Did he?