Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
I watch my little bird from the shadows when she leaves her friend's apartment. I know why she decided to stay there. I know she's upset and seeking comfort, but I can't let her. I need her isolated and afraid. I want her to find the comfort she needs, but I need her to find it with me.
Someday, she will. She'll come to understand that I can protect her entirely, her body and her heart. Could she stomach giving her heart to a monster like me?
When she steps out of the building, the wind whips her hair around, throwing the earthly locks into her face. She grips her coat tightly around her arms and huffs out little frustrated grunts. She smacks her feet down onto the sidewalk like a child who didn't get her way.
I chuckle as her face scrunches up into an angry scowl. A little voice in the back of my mind whines at me. In the quiet voice of my late mother, it tells me I should be more sympathetic. It's probably true. I'm not the man she would have wanted me to be; I'm not good or kind like she was.
Still, I can't wipe the grin from my face. Ava's angry with me, but she's obeying. I follow along from across the street, hiding in amongst the dark corners and shadows of building overhangs.
When three horndogs start barking at her, her shoulders grow stiff. They stand across the street, leering at my woman.
Ava's fist clenches tightly around the straps of her bags until her knuckles blanche. She's afraid, but this time, it's not of me. My fists clench at my sides as I try to rein in my rage.
She pulls her phone out of her pocket, trying to ignore the men. An idea hits me. Maybe I can be her comfort now, if just a little bit.
She jumps when the phone goes off in her hand. When she reads my text, she freezes and her eyes widen. I expect this reaction from her. What shocks me is the little grin that her mouth pulls into. She worries her bottom lip into her mouth and texts me back.
Her response makes my breath catch in my throat. Is she flirting with me? Teasing me? Holy fuck, does she want to talk to me? A wide smirk pulls across my face and I tease back.
When the sweet sound of her laughter echoes through the night air, my heart stops.
If my obsession wasn't entirely solidified before, that sound would have done it.
I can't recall a time that I've ever been invested in making a woman laugh, but suddenly my mind races, fumbling through a million ideas about how to make her laugh.
Her beautiful laughter catches the attention of her wanna-be suitors.
Their eyes snap to her face. My chest feels compressed, squeezed by anger.
My thoughts scream, mine, only mine. I hunch my back slightly and pull my hood over my head as I approach the fuckers that think they have the right to look at what's mine.
“Hey, man,” I drawl with feigned drunkenness, “you got a light?”
The short guy with a greasy ponytail trailing down his back mumbles something and reaches into his pocket. While his face is downturned, I jam my switchblade into his neck. Thick, dark blood spurts from his wound when I yank my hand back. His lips part on a silent scream.
His buddy turns his head with a confused sound as blood splatters into his cheek. My feet swivel, placing me directly in front of him before swiping the blade across his throat. He gurgles a pathetic cry as he falls to his knees.
The short, fat one looks down. When he sees his friends on the ground, he whimpers and pivots his body, preparing to run.
When he lifts his leg to flee, I crash my boot into the back of his knee.
He topples to the concrete, landing on his stomach with wheeze.
I press my boot into his back and crouch down until my eyes meet his wet, teary ones.
“She's mine,” I growl into his ear as I stab my knife into the back of his pudgy neck. His body twitches as his spinal cord severs.
When I look back across the street, my little bird is gone.
Wiping the blood off my blade onto the hoodie of the man lying beneath my foot, I step over his crumpled body, narrowly missing the puddle of urine that's pooled between his legs.
Inhaling deeply through my nose, the coppery tang of blood rushes into me.
A smile pulls across my face. Some primal caveman instinct inside me puffs with pride.
Keep female safe, it screams and pounds its chest.
I quickly follow Ava back to her car and press my body against a concrete column in the garage. She sits in her car, her eyes barely leave her phone screen. A warm and unfamiliar feeling ignites in my chest knowing that she's staring at our text message exchange. That she's thinking about me.
Her teeth stink into her bottom lip and her cheeks quiver, suppressing a smile.
I imagine running my tongue over her bottom lip, the little gasps she'll make when I bite into it.
My cock twitches in response. My fingers ache as I fist the edges of my jacket.
They tingle, craving the feeling of her soft skin.
Soon, I remind myself. Soon, I'll have her. Soon, my little songbird will sing for me. But not tonight. Tonight, I'll remain in the shadows.
* * *
After watching Ava leave the garage, safely tucked away in her car, I leave Charlton and head home.
It doesn’t take me long to get there, since I live just twenty minutes outside the city.
As my house comes into view, I huff out a sigh.
It’s quieter here where the sprawling landscape of my extensive property gives me privacy and lets me avoid neighborly conversations.
The moment I open my front door, my bed seems to be calling my name.
I shuck off my clothes as I move through the house before dropping my body onto the bed.
My body sinks into the mattress. I yield to the comforting embrace of my bed, but sleep doesn't take me.
My mind won't quiet. My thoughts whirl and churn like the clouds of an oncoming storm.
Inside my head, a battle rages. A war between who I was, who I am, and who I could be. Not who I could be for myself or for the world, but who I could be to Ava. To myself and the rest of the world, I'm a monster. Could I be something else to her, though?
I may not be entirely capable of love, but perhaps I could learn to be, for her.
There was a time in my life when I was able to love.
I close my eyes and see a face I haven't laid eyes on in almost twenty years.
The face of the last woman I loved, the face of my mother.
Once, she was my world. Now, she's my only regret.
Guilt squeezes my heart, bruising and crushing the useless organ in my chest as the memories bleed into my mind.
It feels like a lifetime ago, before I became the creature I am now.
I was just a kid who left home for college, to make something of myself.
My mother was ecstatic when my acceptance letter came in the mail for a school out of state.
She scurried around the house, packing my things like it was the most important thing she’d ever done.
She drove me to the station and put me on the train with a packed lunch.
She made me more sandwiches and cookies than one kid could possibly eat, but I just assumed it was because she was so proud.
I was so caught up in my own excitement that I didn’t see the real reason she wanted me to leave.
I should have looked harder at the man she'd be left alone with in my absence.
He was always cruel, but I should have seen how much worse he had become.
But I was na?ve, too young and consumed by my own future plans to see what was really happening.
I was blind to the worst parts of my father, to all the things my mother kept hidden from me in the name of protecting me.
At the start of winter break, I sat on the train with my mind buzzing excitedly.
I thought of all the stories I'd tell her about my courses and my friends.
I was so excited that I didn't think twice when she didn't meet me at the train station.
I was sure she must have gotten caught up, making some extravagant welcome home dinner.
But that wasn't what happened at all. I walked in the house to find her lying on the kitchen floor, bloodied and bruised.
Her face was pale, too pale. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes clouded.
My father stood over her, his face spattered in her blood and brain matter.
When the hammer fell from his hand, I picked it up.
In that moment, my childhood, something I didn't realize was so fragile, shattered like glass.
The pieces crumbled around me, skittering to the floor.
When I reared back and sent that same hammer into his head, I became something worse than he ever could have been.
I became what he made me, a cold and unfeeling thing.
I wave my hand in front of my eyes, as if I could force the memories to dissipate like smoke in the air. I steer my mind back to my little bird.
I'll never be a good man. I know that. I'll always be a monster. But I'll be her monster, her watchful shadow. I may be her ruin, but she'll be mine, too. When we're destroyed and broken, I'll shove our pieces back together until we're whole.