Chapter 23
SOPHIA
Iremember that night. Not as vividly as he does, but some of it.
I remember the costume—the polka dots, the victory rolls that kept coming undone on one side, the red heels that made me taller and braver than I felt.
My basket of lollipops, the heart-shaped ones I buy every year on Halloween because it’s what I do.
It’s my thing. It used to be my and my mom’s thing, but when she died, it became…
my thing. My mom was the one who told me that even monsters deserve love sometimes.
People’s faces always change when I hand them out—this small, confused delight, like they’d been braced for something dark and gotten something sweet instead.
Every year, the color would differ. Red, green, orange, purple. The year he happened, it was pink.
That night, I don’t remember him specifically. That’s the part I keep turning over, sitting here on the floor of this impossible room with my back against the bench and my knees drawn up and the lollipop resting in my palm.
In my memories, there’s a man in face paint; there were dozens of them. But there was this one that was different, a mask of black and white that looked more like heartbreak. Not violent and scary like the others.
Of course I said the same thing to him that I said to everyone else who questioned my heart-shaped lollipops, the throwaway line that came with the colored candy every Halloween since I was eight.
Even monsters deserve love sometimes.
I said it to everyone, but he heard it like it was said only to him. Somehow, something as routine as my Halloween schtick became this big thing for him, changed everything for him. And he left me the clues, pink heart-shaped lollipops all over the house. Why didn’t I see it? How did I not see it?
You were in survival mode, Sophia. Give yourself a break.
The cellophane crinkles softly as I close my fingers around the lollipop. It’s the only sound in the room besides my own breathing and the heavy silence that’s lingered since Reth and Ian disappeared behind a closed door hours ago.
I look up at the ceiling. Spring on one side, autumn on the other. This room is the only place in the house that feels like it’s breathing. Whenever my thoughts get too loud, this is where I end up.
And right now, they’re deafening.
Everything’s changed. He’s no longer the villain who took me, who locked me up in this house. Now he’s the broken man who found something soft enough to matter in a life that had none. Me.
I’m too much of a romantic for my own good, because I feel it. All the way to every corner of my heart, knowing that I became important enough for him to want to see stars and shapes and light in a world that’s always been dark.
I still don’t know all the answers, like why he ended up bringing me here. What he’s protecting me from. Or rather, who. I don’t know how deep or how far it went—the stalking.
I know he read my diary.
Well, I suspect he did.
That’s what stalkers do, right? Invade your privacy?
I never hid my diary, and it wasn’t one of those with the little locks either.
It was just a book with all the pieces of me I didn’t think anyone would get to see.
It’s not like my diary is…was…this sacred thing.
It was more a dumping ground for stupid thoughts I didn’t know what else to do with.
The way a plastic bag catches in a tree and flaps for months, half-translucent and pathetic, and you know you should pull it down but you kind of want to see how long it’ll last. That was my diary.
“This can’t be my favorite room and yours.”
I jolt, my gaze shooting up at Reth standing in the doorway. “You need to stop being so damn sneaky.”
“Sneaky?” He raises a brow, his buff back in place, hiding his scar. “Some people just call it quiet.”
“Let’s just call a spade a spade.” I push to my feet, aware of how his eyes track me. “You don’t have to wear that around me anymore.”
He doesn’t move, arms crossed in front of that impossibly broad chest. “You weren’t supposed to see me like that.”
“Like what?”
“A mess.”
There’s a beat where I sense he’s measuring my reaction. “Everyone becomes a mess at some point. There’s a rule somewhere that says it’s allowed as long as you clean it up before company comes over.”
He lifts a brow. “You consider yourself company?”
“At first I considered myself a prisoner.” There’s a half-smile on my face. “Now I prefer distinguished guest.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, the only visible sign of the smile he’s hiding behind that buff.
Even though I try really hard to keep my thoughts from forming questions that need the right time and the right place to be asked, somewhere my mouth betrays me.
“Who is she?”
A shadow crosses his eyes.
“This morning,” I continue. “You said ‘she knew what they did.’” Tension leaks into the air between us, and I almost regret asking, but the question’s out there now, impossible to take back.
There’s a long pause, one I’ve come to recognize as him choosing his words before letting them drip out. “I’ll never tell you everything. I don’t want you to carry that kind of darkness for me.”
“I just want to know who you are.”
“You already know more than I ever wanted you to.” The silence that follows has a mass, one that tells me everything he said this morning might be all I’ll ever get about his past. It’s not secrecy; it’s protection.
I shift my weight and glance at the autumn leaves spreading along the ceiling. “You read my diary, didn’t you?”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away. Just offers the truth like it’s inevitable. “Yes.”
One word. No apology. No explanation. Just the fact, dropped between us like a loaded gun.
I nod slowly. “How much of it?”
“Enough.”
“Should I be angry?”
Something flickers in his expression. “Yes.”
“Well, I’m not. I don’t know what that says about me.” I cross my arms, a small, helpless shrug. “Maybe it says I need better locks. Maybe it says I’m so hungry to be known that I’m careless with my corners.”
Reth pushes off the doorframe and starts toward me, my heart tripping over itself. Electricity scatters across my skin when he takes my hand. “Come with me.”
I blink. “Where?”
His grip is surprisingly gentle as he leads us out into the hallway without telling me where we’re going.
It’s silence between us as we go down the stairs, and he does this thing where he lightly brushes his thumb over my pulse-point.
I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it, and he definitely doesn’t know it’s doing this strange wavelike thing in my chest.
He takes me past the kitchen where Ian just started searing a steak in the pan. The smell of scorched meat and butter spirals through the air and reminds me I haven’t eaten since before Andrei carried Reth in here this morning.
“Hey.” Ian doesn’t look up from the pan. “Steak’s for one, just so we’re clear. You snooze, you lose.”
Reth doesn’t break stride.
“Of course I’m lying. I’m making enough for three,” Ian calls after us. “Obviously. I’m not a monster.” A beat. “Unlike some people in this house.”
I glance back at him over my shoulder and find him looking our way, the corner of his mouth doing something. “You showing her?”
Reth’s thumb moves over my pulse-point again, and I hear Ian say to no one, “About bloody time.”
We turn a corner, and another, into a hallway I’ve never explored. The ceiling is higher, the walls bare, with that distinct newly-built look, like it hasn’t had the time to be lived in yet.
He stops in front of a set of double doors—dark wood, tall structure. They’re enormous. The kind of doors that imply something serious on the other side.
“If there’s another woman being held prisoner behind those doors, I’m going to need you to walk me back to the kitchen so I can borrow Ian’s steak knife.”
Reth pauses, glancing at me from the side, his eyes narrowed like he’s not amused.
I shrug. “What? I kinda like that I’m the only one whose privacy you invaded.”
There’s this slight crease between his brows.
I wrinkle my nose. “Too soon?”
There’s a loud click of a lock, and it echoes against the wall, spiking my heart rate.
Without saying a word, he pushes the doors open and steps back, waiting for me to go in first. For a second, I envision a room full of filing cabinets and surveillance equipment and seventeen monitors showing live feeds of my old apartment, which, honestly, at this point would be on brand.
There’s this moment where I’m holding my breath as I slowly walk through the doors, Reth close behind. Really close.
Inside, the room unfolds around me like a dream. My eyes register everything at once, but my brain lags several steps behind. Color, light, the specific quality of two completely different kinds of beautiful existing in the same space at the same time.
Paris on one side.
Japan on the other.
Night and morning. Gold and navy, pale pink and light blue. It’s the dark shimmer of a river and the soft scatter of petals. Both of them surrounding me, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, wrapping around the room like the world folded in half and somehow didn’t tear.
“Reth, what is this?”
Hard muscle presses against my back, voice low against my ear. “December thirtieth, twenty-twenty-one.”
I still.
“Made a list tonight, of places I want to eat before I die.”
I swallow, recognizing the words. My words.
“Got through two,” he continues, “and then stopped because the two felt complete somehow, like they said everything the list was trying to say.”
A finger touches the small of my back, slowly tracking up my spine as he continues, each line punctuated by the heat of his breath on my skin. “Breakfast at Takada Castle Site Park during cherry blossom season.”