Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
CHASE
I'm sitting at the desk in our hotel room, my journal open in front of me, pen in hand. Noah is in the shower and I can hear the water running.
I didn’t really speak much on the journey here to the hotel as my brain is in overdrive. As I sit here, my hand is shaking and I press it flat against the open page in my journal, willing it to stop. It doesn't.
Today, I watched my husband kill two men with a baseball bat.
I write the sentence slowly, unable to comprehend that the sentence isn’t fiction. The words look surreal on the page, like something from a crime novel, not my actual life.
They tried to carjack us. One had a gun. Noah disarmed him in seconds and broke his wrist, he took control of the situation with the kind of efficiency that suggests he has had a lot of practice. Then he retrieved a baseball bat from the trunk.
How did I not know that we had a bat in the trunk? Why did we have it?
I pause, staring at the words. How many other things don't I know? How many other preparations has Noah made that I've been oblivious to?
The whole scene was so violent, and the sounds, I have never heard sounds of breaking bones before.
I’ve never heard grown men scream like that, it was so shrill it sent a shiver through me.
All of the blood and gore, it was horrific.
I stood there in shock, unable to move as I watched Noah become this void.
Knowing a psychopath and seeing them in their darkness are two very different things.
Noah, of course, doesn’t understand the problem, but why would he?
I thought I was going to vomit, but it’s not for the reasons Noah may think.
It makes me sick to even write this, but I felt sick because of the disgust I have for myself.
Because in that moment of brutality, all I could think was how stunning Noah looked.
Powerful. I felt safe, which is ridiculous.
My hand is steadier now that the words are flowing.
His face was what I would describe as serene, at peace.
There was no anger or signs of exertion, he just looked like he was performing surgery, methodical in his manner.
And when it was over, when both men were dead at his feet, he turned to look at me.
He was checking my reaction, and when he did I was holding myself back from jumping into his arms. Those deadly, powerful arms.
I’m sick in the head.
I flip back through my journal, scanning previous entries.
I've been enabling him, because I knew what he did from the beginning and I’m sitting here acting like because I’ve seen it in person, it’s something bad.
Which of course it is, but I’m too consumed with the action and how my man looked.
And again, it’s the safety. I feel safe with a psycho killer.
The water shuts off and I hear Noah moving around in the bathroom, the sound of his footsteps, the medicine cabinet opening and closing.
When Noah emerges, he's wearing only a towel around his waist. His hair is damp, water droplets still clinging to his shoulders. He looks at me, then at the open journal.
"Writing about today?" he asks.
"Yes."
He crosses to me, standing behind my chair. His hand settles on my shoulder, and I feel the warmth of his skin through my shirt.
"What are you writing?"
I tilt the journal so he can see. His eyes scan the page, reading my observations about the carjacking, my reaction and fears.
"You liked how powerful I looked?" he says.
"Yes."
"While I was killing them."
"Yes."
His hand tightens on my shoulder. "And that upsets you?"
I close the journal and turn to face him. "It makes me question myself. Noah, this isn’t me, is it? It scares me how nothing you could do would ever turn me away. I’m struggling to accept it."
His eyes search my face, looking for deception, but he won't find any.
"You're not afraid of me," he observes.
"No."
"You should be."
"I know."
He pulls me to my feet, his hands framing my face. "I've killed a lot of people, baby, and you’re still here. You never changed, this was always inside of you, the darkness waiting to be found."
“Your manipulation isn’t helping.”
“How can I manipulate what you already feel?”
This guy is a class A manipulator and he has no shame in it. But I’ll never fight the pull I have toward him.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Then why are you with me?”
I take a breath. "Because I love you. Because I understand you in a way no one else ever will. Because watching you today, seeing you move like that made me want you more.”
He kisses me hard and full of passion. When he pulls back, his eyes are wide with nothing but feral need.
"I'm going to fuck you," he says. "And while I do, I want you to tell me exactly what you felt watching me kill those men."
My cock hardens instantly.
He strips me efficiently, then pushes me onto the bed. He doesn't bother with preparation beyond slicking his fingers with lube. I'm still loose from earlier, still open for him.
When he pushes inside me, I gasp at the stretch, the fullness, the absolute savagery of it.
"Talk," he says, his hips moving in slow, deep thrusts.
"I was terrified at first," I manage. "When I saw the gun. When I realized what was happening."
"And then?"
"Then you moved. So fast. You broke his wrist before I even processed what you were doing."
He thrusts harder, deeper. "Keep going."
"You got the bat from the trunk. I didn't even know it was there. And when you swung it, wow, you were so at ease, focused. Like you'd done it a thousand times."
"I have."
"You looked like you were born for it."
"What else?"
"The sound. The way the bat connected with his skull. It should have been horrifying. But all I could think was that you were protecting me and that you'd do anything to keep me safe."
"I would."
"I know. And that's…fuck…that's what made me so desperate for you. Knowing that you'd kill for me and there's no line you wouldn't cross for me."
He's fucking me harder now, his control slipping. "You liked it."
"Yessss, I loved watching you. I liked knowing what you're capable of. I liked…" I struggle to think as sparks of electric run through my body, setting my core alight.
"What?" he urges, his large hands squeeze my ass, making me clench around him.
"I liked belonging to someone who could do that, to someone who would do that."
The confirmation is all he needs as he cums with a groan, his fingers digging into my ass hard enough to hurt. The pain pushes me over the edge, and I follow him, spurting ribbons of cum between us.
Afterward, I can barely focus my eyes, dizzy from the exertion. Noah’s skin is sweaty, his heart beating fast against me as we lie tangled together, both of us breathing hard.
"Your journal," Noah says after a long silence. "Is it so you can learn more about me?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Because I need to understand, not just who you are but how we navigate that in our lives."
"You're studying me."
"I never stopped being your therapist, Noah, not really. You intrigue me too much to stop."
He's quiet for a moment. "And what have you concluded so far?"
I turn to face him, my hand on his chest. "That you're a psychopath, which you already know. No empathy, no remorse, no emotional connection to anyone except me. And even that connection is about control and possessiveness rather than love.."
"And that doesn't bother you."
"No. Because I understand it. I understand that what you feel for me is the closest you can come to love and that’s all I need."
"You're rationalizing."
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just accepting reality."
He pulls me closer, his arm wrapping around my waist. "I won't stop, Chase. I'll keep killing anyone who threatens you, nobody is safe and I can’t change that about myself.
"I know. I don’t want you to change." The words leave my mouth before I can question them, and the silence that follows is heavier than anything we've said tonight.
Noah watches me for a long moment, as if committing the confession to memory.
Then he brushes his thumb over my cheek with surprising tenderness.
It doesn't fit with the man I watched cave in two skulls only hours ago. Somehow, that's the part that unsettles me most, because I know it’s not tenderness, it’s Noah appreciating the object in front of him.
After he falls asleep, I stare at the dark ceiling, replaying every second of today.
All of the blood, the bat and the look on Noah’s face.
I keep telling myself that I'm trying to understand him, that my journal is an objective record, the observations of a therapist dissecting an extraordinary mind.
But therapists don't get aroused watching their patients kill. Normal therapists don't climb willingly into bed with monsters and ask them to hold them afterwards. Somewhere along the line, I stopped studying the darkness and started making a home inside it.
I close my eyes, listening to Noah breathe beside me. Tomorrow, the world will keep turning as though nothing happened.
Two men are dead and my husband killed them. But the most terrifying discovery I made today wasn't the truth of what Noah is, it was what I'm becoming.