Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EZRA
L eaving the books she likes on her shelf, attaching the lock to make her feel safer, calling her sweetheart and mine, that whole back and forth yesterday after therapy—I’ve done things over the past two months that are so out of my comfort zone, I almost don’t recognise the man looking back at me in the mirror.
‘You’ve got that porn addiction,’ a little voice in my head pipes up—the more naive of the three currently competing for my attention.
His assumption isn’t entirely incorrect—Cara is an addiction—but to my surprise, and that of the alter egos that reside in my head, it isn’t sex with her that is my driving force.
‘Use her body, take what you want, leave her needy.’
‘That’s unhelpful, fucknut inner voice number two, but thanks for the input.’
I want to adore Cara, to make her feel special, to earn her smiles.
‘Pussy whipped—that’s what you are,’ inner voice number one snaps in a panic like my life depends on the fact that this woman obviously has me wrapped around her little finger.
‘Don’t start getting share happy with the group,’ the third voice bellows gruffly, and I take stock that he’s even joining the conversation; he usually only has input when I’m staring at a pleading victim waiting at the end of my axe blade.
He is the reason I find comfort in maiming and murdering.
My bloodlust has a voice, and usually it’s judgemental and snarky unless I’m actively punishing someone deserving of my wrath.
‘So, we’re keeping her!’ voice one states rather than asks.
‘That seems to be the long and the short of it,’ the second confirms.
‘Who wants to see how her spilt blood will sparkle under the moonlight?’ offers the third.
I am fucked if I think I can handle Cara and the three other personalities inserting themselves into our relationship.
Imagine having three people all vying for different things: one wants the normalcy of a real relationship, one wants to suck on her clit until she’s crying out for more, and the other is more entranced by how beautifully her blood could paint an entire wall as I tie her up in ropes and carve my name into her skin. Four voices, one body.
“We’re screwed—all of us,” I state aloud to no one as I try to find my own voice in the crowd. Because all I want is for Cara to see me for who I am. Every fucked-up inch of Ezra Wolfe bent down at her feet as he pleads for her love and understanding.
The unhinged, murderous part of me – the part that refuses to admit I want her – was ready to burn this place to the ground when I saw her car missing from the driveway.
Panic hit. I thought she’d come to her senses and skipped town.
Nurses at Blackwood never last long. Pretty young women escaping bad lives, lured in by Lenora’s minimum wage handouts, backbreaking shifts and speeches about family.
They burn out, pack away their trauma and move on.
Another town, another tyrant, another cycle.
They keep running until something – or someone – finally takes them down for good.
For someone like me who has witnessed the demise of the worst that humanity has to offer—I’m sure of one thing—Falcon Falls is where dreams go to die.
And yet - I already know I will never help Cara to leave; I’m too selfish to let her go, and of everything I’ve done in my life, I’m sure that is what I will be judged on most when my final day with the devil approaches.
She is too good, too kind, too caring—too everything I’m not.
And yet I still can’t bear the thought of being trapped here without her.
Curse my life for what it’s worth because for as long as I have air in my lungs, I will use it to convince her she belongs here with me.
Letting myself into her room and seeing that everything is as it should be, my need to destroy something settles, that lingering rage constantly thrumming through my veins calming the longer I spend in her space.
I bury my face into her pillow and suck down a lungful of her familiar lavender and honeyed almond scent.
One thing I am sure of is that watching Cara through the mirror isn’t enough to sate my obsession anymore.
Thoughts of her invade every waking moment I have, and if I don’t have her soon, I don’t know what I might do.
Today is the day that Cara Morgrieves understands that from the moment she entered Blackwood - she was destined to be mine.
I pull the string on the lamp beside her bed, running my fingers over the cover of her latest read as it lay open page-down, marking where she left off last night.
I have read and reread her file until every detail documented was seared into my memory, but being here, chasing the memory of her touch on the inanimate objects she surrounds herself with, I lose all sense of reasoning.
Her bed is in disarray, like it usually is. With the regiment instilled in us here, I’m tidying it to military standards before I’ve even realised I’m doing it.
Moving around to her dresser, I pull open the top drawer; stacks of her white gloves that she uses to hide her prosthetic are neatly piled beside her underwear.
Fingering through, I select the black lacy pair she wore that first day and pocket them.
I’ve murdered more men than I care to count—a little panty raiding is hardly going to damn my soul.
I select the wolf tarot card from her deck and slide it into the fold of the crudely papered gift wrapped with a red ribbon bow I brought with me and place them on her pillow.
The sound of a rumbling beat-up engine followed by the crunching of worn tyres over the pebbled driveway outside of Cara’s window alerts me to her return.
Hidden behind the ivory curtains billowing as the cool evening breeze floods in through her partially open window, I look down as Cara circles the stone falcon fountain and pulls her car into park.
She climbs out, and all the tense energy I had been feeling dissipates in an instant.
She glances around suspiciously before pulling out a cardboard box, stacking a few paperbacks on top as she kicks the door closed with her booted foot.
She heads for the fire escape at the rear of the building, and I make my way over to the door.
Checking the room before I switch off her lamp, locking the door with the identical key to hers that hangs around my neck before I head next door to watch her arrive.