Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Celeste
The words flow from my fingers like blood from an open vein—dark, necessary, unstoppable.
I've written forty pages in three days, the best work of my career.
Every sentence pulses with the kind of authenticity that can only come from lived experience.
My heroine no longer pretends to understand darkness; she embodies it.
She doesn't fear her stalker—she craves him.
She doesn't want to be saved—she wants to be consumed.
Because I've been consumed.
Three nights ago, in Cain's library, surrounded by evidence of my father's failures and first editions of books about beautiful violence, I gave myself to a killer.
And I'd do it again. Will do it again.
Tonight, if he'll have me.
The scene I'm writing is the most graphic I've ever attempted:
She watched him work with the fascination of a student observing a master.
Each cut was deliberate, artistic. He was painting with blood, composing a symphony of screams. And she, his willing audience, felt herself growing wet with each stroke of the blade.
This was what she'd been searching for in all those safe men with their gentle hands and fearful hearts—someone who could show her that love and violence were not opposites but dance partners, moving together in terrible harmony.
My phone buzzes.
Another text from Dad:
Working late again. Don't wait up. Keep doors locked.
He's been distant since he found me by my car that night, pretending to be lost.
I don't think he believed me, but the alternative—that I was with Cain—is something he can't process.
So, we exist in this state of willful ignorance, both pretending things are normal when nothing will ever be normal again.
He's been spending more time at the station, pouring over Jake's personnel file.
I know because I saw it on his desk this morning at the house, pages of complaints highlighted in yellow.
He’s so invested in this that he’s bringing his work home with him, which is unusual.
Sarah's name circled in red. My father's own signature on the bottom of reports dismissing the allegations.
The weight of his complicity aging him by the day.
The house feels different now.
Not like a sanctuary but a stage, waiting for the next act to begin.
Every shadow could be Cain watching.
Every sound could be him approaching.
The thought should terrify me.
Instead, I'm wet.
Again. I've been in a constant state of arousal since he touched me, my body primed and waiting for its master to return.
I think about his hands—scarred, capable, gentle with me but violent with others.
I think about how he looked when he was inside me, controlled even in passion, watching my face like he was memorizing every expression.
I think about the promise he made: that I was his forever, that there was no going back.
I don't want to go back. I want to go deeper.
I stand to get more coffee and notice the late afternoon light streaming through the windows. It's after four—I've been writing for six hours straight.
My coffee's long cold, my shoulders ache, but I feel more alive than I have in years.
The doorbell rings.
I freeze. Cain wouldn't ring the doorbell.
He'd simply appear, or use the key I gave him.
Dad has his own keys. Which means—
"Celeste? Open up. I know you're in there."
Jake.
My blood turns to ice.
He sounds drunk. Angry.
The kind of combination that leads to mugshots and memorial services.
"Go away, Jake. You're not supposed to be here."
"Not supposed—" He laughs, ugly and sharp. "I'm not supposed to be anywhere anymore, thanks to you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Bullshit." Something slams against the door—his fist or his whole body. "Your father called me into his office a few days ago. Started asking about Sarah. About complaints from years ago. About why I really wanted off your protection detail."
My hand moves to my phone, but I hesitate.
Call Dad?
He's forty minutes away at least.
Call Cain?
I don't have his number.
Call 911? Jake is 911, or was.
"Someone told him lies about me," Jake continues. "Was it you? Or was it your psycho boyfriend?"
"I don't have a boyfriend."
"Right. So you weren't fucking Lockwood in his cabin while your daddy was looking for you?"
The door handle jiggles.
He's trying his keys, but Dad must have changed the locks. "I saw you leave his place that night. Saw you kiss him goodbye like some lovesick teenager."
My heart pounds.
He was watching.
Even after Cain's threats, he was still watching.
"I've been suspended," Jake continues, his voice getting louder. "Pending investigation into 'historical complaints.' My career's over. My life's over. Because you couldn't just give me a chance. One chance, Celeste. That's all I wanted."
"You've had fifteen years of chances—"
The sound of breaking glass cuts me off.
Kitchen window.
He's coming in.
I run for the stairs, taking them two at a time.
My phone's in my hand, but my fingers are shaking too badly to unlock it.
Behind me, I hear Jake's boots on broken glass, his heavy breathing as he follows.
"Running again?" he calls. "Just like that night at the party? But there's no Lockwood here to save you now. No daddy with his badge. Just you and me, the way it should have been years ago."
I make it to my bedroom, slam the door, and turn the lock.
It won't hold long, but maybe long enough to—
The door explodes inward.
Jake must have kicked it, the old wood splintering around the lock.
He fills the doorway, face red with alcohol and rage, uniform disheveled.
He's not wearing his gun, thank God, but he doesn't need it.
He's six feet of muscle and fifteen years of resentment.
"There you are," he says, stepping into my room. "Right where you belong. In your bedroom, waiting for me."
"Jake, don't do this. You're better than this."
"Am I? Your father doesn't think so. Suspended me based on complaints from girls who wanted it then changed their minds." He moves closer, backing me toward the window. "Just like you wanted it at that party. Wearing that dress, dancing like that, then acting shocked when I tried to kiss you."
"I was seventeen—"
"You were a cocktease. Still are. Writing those books, putting those thoughts out there.
" He's close enough now that I can smell the whiskey, see the burst capillaries in his eyes.
"All those scenes about women being taken against their will, secretly loving it.
You think I haven't read every single one?
Studied them? You were writing about what you wanted, Celeste. What you were too proud to ask for."
"That's fiction—"
"It's what you want." His hand shoots out, grabs my throat, slams me against the wall. My vision spots black at the edges. "You want someone to take control. To make you submit. But not someone normal, right? Has to be a killer. A monster. Someone broken and dangerous."
I claw at his hand, but he's too strong. With his other hand, he grabs my shirt, tears it open. Buttons scatter across the floor like broken teeth.
"Stop—"
"Stop? Your heroines never really mean stop, do they?" His hand moves from my throat to my hair, yanking my head back. "They always end up begging for more. End up falling for the man who takes what he wants."
I spit in his face.
He backhands me, hard enough to split my lip.
I taste copper, see stars.
When my vision clears, he's smiling.
"There she is. The real Celeste. Not the sheriff's perfect daughter. Not the successful author. Just another whore who spreads her legs for killers."
He grabs me again, throws me onto the bed.
I try to roll away, but he's on me, his weight crushing, his hands everywhere.
This is happening.
This is actually happening.
All my dark fantasies, all my written scenes about violence and desire—none of them prepared me for the reality of being truly powerless.
"I loved you," he says, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand while the other roams my body. "For fifteen years, I loved you. Waited for you. And you gave yourself to him. A freak who plays violin and collects bones. A killer."
"He's more man than you'll ever be—"
Jake hits me again, this time with a closed fist.
My cheekbone explodes with pain.
"We'll see about that when I'm done with you. When you're ruined for anyone else." He's fumbling with his belt now, and terror finally breaks through my shock. "Your precious Cain won't want you when you smell like me. When you're marked by me."
Then suddenly, impossibly, the weight is gone.
Jake doesn't scream.
He doesn't have time.
One moment he's on top of me, the next he's being dragged backward by something—someone—in black.
Cain.
He doesn't speak.
Doesn't announce himself.
Just carefully, silently, breaks Jake's right arm at the elbow.
The crack echoes through the room like a gunshot.
Jake's scream follows a second later, high and breathless.
"You touched her." Cain's voice is calm, conversational, as if discussing the weather. "You put your hands on what's mine."
He breaks Jake's other arm just as efficiently, then his right knee, dropping him to the floor.
Jake tries to crawl away using just his left leg, leaving a trail of drool and tears, but Cain follows patiently, like a cat with a wounded mouse.
"Please," Jake gasps. "Please, I'm a cop, you can't—"
"You were a cop. Now you're just another predator who thought a badge gave you permission." Cain pulls out a knife—not a hunting knife but something else, maybe a filet knife? "Do you know what I do to predators, Deputy Bauer?"
I sit up, pulling my torn shirt closed, and watch as Cain works.
There's an awful beauty to his precision, a terrible grace in his movements.
"You looked at her," Cain says.
The blade enters Jake's right eye socket with the wet sound of a spoon through jello.
Jake's scream cuts off into a gurgle.
"For years, you looked at what was mine. Watched her. Photographed her."
The left eye follows.