23. Ought To
23
Ought To
Ever
I’d stayed buried in my bed for days — weeks, rousing only to go to the bathroom and eat the occasional piece of bread so that I didn’t feel like my body was cannibalizing itself. I didn’t care much for anything, and though my mind was overflowing with thoughts, I couldn’t bring myself to focus on any of them for longer than a moment before tears threatened to overwhelm me.
Theron had kept to his promise, giving me time to think about everything I had witnessed. He’d even refrained from calling my phone or showing up at my door. I was thankful for that, because I worried that seeing his face or hearing his voice would have me silencing my fears and instead falling into his arms, basking in the false warmth. I hated that I missed his gaze that tracked me around the room, or the way his words could make me forget how to breathe.
He was a danger to me, because I missed him. Fuck — I missed him.
When I’d close my eyes, the darkness staring back at me was the same shade as his eyes. When I caught sight of a red book on my shelf it would bring me back to his operating room, drenched in blood, littered with teeth and bathed in the reality of his insanity. I couldn’t do this, could I?
I reached for my phone and turned it on, hoping that his name would pop up on the screen and tell me to look out the window. I dreamed of his barging through my door, covering my mouth with his and giving me no choice but to go with him. I wanted him to make the choice for me, because I knew I couldn’t make it myself. To choose him would be to choose my own demise, and I knew how suicidal I was. My hand already reached for death, and Theron’s was there to draw me faster into the darkness.
Sure enough, my phone was void of any missed communication — no one beside him would bother to check in on my well being, and I’d begged him to leave me be. Why did I tell him to give me time? I groaned, rolling onto my side and tossing my phone onto the floor.
I started when a noise suddenly came from my front steps.
“Theron?” I whispered as I sat up straight. A lump formed in my throat and I just about tripped over the blankets while hastily climbing to my feet. The boards creaked outside of my door, and I held my breath. Would he knock? I knew by now that he had a key, so maybe he’ll just barge in and throw me over his shoulder. I bit the inside of my cheek as warmth crept up my neck at the thought. Fuck I wished he’d make the decision for me.
I flinched when a loud knock came from the other side of the door. I was immediately cold with fear at the thought that this might not be Theron. It was like being doused in an icy bucket of water, as images of the attack played in my head. I trembled, but steeled myself. “Hello?” I called out.
“Miss Knight,” a low voice came through the door. “I’m here to talk about my son.”
My mouth fell open, and I took a tentative step away from the door as my mind was filled with a visual of a box filled to the brim with golden wedding bands. No — those belonged to his grandfather.
“Dr. Hawthorne?” I asked with an edge to my voice, reaching for the bathrobe I had left over a nearby chair.
“Can you open the door, Miss Knight?”
I swallowed, twisting the lock and cracking the door open, allowing the sun to barge its way into my apartment for the first time in a week as I blinked. Standing on the steps was an older man, well groomed, with silver hair swept back. He seemed to be in his sixties or seventies, but stood tall with sure shoulders and appraising eyes that were dark like Theron’s. It wasn’t so much that the color of his eyes was the same, more that he carried the same darkness as his son. Come to think of it, I couldn’t see much resemblance between the two at all, aside from the manner in which the older man stood, and the way the corners of his mouth twitched impatiently.
“May I come in, Miss Knight? I think we have a few matters to discuss, and I’d rather not do so on the steps of your dilapidated apartment.”
I raised my brows, but stood back and opened the door wider, peering around him in the hope of seeing Theron lurking on the sidewalk. Why was his father here? Did he know that Theron had taken me to his facility?
“Okay,” I said quietly and let the man past me and into my dark cave of a home. The shades were drawn, and the floor was a mess of discarded clothes and blankets that I couldn’t find the will to be bothered about in this moment.
The elder Dr. Hawthorne wrinkled his nose as he looked around, hands clasped behind his back. I could almost see him wondering whether the ground he walked on was good enough for his polished Oxfords. He wore dark gray slacks, and a pristine white button up, lending him a studious and somewhat rigid air. The more I watched him, the less similarities I saw between Theron and himself.
“My son says you suffer from AHC,” he said suddenly. He was turned away from me, reading a few of the book titles on my shelf with detached interest. “Why should a young woman like yourself be denied from the transplant list?”
I bristled. “ You didn’t read my file? Your son didn’t have an issue breaking into my private records, I assume he learned that habit from you.”
The older man turned his gaze from the bookshelf to look at me for the first time since he’d walked through my door. I noted his eyes were ever darker, if that was possible. He didn’t seem to be as amused by my attitude as Theron did, and I could see he was just as much a wolf as his son — but I wasn’t a protected little rabbit anymore. This wolf held no special regard for me, that much was clear.
“How much do you know about my son, Miss Knight?” He turned to face me, shoulders held back tightly as he peered down his nose like I was a nuisance to his day. A splinter interrupting use of is well-honed and talented hands.
“I know enough,” was all I said in return, standing very still. It was best not to taunt a predator into attacking. “How much do you know about me , Dr. Hawthorne?”
“Enough.”
He looked back to my assortment of books, eyes flitting over the worn radiator, the dead potted plants, and the dust that lingered on every surface. “I know that you’re an addict, Miss Knight, and that you’ve quite the record at New Haven.”
I opened my mouth to spit a retort, but thought wiser of that and quickly closed it with a low grumble in the back of my throat. “So you do know how to open sealed records.”
The man hummed low, then plucked a book from my shelf and turned around so that I could see. Between his fingers was an old paperback copy of Anna Karenina , the edges torn from years of use and abuse.
“Such morbid reading habits,” he mused, his voice suspiciously light. “But fitting.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I deliberately avoided drawing a comparison between myself and Anna, but it was hard to ignore the fact there was a certain similarity between the troubled heroine and the image of myself that so many people saw.
“I’m hardly a troubled socialite,” I said quietly.
“Hardly,” he agreed with a curl to his upper lip. “But in trouble, you certainly are.”
I swallowed hard, my heart starting to pound in my chest. “What do you want? You said you were here to talk about Theron.”
He opened up the book, thumbing through a few pages before reading. “Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.” He looked back up at me through narrowed eyes. “Have you exhumed my son’s proclivities, Miss Knight? Can you live with what you’ve seen?”
I twitched, my fingers curling into fists as I realized he knew exactly where I’d been and what I had witnessed Theron do. He was here to protect the family business — the killer he’d helped craft.
“He was afraid of defiling the love that filled his soul.” I whispered back to him in a broken voice, thinking of a bloodied Theron on his knees in front of me. “I’ll ask again, what do you want with me?”
Dr. Hawthorne snorted, tossing the book none too gently onto my coffee table before rounding the futon. His steps were light, careful, and far too agile for his age. Truly a fox in a hen house, trained to be silent and unseen. He tilted his head to the side, eyes roaming over my small frame before he sighed through his nose.
“You cannot love him, Miss Knight. Not the way he craves, and certainly not if you have reservations about his nature.”
“I —”
“You cannot,” he interrupted with a stern voice. “You’ve already wounded the man I made, and I’m not prone to forgiveness.”
I shook my head, anger coursing through my veins as I thought of the midnight gaze of the man I wanted so desperately to hate — but couldn’t.
“I haven’t given up,” I admitted quietly. The elder Dr. Hawthorne looked doubtful, but remained silent as I tried to express my thoughts. “I’ve seen the demons you’ve groomed so well, doctor. An empire of blood and violence that I’m sure you cultivated in a boy too young to understand.”
Dr. Hawthorne’s eye twitched, his silver brows furrowing. The veins in his neck bulged with restraint. I was playing a dangerous game.
“You’re a liability, Miss Knight. A burden who’s wandered into my son’s obsessive gaze and flaunted themselves a savior —”
“I’m not trying to save your son, Dr. Hawthorne. I don’t even know if I want him, but it’s not your choice to make.”
I stood my ground — as much as I could whilst wearing a fluffy robe and Christmas socks. The sun had started to set outside, and the only light inside was coming from the orange bulb that flickered in my kitchen. It was the lion and the gazelle, neither wanting to move first while the stakes were impossibly high. If the lion was to inch closer prematurely, it could lose a meal. The gazelle, if not careful, would lose her life.
“How do we resolve this, Miss Knight?”
“What do you want?” I asked coldly, my arms crossed over my chest.
He let his face relax, though his eyes were darker than ever. He was not as pleasant as his son, far more severe looking with none of Theron’s warmth and gravitational draw. I could be sucked into Theron like a dying star and have no qualms. His father on the other hand, was a blazing white dwarf that threatened to take the whole fucking solar system down with it. It was no wonder that Theron had craved solace in the blood of others when his own father showed him no love. I wanted nothing more than to be out of his presence.
Was that how Theron found his comfort? Behind the blade of a scalpel he could carve out a place for himself that his family never gave him? I could imagine the world the man in front of me created for his son and I hated it. When Theron needed love, he was given gore.
“What I want ,” he enunciated slowly. “Is for you to be out of the city by sunrise, or, I will leave your body on my son’s operating table and he won’t have to bother with finding you a heart. I have contacts in Seattle who are ready to receive you and have found a suitable donor, but they can just as easily give the heart to someone else.”
I felt frozen, every limb clenched as I tried to stop myself from shaking. Theron’s father stepped closer to me and swept an invisible speck of dust from his shoulder. “You need to choose, Miss Knight. Death, or a new life away from my son where I’ll never have to see your face again. You’ll stay out of Boston, and if you speak a word of this to anyone, let me be clear when I say that I have people who will repossess your heart faster than you can ruin it with your filthy fucking addiction.”
He spit the last of his venom down at me, eyes blazing now. I stumbled back, bumping into the coffee table and knocking a few books to the floor. “Theron will come for me,” I whispered, chin still high despite the terror I felt. “He’s a man possessed, Dr. Hawthorne. I can’t control him.”
I gaped as the older man laughed, wiping a hand down his face before cocking his head at me in derision. “You really haven’t a clue the creature you’ve ensnared between those legs, do you?”
“Excuse me —”
“You’re right, Miss Knight. My son would never allow distance to be a factor when it comes to cutting a nasty habit, which is why I must go through the painful process of making you disappear. A new name, a new heart and half a million dollars to leave Boston with nothing but the clothes on your back.”
He wanted me to run? To make Theron believe I’d disappeared like a ghost who’d never existed? I stared down at the ground, blinking away the tears as his glorious face appeared in my mind. I could see his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. What I did know, was just how he made me feel when I was standing in his library, and convulsing with pleasure in his bed. Worse though, I could feel his fingers in my flesh like he was forming me into a new person. Someone I wasn’t ashamed of anymore. He was making me feel whole again.
“I — I can’t —”
“You will if you ever want to see another sunrise, Miss Knight. You leave here on your own two feet, or in a body bag.”
I looked up at him through my tears, flinching as he stepped closer still with rage flashing across his face. A man I would have smiled at on the trains — a face that could have been a doctor of mine and here it was eliciting a primal terror in me I could barely face.
“You’ll — you have a heart already?” I asked through the lump in my throat.
Dr. Hawthorne narrowed his eyes, but nodded. “I took the records from Tabitha and found a suitable target in the Portland area. He’s being held in sedation in Seattle, where he will be cremated with, or without his heart.”
I bit down on my bottom lip as I started to shake, hands gripping the small table I was propped up against. A heart. It was what I had been after, in the beginning at least, but I would be lying to myself if I said it was the only reason I let Theron into my life. Into my body and soul.
Theron’s father sighed, moving aside his sleeve to peer at his watch impatiently. “Make a decision, Miss Knight, or the plane will leave without you.”
I wiped furiously at the tears on my cheeks. “He’ll think it’s his fault,” I sobbed. “Theron will blame himself for me leaving.” The poor, broken man will never trust anyone ever again. I looked into his eyes as he held me and I promised I wouldn’t leave.
“Theron will recover — but not while you’re still here. What will it be, Miss Knight?”
My heart was a stone, cracking in half as I made my choice.
“Fine,” I snarled, pushing myself up. “Just make sure he knows it wasn’t his fault.”
The elder doctor narrowed his eyes, something alien flashing in his features before he schooled them and held his hand out to me. I blinked, then followed his gaze to the metal smart ring Theron had given me to track my heart rate.
“It also tracks your location,” he said with a lifted brow. “You’ll need to remove it, and then we must leave at once. Theron will know something is wrong when it stops transmitting your vitals and GPS location.”
I swallowed, fingers skimming over the black band as I thought of the night he put it on. I’d never felt so alight with life, nor so close to the edge of total annihilation. I took a steadying breath, then pulled it from my finger and dropped it into his hand. He twisted it about his palm before tossing it unceremoniously onto the couch. “After you,” he said with a wave to the door.
Biting into my lip I let my eyes wander the apartment that had been my home for years now, and realized how empty a life I had been living. Other than my books and clothes that were carelessly thrown about, there was little personalization to be seen. Dust cloaked every surface that I didn’t touch routinely, and the blinds were pulled closed like a symbol of my inhospitality.
My books . I would miss those.
Dr. Hawthorne sighed next to the door. “Now, Miss Knight,” he clearly had no appetite for sentiment as I said my goodbyes to my old life.
I looked towards the towering man, his gaze hard. He could say all he wanted that this was to protect his son, but there was something else happening here. An underlying anger that this man had for me that went far deeper than protecting the secret of his business.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, because Theron will not relent. He’ll not rest until he’s found me and dragged me back by my hair kicking and screaming.” I whispered as I walked past him.
Theron’s father smiled broadly, the first unguarded emotion I’d seen on his face since he arrived. “I know.”