32. Chapter 32
So, getting hit with a crowbar wasn’t on my list for this trip, but I can’t say I’m entirely upset about where it ended. My ribs ache however. It’s a dull, persistent throb. One that blooms when I inhale deeply or shift the wrong way. Not sharp enough to be dangerous, but enough to remember.
A very real reminder of who Sadie can be when backed into a corner, no matter how thrilling it is to meet someone on their own level.
I stare at the ceiling of the cabin, tracing the cracks in the wood with my eyes while Sadie sleeps against my chest. Her head tucked just under my jaw and her hair spilling over my collarbone in a warm, messy curtain.
One leg is thrown over mine, entirely too comfortable for someone who tried to open me up with a crowbar only hours ago.
I flex my fingers slowly where they’re threaded through her hair, the strands far softer than they look.
Like silk as I slide my fingers through the gold and marvel at how deeply she sleeps.
The touch is absent-minded at first, a grounding habit more than anything, but it becomes deliberate without me noticing.
Mapping the weight of her and the heat, the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
A crowbar to the ribs and we end up here.
A win? I think.
I almost laugh.
The thing is—and this is new, unsettling information—I don’t enjoy the fact that she fell asleep angry.
Usually, the release is enough. A fantastic resolution with cause and effect, all the tension released. But my chest tightens at the memory of her expression before she finally collapsed against me; eyes too bright, jaw set like she was bracing for an impact that wasn’t coming.
She didn’t break exactly, but she didn’t soften either.
She simply stopped moving. And that… bothers me.
Because the act itself had nothing to do with the pair of us.
Sure, we were both involved and we both finished, but it was just a valve on pressure.
There was no real meaning behind it other than to burn through some of this tension that lives between us, and I don’t want that.
I adjust slightly, careful not to wake her, and feel the echo of pain flare in my forearm and side. I ignore it, because it’s familiar, but this isn’t. Her fingers curl reflexively to my skin as I shift, and she makes a soft sound in her sleep.
I’ve always understood actions. People are predictable once you understand the machinery. You just apply pressure and you get a response. You remove it, you get relief. It’s simple and easy.
Sadie just doesn’t follow the model.
She hit me with a crowbar then kissed me like she was afraid I’d disappear if she didn’t. She hates me and wants me in the same breath. She is angry and aroused and grieving and here.
Here matters more than it should.
I brush my thumb gently along her temple, feeling the warmth there. She frowns faintly, then relaxes again, burrowing closer. I don’t believe she’s afraid of me, and that can be a problem.
I should probably be satisfied enough to focus on containment or keeping her where I can see and touch her.
Instead, I find myself cataloging things that have nothing to do with control and everything to do with her.
The crease between her brows when she’s thinking too hard.
The way she swings first and asks questions later when she’s cornered.
The fact that she didn’t aim to kill me but aimed to feel something back.
I don’t like that I recognize the impulse and understand it.
Because it makes her less the woman in that mirrored room and more like me.
And I know that I can’t decide what she is to be, but making her like me?
I hate that I want to. That I want to drag her down into Pitch and keep her here.
Let all this darkness seep into her so that maybe I don’t have to be a monster all on my own.
I slide my hand down her spine, feeling the way she fits there like she was designed for this exact curve of my body.
And maybe… it’s okay for us to be monsters together.
Maybe that is what I have been doing all along, trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
Trying to make her into something that she is not.
Maybe she just needs the room to be exactly what she is. A place with no rules and no consequences outside of the ones you make. And I know just the place. It just might take a little more prepping on my part before she is ready.
She’s not just a curiosity to me anymore, not entirely. She’s an entire variable that I didn’t account for when this all started. And for the first time in a very long while, the thought doesn’t irritate me.
I press my lips briefly to the crown of her head. Just a moment of contact to confirm that what is happening is real. That what I feel—what I’ve never been able to feel—is real.
She shifts and sighs, relaxing fully against me as I look back to the ceiling again. My mind refusing to quit now that it’s found itself in new territory.
One I have no intention of turning back from.