Chapter 39
Amy
Saint has been gone for four days. I thought about showing up at his house. I try to tell myself it’s to make sure he’s okay, but people don’t go missing at Kenyan. They vanish into explanations no one gives, and if Saint wanted to talk, he would answer my calls.
By Wednesday morning, I stop looking at the back of the lecture hall. His seat stays empty. No pressure in the air that makes every nerve in my body wake up before my mind understands why.
Nothing.
Just an empty chair every time I look. I tell myself I shouldn’t care. Saint is not my boyfriend nor my protector, but the room feels wrong without him in it.
Roman’s envelope stays hidden beneath my mattress. I don’t know why I keep it. I should tear it up and forget that it exists. It isn’t real because I never signed anything, but Roman has the power to make it look like I did.
If I take it to the police, he will make it go away. If I take it to Azriel, why should he care? My past has found me, and there is no way out.
Instead, I keep pulling it out when I can’t sleep. The paper is thick, embossed with the state seal with my name already typed where it shouldn’t be, and a signature I didn’t sign.
Amelia Torres.
His name beside mine.
Roman Mancini.
His signature is there like a warning.
But the empty space where mine belongs feels worse than if he’d forged it. Because Roman didn’t send it as proof, he sent it as a promise that all it takes is a stroke of a pen.
It’s a reminder of the cage waiting for me to step back inside.
I fold it carefully and put it away again. Then I sit on the floor beside my bed and try to breathe. The room feels smaller than it did yesterday.
On Thursday, Azriel finds me in the library. I’m sitting at my usual table with three open books in front of me and no memory of what any of them say.
He doesn’t announce himself. He simply pulls out the chair across from me and sits. “You’re not reading.”
I turn a page. “Yes, I am.”
“Your book is upside down.” I look down.
It isn’t.
When I look back at him, he’s smiling faintly. “That was mean.”
“That was a test.”
“I passed.”
“You absolutely did not.”
For a second, I almost smile. Almost. Azriel notices the failure of it. “You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
I close the book. The sound is louder than it should be. “I said I’m fine.”
He watches me for a long moment. Unlike Saint, Azriel doesn’t make silence feel like a weapon. He makes it feel like a choice. Like he’s giving me room to decide how much of myself I want to hand over. But I give him nothing.
Eventually, he reaches into his pocket and slides a folded piece of paper across the table. I stare at it.
“What is that?”
“My address in case you need somewhere to go.”
“I already have campus security.”
“I wasn’t talking about campus security.”
The words settle between us, and that somehow makes it worse. Because Azriel belongs here. Even when he’s gentle, he belongs to this place. Designer coat, old-money posture, with a name that opens doors before he knocks.
He can sit in this library and look like part of the architecture. I look like someone who snuck in through a side entrance.
“I don’t need help,” I say.
“I never assumed you did.” His voice is soft. “Keep it anyway.”
He stands before I can argue. Then he leaves me with the folded paper and the uncomfortable knowledge that there are people here who might try to protect me.
But none of them are Saint. And I hate that I know the difference.
On my way back across the quad, I see Monica. She’s sitting beneath one of the old oaks with two girls from my literature class, sunlight filtering through the branches and breaking across her bare throat.
There is a fresh mark there. A bruise shaped like a mouth. One of the girls says something that makes Monica laugh. My steps slow before I can stop them. I think about the night at the party. The red pool. The room in the back.
The way Saint opened the door without flinching. The way Monica had looked inside that world like she belonged.
Something twists inside my chest. I shouldn’t compare myself to her. I shouldn’t wonder whether she understands Saint’s darkness better than I do. I shouldn’t wonder whether girls like Monica know how to surrender without disappearing.
Maybe that’s why she was there, and that’s why Saint knew where to find her, because girls like Monica fit into his world. They know the rules and give them what they want. And it’s no secret he wanted her.
I was never taught how to be wanted without being taken and don’t know the difference. Maybe that was what he was trying to tell me.
The quad stretches around me in bright, indifferent green.
Kenyan breathes around me with all its money and secrets and polished cruelty.
For one terrible moment, I understand it.
This place was never built for girls like me.
Scholarship students weren’t invited. We were collected, and not all Prey survive this place.
By Friday night, the walls are moving. Not really but I know the difference between reality and panic. The room isn’t shrinking. The ceiling isn’t lowering.
I know Roman isn’t outside my door, but my body doesn’t. My body remembers his voice. The envelope with the license hinting at what awaits me outside of these walls. There is nowhere to run. I have no money, no connections, and nowhere to go.
I check the lock, then the window. Then the lock again.
I pull the envelope from beneath the mattress and stare at it until the letters blur. There has to be a way out, I tell myself.
Every time I think there is hope, my thought leads back to Roman. The way he appeared on campus like distance had never existed. The way he looked at me and already saw the ending.
I put the envelope away, and it feels like I can’t breathe.
The room is too hot. I’m sweating as I gather my things and head to the women’s shower.
I stumble into the bathroom, pull the curtain, and turn on the shower. Steam fills the space slowly. I step under the water before it’s warm enough in my clothes and all.
The shock of the wet fabric makes me gasp, but it doesn’t stop the shaking. I slide down the tile wall until I’m sitting on the floor of the shower with my knees pulled to my chest. Water beats against my shoulders, my hair, my face.
I press my palms over my ears, but it doesn’t help. Roman’s voice is still there. My father’s voice is still there. I thought leaving meant freedom, that Kenyan meant safety.
If I ran far enough, became small enough, quiet enough, useful enough, I could build a life Roman couldn’t reach.
But he found me. I was stupid enough to think I had a chance.
Men like Roman always find what they think belongs to them. The sob that breaks out of me doesn’t sound human.
I bite down on my fist to stop the next one, but it comes anyway. Then another.
And another.
Until I’m folded over my knees, soaked and shaking, trying to hold myself together with hands that have never been enough.
Then the shower curtain moves, the rings of metal sliding over the track.
I go still.
The steam shifts.
A shadow fills the space, making the tiles darker.
For one impossible second, I think Roman has come to get me. Then a voice cuts through the water.
“Amy.”
My head lifts.
Saint stands at the end of the shower, not caring if his black hoodie gets wet. His hair, neatly braided and tied at the nape of his neck.
I blink through the water on my lashes, trying to see if my eyes are playing tricks on me. He became another absence I didn’t know how to survive.
His eyes move over me once, and his expression changes. Something cold and lethal moves behind his eyes when he sees the side of my thighs under the fluorescent lights. The times he was in my room, it was dark, and the only light was filtered through the curtain.
Old scars cross my skin in faint, uneven lines. Some from when I was thirteen, some from my father, and some I don’t remember making.
His gaze drops lower, to the faded marks my father left on the side of my butt where my shorts have ridden up. The old memories the skin keeps so you never forget. The evidence of every moment I survived without anyone coming.
Shame hits so hard that I try to cover myself.
Saint moves fast enough to startle me, but not toward me. He reaches over me toward the shower handle and turns the water off.
Silence crashes into the shower stall, and for a split second, all I hear is my own ragged breathing.
Saint crouches next to me, careful not to touch. He just looks at me like the sight of my survival has rearranged something inside him.
“You survived all of them,” he says softly.
The words broke whatever was left of me. I cover my face and cry. I break open.
Saint doesn’t move.
When the worst of it passes, he reaches for a towel and holds it out.
My shaky fingers close around the fabric.
After a moment, Saint says, “Can I?”
I nod once.
He moves slowly like I’m wounded. He wraps the towel around my shoulders, tucking it close beneath my chin. His hands are enormous, scarred, gentle.
That is what ruins me when he’s around. The violence I know lives in him is replaced by the gentleness I don’t understand.
When I try to stand, my knees don’t hold. He catches me before I hit the tile.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“You don’t have to.”
He lifts me like I weigh nothing. I press my face against his chest and breathe him in. Cedar. The slight dampness of his hoodie mixed with the smell of smoke and vanilla.
He carries me out of the bathroom, down the quiet hallway, and into my dorm room. I’m glad it’s the middle of the night, and everyone is asleep. He sets me on the edge of the bed.
Then he turns away and finds a dry shirt and shorts inside the drawer near my desk.
“Put some dry clothes on,” he says, handing them to me.
My throat tightens when he gives me his back. It feels more intimate than looking ever could.
I change with shaking hands into an oversized shirt and sleep shorts.
When I’m done, I whisper, “Okay.”
Saint turns around and kneels in front of me and takes one of my hands between both of his.
Warmth closes around my fingers. “I know you have questions, but I need you to tell me what’s wrong.”
I look down, and his grip tightens slightly. I can’t tell him about Roman. It’s too risky. What if Roman makes everything worse? For me. For Saint.
“Did someone touch you?”
I shake my head. “No.” The room seems to darken around him.
His jaw flexes. “You would tell me if someone did, right?”
I go still and then nod.
Saint waits. I don’t know how he knows, but he knows something is wrong.
Finally, I look toward the mattress where I left the envelope. He follows my gaze.
He grabs the envelope and opens it.
His eyes move swiftly as he reads, but nothing in his expression changes.
When Saint is angry, the world usually feels it, but this is different. I don’t know what he is thinking. It’s not real, but I was with Roman even though he turned out to be a monster.
He folds the paper once, slides it back into the envelope, and places it on the desk.
“You’re not signing that.”
A broken laugh escapes me. “You don’t understand.”
His eyes cut to mine. “I understand ownership, and I know men who confuse fear with consent.” His voice lowers. “I understand cages, Amy.”
My chest aches. “Roman doesn’t stop.”
Saint steps closer. “No, but I have a name for the person you’re running from. From the look of it, I don’t see you thrilled to be his wife.”
The way he pieces it all together so fast should scare me. Instead, it steadies me knowing he knows I don’t agree and that I’m running.
He sits beside me on the bed, leaving space between us enough that I can choose. I stare at that space for a long moment. Then I move into it. Saint’s arm comes around me. I lean against him and close my eyes.
For the first time in days, my body exhales. His hand settles at the back of my head.
I don’t remember lying down. I only remember the mattress beneath me and Saint pulling the blanket over my shoulders, his weight settling in the chair beside the bed.
I remember opening my eyes once and seeing him watching me. The door, the window, and every shadow that blankets the room. Like the entire world could come for me tonight, and he had already decided it would not get past him.
“Saint,” I whisper right before my eyes close. His gaze moves to mine. “Don’t leave.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together like prayer has finally become violence. “I’m here.”
Sleep pulls me under before I can ask how long. The last thing I see is Saint sitting between me and the door. The only safe thing in the room.