CHAPTER NINE #3
He glances down at his knife before lifting his eyes.
I know he notices the trembling. He notices how tightly I’m gripping the handle, how unpracticed I look while holding it.
Probably even more so tonight than I did last night.
But he doesn’t comment. Instead, he slowly raises his arms, his palms wide, in a gesture of surrender.
Although calling it a surrender is so fucking ridiculous that I’d laugh if I could.
All this position does is display how big his hands are, that I could fit both of mine in one of his.
And how taut and bulging his biceps are; how they’re hills of their own.
I tighten my grip around the knife and put it on his neck. Then, poking the blade in, I ask, “How did you know where we were?”
He keeps watching me with glittering eyes. “Arsen came to me. Said he couldn’t find Reverie in her room. Had a hunch you’d be involved.” He takes a pause here as if preparing me for the worst. Then, “Checked the feed on my phone, found your bed empty too.”
“Feed?”
He chooses to remain silent at this.
I’m about to demand his answer when it occurs to me and my words stumble as I ask, “Do you… do you have cameras in my room?”
“My room,” he replies strangely.
“What?”
“That’s my room.”
My chest is heaving. “I’m… They put me in your room?”
“Told them to.”
I prod his neck with the blade again. “You told them to put me in your room. Why?”
“’Cause it’s blue.”
“It’s… What?”
His eyes flick back and forth between mine. “Ain’t that your favorite color?”
I blink. And then I blink a couple more times. When I have my thoughts, my words straight, I ask, “Are you saying that you kidnapped me and then put me in a room with my favorite color?”
Because he is right. That room is blue. Everything in that room is different shades of blue, from walls to bedsheets to drapes. And like an idiot, I didn’t even question it. I thought it was a coincidence.
When he doesn’t respond, I ask, my voice rising, “Is it like the breakfast thing again? Where you tie me to a tree and then cook me eggs exactly how I like them?”
“You needed to eat,” he explains. “I knew how you like your eggs. Why wouldn’t I cook ’em the way you like ’em?”
“Why wouldn’t you…” I stare at him in disbelief for a few moments before practically screaming, “Do you realize how crazy you sound right now? How psychotic. You kidnapped me, asshole, and you’re being considerate about my breakfast and the color of my bedsheets.”
He shakes his head once. “Already got you where I want you. Ain’t no reason to make this more uncomfortable for you than it already is.”
I glare at him some more before snapping, “And to put cameras in my room and watch me and—”
“Watched you for six months, three weeks, six days, seven hours, and forty-four minutes, give or take,” he cuts me off. “That ain’t new.”
My belly whooshes at his count but I ignore it. Because something else occurs to me. “Did you… did you have a camera in my other room too? Back in the city.”
He doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t have to.
My heart drops. “Where?”
“On your bookshelf.”
“H-how?”
“Broke into your room one day,” he says. “When you were gone. Put it on your shelf.” Then, “Wanted to look around, but I…”
He trails off and shakes his head, telling me he didn’t.
Because if he had, he would’ve found out that I was the real Peyton.
He would’ve known, right away, that I was the Turner Princess, not Reverie.
And maybe my best friend wouldn’t be in this mess.
Although, from what I saw of her with Arsen, it didn’t look like a mess, or rather, that she appeared to kind of like the mess she’s in.
In any case, I decide to focus on the present and thrust aside all the other crazy things he just revealed. “I could stab you in the neck right now.”
“Wouldn’t give you what you want.”
“Oh yeah?” I poke it harder, almost cutting through the skin. “I told you I’d kill you, didn’t I?”
“You also said you wanted to dance on my grave,” he adds.
“Well, tonight’s the night then.”
His eyes flash. “Can’t deny I wanna see that. You movin’ your hot little body over my bleedin’ one.”
I blush furiously. “You—”
“But that’s not what you want.”
“Okay, asshole, if you know what I want, why don’t you tell me?”
Those piercing green eyes of his meet mine as he shares, “To hurt me.”
I grit my teeth in response.
“Make me suffer,” he continues, his gaze moving over my features.
My cheeks feel warm under his intense scrutiny, but still, I prod his neck with the knife again as my heart races. “So stabbing you in the neck seems like the right choice, doesn’t it?”
He shakes his head slowly. “No.”
“You’re such a—”
“You wanna hurt me,” he says, “stab me in the stomach.”
My grip on the knife falters. “What?”
He lowers one of his hands, very slowly—as if to show me he means no harm by this; what a hilarious thought—and points two fingers to his thickly muscled torso.
“Here.” I look down to the spot he’s showing me before quickly looking up as he continues, “Between the ribs. Just a little pressure and you’ll cut through the muscle. There ain’t no bone here to stop you.”
I don’t know why I’m having so much trouble breathing, but gathering my choppy breaths, I say, “I can very easily do that up on your neck too.”
“You can,” he admits. “But there’s a chance you’ll hit an artery and I’ll bleed out within minutes.”
“Well, wouldn’t that be wonderful then.”
“Not for you,” he says, shaking his head once.
“You wanna make me suffer, remember? You want me to hurt. Nothin’ hurts like a stab wound between the ribs.
It hurts like a bitch and it heals like a bitch too.
Slow, painful, over days. It’s a wound that toys with you, haunts you.
Every time I breathe, it’ll hurt. I’ll feel it.
I’ll feel you. Like you felt me. Watchin’ you, stalkin’ you.
For months. Ain’t that what you said? That I toyed with you for months, hunted you, played with you.
So this is your chance. To play with me back.
To haunt me, to toy with every breath I take. ”
He’s right.
That’s exactly what I want. Killing him would be too easy.
I want him to suffer. I want to punish him, teach him a fucking lesson for everything he has done to me.
I want him to feel the pain, my pain. That no matter how many times I try to push away, to ignore, to deny it exists, it rears its head back up like a fucking wild animal. Like the wolves he set on me.
My eyes skitter down again before coming back to his face. “Hands back up.”
He lets a beat pass before obeying me.
My heart races in my chest, and somehow, his easy acquiescence only makes my hands tremble more.
“Is that what you did? With the calf this morning?” A light frown emerges between his brows and I explain, “You were the only who could calm it down. So what, you told the animal a bunch of lies, lulled it into a false sense of security before snatching it up? Is that your game? Tell the crazy knife-wielding girl whatever the fuck she wants to hear before you fucking—”
He growls like a freaking animal and cuts off my words.
“What?” I bite out.
“Watch your fuckin’ mouth.”
I grit my teeth and poke the knife harder. “Are you fucking kidding me? You just threw me to the fucking wolves, you bastard, and you want me to watch my goddamn mouth?”
He growls again, as if saying yeah.
“You’re—”
He glances down at my mouth before rumbling, “No reason is reason enough to sully your beautiful princess mouth like that. Definitely not for whatever I did.”
A breath escapes me in a rush then. At his beautiful, at his princess. Still spoken in a tender tone. I feel my lips tremble slightly, tingle, as if he really meant it. As if this isn’t yet another game he’s playing. Before I can say anything, though, he continues, “And I told the calf the truth.”
I focus back on what we were talking about. “What truth?”
His eyes go back and forth between mine. “That it was safe with me. That if it let me get close, I wouldn’t let anythin’ happen to it.”
My heart twists in my chest. In both pain and oh God, jealousy. I’m jealous of an animal, a calf stuck in a stream because I thought I was safe with him. I swallow thickly. “As opposed to me.”
His jaw pulses at my words.
I prod his neck again. “Are they going to come back?”
He knows I’m talking about the wolves and he shakes his head. “Not until I call ’em back.”
“How did you know to do that?”
“Got ’em trained.”
“You trained wolves?”
“Been with them since they were pups,” he says, his voice low. “You spend enough time with an animal, it’ll pick up on things.”
“So you have, like, pet wolves.”
“Companions,” he corrects, his voice hard.
“What’s the difference?”
“A man doesn’t make pets out of animals; he makes companions,” he explains, his words firm, almost biting at “pets.” “A smart one anyhow. They were here before us. They know way more about the land than we do. You show respect to earn respect.”
God, fucking cowboys. Actually, fucking him and his crazy, twisted morals.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
Again, I don’t have to specify what I’m talking about; he already knows, and his response is an angry clench of his jaw.
I’m not letting it go that easily. I want him to say the words. So I keep prodding. “Is it because you thought I ran?”
“We both know you don’t run fast enough.”
“So because of the snooping then?”
“Don’t got the habit of leavin’ my secrets lyin’ around for someone to find. So you can snoop all you want.”
“So then why?”