CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“Runnin’ never helped you anyhow,” he reminds me, his eyes penetrating. “Besides, the time to turn back was the second you opened the door to your room, looked right and then left, before bitin’ your plump lip, tuckin’ your shiny hair behind your ear, and steppin’ out ’cause the coast was clear.”
A massive shiver runs down my spine. At the way he describes my every move, so explicitly. It makes me think no matter where I go, his eyes will follow. He will follow. It shouldn’t be exciting, but God, it is. “You were watching me?”
What a useless thing to say, and he agrees with me because he doesn’t respond, simply cocks his head to the side and glances over at his desk.
I follow his gaze to find his phone, sitting beside the long row of his knives.
I can’t exactly see the screen, but I know it’s lit up and I’m assuming it’s the camera feed.
Goose bumps break out on my skin, and I look back at him as he jerks his chin up.
“Left the door open for you,” he says with a glance down my body, going from the top of my head to the bottom of my cowboy boots, as my breath gets tangled up in my throat, “Seein’ as you had a hard time pushin’ it open last time. ”
I did. His door is rusted metal but heavy, and even though unlocked, it took considerable strength to push it open when I was here on my first night at Rawhide. So I guess I should be thankful. It’s just that I’m too busy catching my breath with everything. Then, “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
He doesn’t deem it necessary to answer that question.
But I keep forging ahead. “Is it your headache?”
At this he says, his voice gruff, “You here to sing and make it better for me?”
I blush. So, so hard and clutch the edge of the door because my knees start shaking. So he did listen to me; he did understand why I sang. “Did it… did it help?”
His jaw pulses at my question. Angrily. Then, “Never slept better in my entire goddamn life.”
My mouth forms an O and my eyes widen.
“Not even before,” he adds.
My belly whooshes and I hold the door tighter. “So that’s a g-good thing, right?”
Another angry pulse in his jaw.
“Is there something else that’s bothering you?” I ask next.
Another question he doesn’t give me an answer to.
“Is that what you do when you can’t sleep?
Throw the knives? I didn’t know you had a collection of them”—I glance over at them on his desk again, then at the wall of ropes and swallow thickly—“also.” When he doesn’t respond to that either, I mumble, “I guess that’s why you were so offended by my pocketknife. ”
“Was offended you tried to hurt me with it,” he corrects, “when it was more suited for butterin’ toast.”
I open my mouth to protest but think better of it. “Throwing knives isn’t a cowboy thing, is it? How’d you get so good at it?”
He watches me for a few seconds before he answers, tilting his head to the side, his tone both biting but also falsely sweet.
“When I was a boy, I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands. Didn’t wanna see people, couldn’t talk to them, so I spent my days up on the cliff with the wolves.
Or sat around readin’, playin’ with ropes.
When I got bored with that, I threw things at the wall.
Whatever I could find. Although I did like things that broke, like lamps, glass windows.
Somethin’ about the loud sound made the stuck words in my brain shut up.
One time, I broke all the mirrors around me.
Liked how they burst into a million pieces; didn’t like cleanin’ them up, though.
So decided to get a new hobby. Throwin’ things that stick.
They don’t make too much noise, but it works wonders when you wanna break somethin’ but can’t.
Wasn’t gonna use darts like a fuckin’ child. Hence the knives.”
I think I break my nail on the door listening to him talk about it. About what he went through. And this isn’t even all of it. I know there’s more, so much more that my stomach feels hollow. My chest feels tight and heavy as I whisper, “You broke all the mirrors around you.”
“Didn’t need to see myself in a motherfuckin’ mirror to know what I looked like,” he replies in the same tone. “What I’d become. I knew.”
“You didn’t become anything. You’re not a—”
“You’ve got three seconds to decide,” he says, cutting me off.
“What?”
“You wanna get in or not,” he says with a low rumble. “After that, I’m makin’ the decision for you.”
My breath snags in my throat, and before he even counts to one, I step in.
He looks down at my feet before looking up at me.
He clenches his jaw as if he’s unhappy about my decision.
As if he wanted me to leave, to go far away from him.
And maybe I should have because he seems…
different. He seems unpredictable tonight, agitated, angrier than usual.
Something is clearly going on with him, but I’m here now, and…
My thoughts come to a halt when I hear a screech followed by a loud clang of metal.
What was that?
My heart pounding even faster, I turn back and notice the door’s been closed. “How did that…”
“Remote,” he says.
I swivel my eyes back to catch him sliding a black remote into his pocket. “You closed this door with a remote?”
“And locked it.”
“The door’s locked?” I squeak because that sounds ominous. “But this is like a hundred years old.”
“Can still rig it, though. Run a wire through, hook it to a security system.”
Still reeling from the fact that not only is this door locked, but it operates automatically, something I never would’ve guessed given the state of this whole place, it takes me a few seconds to realize something… kinda important.
“It was you,” I breathe out, knowing it down to my bones. “Last time. You unlocked the door for me when I snuck in here last time. It wasn’t a lucky shot like I thought. You opened it for me.”
He keeps his gaze steady as he replies after a few moments, “Figured you were headed my way when you kept goin’ up the path. Thought I should make it easy for you.”
My heart is racing even harder now, and I ask, even though I know the answer, “Why?”
He studies me back before telling me what I already expected him to: “A man always pays his dues. A smart one, anyhow.”
“Who taught you that? Your twisted sense of honor.”
“My ma and my daddy.” My breath hitches and he keeps going, “Although they didn’t mean for it to be twisted. That was all me.”
I can’t believe he did that. He helped me—the Turner Princess—get into his private domain when he’s usually so tight-lipped about himself. But maybe I should believe it because wasn’t it him who made me slide the knife in between his ribs for all his crimes against me?
I know his wound is fine now, by the way.
Not only because I heard him telling Haven but also because his gait is more natural.
He doesn’t favor his left side anymore. For days, I worried about him, watched him carefully whenever we crossed paths.
So many times I wanted to break his rules and seek him out.
But I stayed put. I knew he wouldn’t have liked me looking for him.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I blurt out.
The silence is so thick that my voice sounds extremely loud. My breaths sound noisy too. My chest is heaving and I’m clutching my dress tightly. Just saying those words out loud is sending me into such distress, I don’t know what I’m going to do when I actually have to go tomorrow.
To make matters worse, my father is sending out a car that will take me back to Wildfire.
The place I avoid going to at all costs.
The place where I’ve seen my father do terrible things.
I haven’t been back there in a long time, choosing to spend my summers at our cabin up in the mountains.
The only thing I ever ask of him, apart from letting me live with Reverie in the city.
But as a part of the deal that was struck between the Graysons and the Turners after my “kidnapping for the Turner land,” I’m to be released into my father’s custody.
I’m sure he has some grand plans to keep me away from the cabin that I desperately want to be at. Another one of his power plays.