Chapter 37 — Baptism #2
“And if I had helped?” he asked. “If I'd sent an anonymous check? You would have thanked the universe and continued your life with Kyle. You would have continued on the mediocre path that was killing you slowly.”
He held her chin, lifting her face so she had to look at him. Water fell over them, binding them together.
“I didn't want to be your benefactor, Maya. I didn't want to be a footnote in your triumph-over-adversity story. I wanted to be the protagonist. I wanted to be destiny.”
“You stole my choice.”
“I gave you a better choice,” he insisted. “Look at where we are. Look at who you are now. You're stronger. You're more alive. The girl from Ohio… she would have died in that warehouse today. She would have frozen. You… you survived. You called me.”
Maya looked at him. It was true. Her innocence had died, yes. But something more resilient had taken its place. Something that could look at the blood in the drain and not faint.
She looked at his hands, which she had just cleaned.
“You burned the world for me today,” she said.
“I would burn the universe,” he replied.
“And the files?” she asked. “The plan. The past.”
“The past served its purpose,” Ethan said. “The plan brought us here. Now… the plan is over.”
“How can I know?” she asked. “How can I know there are no more secrets? That there are no more hidden cameras in my mind?”
Ethan released her face. He stepped back, out from under the direct stream, but still inside the shower. Water ran down his body like tears.
“Because I’m afraid,” he said.
The confession was so unexpected that Maya blinked, clearing the water from her eyes.
“You? Afraid?”
“Look at me, Maya.” He opened his arms, exposing himself. “I’m a man who spent his entire life building walls. Controlling variables. Eliminating risks. And today… today I watched the only thing that matters get dragged into a black van, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
His voice broke.
“I felt the terror. Real terror. Not the anxiety of losing money or power. The terror of losing you. And that terror… it burned all the plans. It burned the arrogance.”
He moved closer to her again, invading her space, the water falling over both of them.
“I’m going to burn the files,” he promised. “Tomorrow. In the terrace garden. You’ll light the fire. I’ll destroy the computer. I’ll erase the past.”
He took her hands and placed them on his chest, over his heart, which was beating furiously.
“There is no more architect, Maya. There’s only a man. A man who knows he almost destroyed his own life trying to control it.”
He looked deep into her eyes. The question he asked next wasn’t a challenge, nor a manipulation. It was the most honest question he had ever asked.
“Are you afraid of me?”
Maya looked at him. At his size. At the strength that could break bones. At the mind that could orchestrate destinies.
She thought about the violence in the warehouse. The gunshot. The sound of bone breaking.
Yes, there was fear. The instinctive fear of being near a predator.
But there was something greater.
She thought about the dirty motel. The loneliness of freedom. The emptiness of not being his.
She thought about how safe she felt when he picked her up.
“No,” she answered, and the truth of the word freed her. “I’m not afraid of you, Ethan.”
She slid her hands up his wet chest, up to his shoulders, to his neck.
“I’m afraid of a life without you. I’m afraid of the silence out there. I’m afraid of being ordinary again.”
Ethan’s eyes gleamed. A mixture of relief and adoration.
“Then don’t be,” he whispered. “Be mine. Be extraordinary. Be the only thing I can’t control, but that I’ll never let go.”
He kissed her.
Under the hot water, with the blood of their enemies going down the drain, they kissed. It wasn’t a kiss of lust, though desire was there. It was a kiss of covenant. A seal.
They were accepting each other’s darkness. She accepted his obsession; he accepted her need to be consumed. They weren’t healthy. They weren’t normal. They were a perfect symbiosis of trauma and healing.
Ethan turned off the shower.
The silence returned, but now it was clean. Only the sound of their breathing and the dripping water.
He grabbed a large towel and wrapped her in it. He dried her with the same reverence as before, but now there was an underlying urgency. The need to affirm life. The need to feel that they were still there, warm and breathing.
He dried himself quickly.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
He didn’t carry her this time. He took her hand. He intertwined his fingers with hers. They walked together to the bedroom.
The bedroom was cold, dark, safe. The door was still open, the lock Maya had asked him to engage earlier forgotten. They didn’t need locks now. The bond was the lock.
They lay down on the bed.
There were no slow preliminaries. There were no games.
There was only a desperate collision of skin against skin. Ethan needed to feel her. He needed to bury himself in her to erase the image of Julian with the knife at her throat. And Maya needed him inside her to fill the void that freedom had opened in her chest.
They made love with an intensity that bordered on pain. It was fast, it was deep, it was absolute. It was an affirmation. I’m here. You’re here. We survived.
When it was over, when exhaustion finally defeated them, Ethan pulled the comforter over them. He held her from behind, spooning, his heavy arm over her waist, his hand holding her hand against her chest.
“Sleep,” he whispered against the nape of her neck. “I’m keeping watch.”
Maya closed her eyes.
She thought of the files in the office. Tomorrow, they would burn. Tomorrow, she would watch the paper turn to ash.
But today, she knew the truth. The file didn’t matter. The plan didn’t matter.
What mattered was that the monster had found her in the dark. And yes, he had sharp teeth. But he used them to tear out the throat of anyone who tried to take her from him.
And for Maya Brooks, the girl who had spent her life being invisible and disposable, being the protected obsession of a monster felt very, very much like paradise.
“I’m staying,” she whispered into the darkness.
Ethan tightened his arm around her.
“I know,” he replied. “Forever.”
And with that promise, sealed in blood and water, Maya finally fell asleep, not dreaming of escape, but dreaming of the fire they would light together in the morning.