4. Drystan #2
I head to our bedroom and open the small top drawer of the nightstand. It is my shrine. My secret.
Inside rest the pieces I have collected over the years, small, ordinary things that meant nothing to anyone else, but everything to me.
A single golden hair I took from her brush at her dorm when she was eighteen, preserved in a tiny glass vial.
A coin she was playing with while waiting for exam results, the one that rolled under a table at a coffee shop while she laughed nervously trying to retrieve it.
A straw she used during a late-night movie, still faintly stained with her lipstick.
A crumpled receipt with her handwriting on the back, a hurried note reminding herself to buy bread.
A button from the coat she wore almost every day that winter.
I place the three new black strands I took from her pillow next to the golden one in a fresh vial. The contrast sits there in the drawer, jarring and perfect, the old her and the new her, side by side.
I close the drawer slowly and let the obsession settle deeper into my bones, warm and inevitable.
Soon she will be here, sleeping in this bed, breathing the same air as these fragments of her life.
I move to the office where the twelve camera feeds bloom across the screens in cool light.
There she is.
Briar sleeps in her bed, sheets tangled around her legs, that black hair fanned across the pillow I once pressed my face into. She looks peaceful. Innocent. Utterly unaware that the man who dared touch her no longer exists.
I lean back in the leather chair, heart still racing with dark satisfaction, and let a slow, unhinged smile spread across my face.
One less obstacle.
One less filthy hand on my beautiful girl.
The rain keeps falling outside, drumming steadily against the stone. I keep my eyes on her all night.
“Sleep tight, my love. I will stand in the dark and guard what is mine. No one else will ever have you. Not in this life… or the next.”
The rain streaks steadily down the tinted windows of the BMW as I sit parked three buildings down, engine off, the laptop glowing warm on my lap.
Twelve perfect feeds fill the screen, and I have not blinked in twenty minutes.
My coffee sits cold and forgotten in the cupholder.
I do not care. I am exactly where I belong, watching.
Today is her day off.
She sits curled on the off-white couch, legs tucked beneath her, black hair falling in loose waves over her shoulders. The phone lights her face from below as her thumbs move across the screen. She is texting him—the dead man whose body now feeds the hellebore roots back at the mansion.
His phone vibrates against my thigh where I keep it, a low buzz that sends a slow, unhinged smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. No. You are most definitely not still on for tonight. He is busy nourishing our flowers.
She stares at the screen, waiting. The silence stretches between us through the feed. I can almost taste the irritation building in her.
“Silent treatment, seriously? Again? The hell with you, Luke.”
She throws the phone onto the couch. It bounces once and lands face-down on the cushion.
She stands and walks to the tiny kitchen, pulling a bottle of red wine from the rack.
Two in the afternoon. Too early, but she does not seem to care.
The cork pops with a soft, wet sound that carries clearly through the hidden microphone.
She pours until the glass is nearly full, the deep red liquid catching the gray light filtering through the window.
I watch the way her throat moves as she takes the first long swallow, and my fingers tighten on the edge of the laptop until the plastic creaks under the pressure.
I do not like this.
She refills the glass, carries it back to the living room, and picks up her phone again. A moment later music fills her apartment, Never Know by Bad Omens, turned up loud enough that the bass vibrates through my headphones and into my ribs. She starts to sway.
Black sweatpants hang low on her hips. An oversized black t-shirt with a white skull across the chest clings to her frame as she moves. Her arms lift slowly above her head, hips rolling in time with the heavy notes, her voice joining the song, soft, raw, breaking slightly on the high notes.
Fuck. I missed her voice.
I lean closer to the screen, my breath fogging the surface of the laptop. Last night she sounded different when she spoke to him, flat, guarded, not truly herself. This is the real Briar, the one I kept alive inside my head all those years. Aching. Beautiful. Mine.
Her apartment is a strange, perfect collision of who she used to be and who she is becoming.
Dark forest prints and raven feathers adorn the walls.
Skulls of every kind: small ceramic ones, black crystal ones that line the shelves alongside candles in every size and shape.
Yet the furniture remains lighter, softer: the pale beige couch, white throw blankets draped across it, and that persistent touch of purple she has always loved woven through the space.
The same purple I chose for the master bedroom at Hellebore.
The same purple that will soon wrap around her when I finally bring her home.
She still loves candles. Good. I made sure dozens of them wait for her there, especially the dark cherry ones that were always her favorite.
She finishes the glass and pours another.
Wine sloshes over the rim, but she does not seem to notice.
She keeps singing, keeps swaying to the music, yet I see the pain bleeding through now on every chorus.
It lingers behind her blue eyes. The way her shoulders curve inward.
The way her fingers tighten around the stem of the glass until her knuckles turn white.
My chest squeezes so hard it hurts.
I press two fingers to the screen, right over her face, as if I could push through the pixels and touch her skin.
“I am here, my love,” I breathe, voice low and ragged in the quiet of the car.
“I am right here. I am going to take every drop of that pain you carry and pull it into my own dark soul so yours can shine again. The way it used to. The way it was always meant to.”
The rain outside beats harder against the roof and windows. Wind rattles the branches overhead. I imagine the words riding the storm through the streets, slipping between her curtains, wrapping around her like the black hellebore petals I left on her doorstep.
She does not know I am watching. She does not know Luke is already rotting in my garden. She does not know that every sway of her hips, every cracked note in her voice, every early glass of wine only adds fuel to the fire that will burn the world down if it means keeping her safe.
I sit back in the leather seat, heart hammering against my ribs, cock half-hard from the sight of her dancing alone in that apartment, and let the obsession sink deeper into my bones.
Soon she will dance for me. Soon she will sing for me. Soon the only pain she feels will be the sweet kind I give her when I remind her exactly who she belongs to.
I reach for the small black hellebore bloom resting on the dashboard, fresh from the garden this morning, and press it to my lips.
She dances and sings for hours, drinking steadily. Not a single piece of food or water passes her lips.
Her phone pings.
The sound cuts through the music. I lean closer to the laptop screen, breath fogging the glass.
A new message slides across the top. “Tonight we hit Bauhaus?” Lucille.
What the fuck is Bauhaus?
My fingers fly across the second phone I keep in the center console. I search it quickly, heart pounding. The results load fast.
A gothic club. Industrial. Black walls, blood-red lights.
Shit.
Briar is already typing. Her thumbs move quickly across the cracked screen, that familiar half-smile tugging at her lips, the same one she used to give the court when she won a match all those years ago.
“Of course!” she replies.
Well… I guess I am going to a gothic club tonight.