Chapter 21 Edge
Edge
Iwoke up screaming.
Not the kind of scream that tears from nightmares—I'd trained myself out of those years ago. This was different. Soundless. Internal. Every nerve firing at once as my body tried to process proximity to its maker.
Nathan was already awake, hand steady on my shoulder. Not restraining. Just... there. Present. Real.
"Breathe," he said, but breathing felt like drowning. Like my lungs had forgotten their purpose and were trying to collapse instead.
The motel room came into focus slowly. Water stain on the ceiling shaped like a bird. Crack in the wall that looked like lightning. Nathan's face, concerned but calm. Always so fucking calm while I shattered into smaller and smaller pieces.
"What time is it?" My voice sounded wrong. Scratchy. Like I'd been screaming after all.
"Four thirty."
Three and a half hours until dawn. Three and a half hours until we moved on the facility—an abandoned psychiatric hospital forty minutes outside Boston where our intel suggested Gabriel had set up his new operation.
Three and a half hours to hold myself together when every cell in my body was either preparing to submit or preparing to slaughter.
I sat up, pulling away from Nathan's touch. I couldn't think with his hands on me. Couldn't separate what was real from what wasn't.
"I can feel him," I said, and hated how small my voice sounded. "It's like... like my bones know he's close. Like everything he put inside me is waking up."
"That's the trauma talking—"
"No." I turned to face him, needing him to understand. "This is different. This is... fuck, I don't have words for it. Cellular recognition? Proprietary programming responding to proximity? My body knows its owner is near."
"You don't have an owner."
"Tell that to my nervous system."
I stumbled to the bathroom, needing distance. Needing space. Needing something I couldn't name and couldn't find. The mirror showed me what I already knew—I looked like prey. Eyes too wide, pupils dilated, that particular pallor that comes from fear so deep it bypasses the conscious mind entirely.
No. Not fear. Something worse.
Anticipation.
I splashed cold water on my face, trying to shock myself back to the present. But the present kept sliding away, replaced by sense memory. Gabriel's voice. Gabriel's hands. Gabriel's particular way of breaking someone down to component parts and rebuilding them in his image.
Daddy's special girl. Daddy's perfect pet. Made for me, weren't you? Every piece of you crafted for my pleasure.
"Stop." I gripped the sink hard enough to hurt. "You're not her anymore. You're not his anymore."
But my reflection didn't believe me. She looked like a child playing dress-up in killer's clothes. Scratch the surface and find the frightened girl underneath, still desperate for Daddy's approval even while planning his murder.
Nathan appeared in the doorway. He'd pulled on jeans but nothing else, scars mapping stories across his chest. Real damage. Real survival. Not like my careful conditioning, designed to leave marks only on the inside.
"Talk to me," he said.
"About what? How I can feel my programming activating? How every trained response is warming up like an athlete before a meet?" I laughed, sharp and bitter. "How part of me is excited to see him? How fucking sick is that?"
"It's not sick. It's a conditioned response."
"Same fucking thing."
"No." He moved closer but didn't touch. Smart man. "Conditioning can be overwritten. You've been doing it for months. New patterns replacing old ones."
"Not deep enough." I turned away from the mirror, unable to stand my own reflection. "Not when he's this close. It's like... like everything you helped me build is just paint over rust. Pretty on the surface but corroded underneath."
"So we add more paint. More layers. Whatever it takes."
"There's no time—"
"There's always time."
He said it with such certainty that I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that three and a half hours was enough to reinforce the barriers between who I'd been and who I was trying to become. But my body had other ideas, trembling with chemical reactions I couldn't control.
"I need..." I stopped, throat closing around words I couldn't say.
"What do you need?"
To not exist. To be someone else. To burn away every synapse Gabriel had ever touched. To curl up in Nathan's arms and pretend we were different people in a different life.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Everything feels wrong. Like my skin doesn't fit. Like I'm wearing someone else's nervous system."
He studied me for a long moment, then held out his hand. "Come here."
"Nathan—"
"Trust me."
Trust. Such a simple word for such a complicated process. But I took his hand, let him lead me back to the bed. He sat against the headboard and pulled me between his legs, my back to his chest. Safe. Contained. Unable to see his face, which somehow made it easier.
"Tell me what you're feeling," he said against my hair. "Not thinking. Feeling."
"Scared." The admission scraped out of me like broken glass. "But not... not the right kind of scared. Not afraid of dying or failing or even pain. Afraid of—" I stopped, choking on truth.
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of wanting it." The words fell between us like stones in still water. "When I see him. Afraid some part of me will want to kneel. Want to be good. Want to be his again because that's what I was made for."
Nathan's arms tightened around me, but he didn't deny it. Didn't offer empty reassurances. We both knew how deep conditioning could run, how the body could betray even the strongest will.
"What else?" he asked.
"Angry. So fucking angry I can taste it. I want to tear him apart with my hands. I want to make him suffer for every minute he stole, every piece of me he rewrote." My hands clenched into fists. "But the anger's tangled up with the conditioning. I can't separate what's mine from what he put there."
"What else?"
I turned in his arms, needing to see his face. "Empty. Like I'm just... reactions and training and learned responses. Like there's no actual person underneath, just programs running on damaged hardware."
"That's not true."
"How do you know?"
"Because programs don't fall in love."
The words hung between us, dangerous and undeniable. My heart stuttered, then raced. Fight or flight or something else entirely, flooding my system with chemicals that had nothing to do with conditioning.
"Nathan—"
"Programs don't sacrifice for others. Don't feel guilt or shame or joy.
Don't build new connections that overwrite old ones.
" His hand cupped my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone.
"You're not empty, Bunny. You're the fullest person I know.
Full of rage and pain and terrible purpose, but also. .. this. Whatever this is between us."
"This could just be trauma bonding. Shared psychosis. Two broken people using each other—"
"Do you believe that?"
I wanted to say yes. Wanted to keep things simple, defined, controllable. But looking at his face in the pre-dawn darkness, I couldn't lie.
"No," I whispered.
"Neither do I."
He kissed me then, soft and careful. Not trying to start anything, just... connecting. Reminding me that my mouth could do more than scream or submit. That my body had learned new patterns in the months since escape.
When we broke apart, I was crying. Silent tears that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than emotion. Like my body was purging poison through salt water.
"I can't lose myself again," I said. "I can't go back to being his thing. I'd rather die."
"You won't lose yourself."
"You can't promise that."
"Watch me." He shifted us so I was straddling his lap, facing him. Eye to eye, no hiding. "I promise you won't lose yourself. Because I won't let you. Because you're too strong to break that way again. Because you've built something new in the ruins of what he made."
"What if it's not enough?"
"Then we build more. Fight harder. Whatever it takes.
" His hands framed my face, forcing me to meet his eyes.
"I love you. You hear me? I love exactly who you are right now.
Not who you were or who you might become.
This person. This moment. And I'll fight for you—against him, against your conditioning, against your own mind if necessary. "
The words broke something in me. Or maybe mended something. It was hard to tell the difference anymore. I collapsed against him, sobbing into his shoulder while he held me steady. Not the careful tears of earlier but something raw and ugly and necessary.
"I'm scared," I admitted between sobs. "Scared of seeing him. Scared of killing him. Scared of what happens after."
"I know."
"I might freeze. Might revert. Might call him Daddy and beg—"
"Then I'll remind you who you really are."
I pulled back to look at him. "How?"
"However I need to. Words. Actions. Violence if necessary." His expression was fierce, protective. "I'll shoot him myself if I have to. If it means keeping you safe from what he made you."
"No." The word came out sharp. "No, I need to do it. Need to be the one who ends him. Otherwise I'll never be free."
"Then I'll make sure you can. Whatever support you need, whatever reminders, whatever anchors—I'll be there."
I believed him. I had to believe him. The alternative was drowning in my own fractured psyche before we even reached the facility.
I rocked against him slightly, needing contact. Not sexual—everything felt too raw for that—but necessary. Physical connection to remind my body it had learned new responses. That pleasure didn't have to come with pain, that touch could be safety instead of control.
"Tell me I'm yours," I whispered. "Tell me I belong to you now, not him."
"You're mine." No hesitation. "Every broken piece, every sharp edge, every survival instinct—mine to protect. Mine to fight for. Mine to put back together when you fall apart."