“What about the camp?”
“I’ll burn it to the ground—turn it to ash.”
I nodded.
“His death is for Claire. But everything else…that’s for you.”
The holiday break passed quickly. Claire and I spent a lot of time together, and she spent a lot of time with her father too. We made a trip to the stables to visit their horses in the rain, took down the Christmas tree after the new year, and then the house was back to its usual self. Now, it was just winter…gray skies and slick sidewalks.
I’d been living in this winter a long time.
When I’d arrived at the cult, it’d been the beginning of fall. Months passed, and that cold deepened, the ground feeling like ice against my bare feet. But even if spring would have arrived, my mind would have been forever trapped in the cold.
I hadn’t returned to my bedroom since the incident. Whatever Benton did with the statue…I had no idea. All I knew for sure was that it was out of the house. That night when I looked out the window and saw Forneus’s face…I’d wondered if that was real.
It was still hard to know what was real and what wasn’t.
I had just finished the dishes in the sink when the front door opened. My ears immediately strained for the sound of his heavy footsteps, his gait slow like he was never in a hurry.
I finished with the dishes as I heard him behind me, felt his heat around me, felt a presence so palpable it felt as if it was inside me. As if I had eyes in the back of my head, I knew he was behind me, knew exactly where he was.
Then his hands gripped the counter on either side of me, and his chest pressed into my back. Pine needles. Bar soap. The smell of man. It felt like the stove was on because the kitchen suddenly became much warmer.
My head turned over my shoulder to regard the man who towered over me, seeing those bright-blue eyes piercing into mine. Possessive. Intense. Deeper than the deepest part of the sea.
My hands dried on the towel as I held his stare. “How was your night?”
His eyes remained steady as he cupped the side of my face and pulled me closer. He leaned in and kissed me, a slow kiss packed with purpose. His neck angled farther to meet my shorter stature. When the kiss was over, he left me there and headed to the fridge to help himself to the leftovers.
I was paralyzed—because he’d never done that before.
He never kissed me when he walked in the door.
He ate his food cold and paired it with a glass of scotch. His heavy body occupied one of the chairs at the dining table, and whether he liked his meal or not, it wasn’t clear. He devoured everything that I served him, even the stuff that Claire didn’t like.
I sat across from him and watched him, watched the way he hunched over his food, the way his large size made the table creak underneath the weight of his arms. Whenever he had a big bite in his mouth and he chewed, he would study my gaze, study me exactly the way I studied him.
“When are you going to talk to him?”
He finished his bite and washed down the eggs with a drink of his scotch. “Tonight.”
My chest automatically seized, like every muscle tightened all at once.
“And how do you think that’ll go?”
He took another drink of his scotch. “I’ll take care of this, alright?”
“What if he—”
“I said, I’ll take care of it.”
“I just… I don’t want you and Claire to go through this—”
“Claire doesn’t know a thing.”
I released a painful sigh.
His plate was clean, so he set his fork on top and held my gaze. “It may not happen tonight or tomorrow. But I will make this go away. And even if I can’t, he’ll move on to someone else eventually.”
Images flashed across my mind, the cold statues in the center of the camp, Beatrice’s blood on the dais as she was carved like a roast, the women in their gowns in the church, playing pretend to stay alive. “That’ll make me feel better…but not by much.”
His eyes narrowed, as if he didn’t understand.
“Someone will take my place…and suffer the way I suffered. The cycle will continue, the graveyard will run out of vacancies, and then they’ll make a new graveyard…for all the women who come after.”
With his elbows on the table, he stared at me.
“It’ll never really end…”
His eyes were steady, and instead of his usual flash of irritation, there was something else. “It will—someday.”
I dropped my chin and looked at the table between us.
“Baby.”
The air that was yanked into my body was involuntary. My lungs expanded on their own, gulping the oxygen my blood suddenly craved. My eyes remained down, the echo of his voice reverberating in my head. It wrapped around me like a piece of armor, a bulletproof vest, the kind of affection I’d never known.
He held his silence, waiting for me to raise my chin again.
I finally did, and it was hard to look him in the eye when he looked like that. Intense. Commanding. Powerful.
“You have my word.”
Ten
Benton
I got Claire ready for bed and tucked her in for the night.
She pulled her new stuffed bear against her chest and turned on her side to face me.
“What’s his name?”
“Bleu.”
I smirked. “Looks just like him too.”
She gave a chuckle as she squeezed him tighter.
I tucked the blanket around her to keep her warm then ran my hand over the top of her hair, catching some of the soft strands.
Her eyes always turned tired when I did that. They started to blink now. She tried to keep them open, but the fatigue was too much. It was a pointless battle, but it happened every night, nonetheless. When she was a baby, she would fight it even more, and we ended up with a lot of crying fits.
When her eyes closed, they stayed closed this time.
I gave her a kiss on the forehead.
“Daddy…?” Her eyes remained closed, her bear against her chest.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Can Constance be my mommy too?”
I stared at her innocent face as I stilled on the spot.
Her eyes opened when she didn’t get an answer.
“If you want her to be.”
She closed her eyes again.
I watched her for a moment longer before I let myself out of her bedroom. Constance was on the couch in the living room, ready to say goodbye before I left for the night. In her leggings and a loose-fitting shirt, she was comfortable for the evening but still stunning to me. She rose to her feet when I came close, ready to walk me to the door.
I held her stare for a moment.
“What is it?”
After a quick deliberation, I gave a shake of my head. “Claire just told me she loves you… That’s all.”
Her eyes softened like a wilted flower, and the depth of that love went well below the surface, into the recesses of her heart. “I love her too.”
I’d never had a woman anywhere near Claire, but I imagined if I had, they would’ve tried to use my daughter to earn my affection. It would be a superficial ploy just to get to me. But I never had to worry about that with Constance—because she loved my daughter before she even knew me.