“I’m eating enough.”
“She says there are nightmares.”
“Aren’t there?” I ask softly. “For you?”
That finally brings him around in front of me. It’s a shock to see him in daylight, maybe for the first time. The sunlight makes his black hair gleam. His eyes look almost luminous out here, but calming, the contrast to the sun a relief.
“I’ve had nightmares,” he says, his voice distant.
Unemotional, even though I know that’s a lie. No one experiences what we have and comes out unscathed. Avery talked to me about seeing a counselor, asked if I wanted one, but I can’t imagine what acceptance would look like.
Oh, that black pool with green tiles? Sure, I had a rough time almost drowning. I’m over it now. Anyone who says that is lying, so what’s the point?
He looks cold and removed, like he has somehow achieved the impossible.
It makes me want to tear him down.
“Tell me,” I demand.
For a moment I think he’s going to refuse. He’s going to keep that wall between us, thin now but crucial. Whatever we were before this—friends, potential lovers. Enemies. We’ve shared something now. We’re both survivors.
Then he sits down, the softest sound of his breath releasing. And in that sound I hear the wall come down. I feel it, erased from existence—if only for this moment. It makes every nerve ending tingle along my arms, my stomach. He’s been nearer to me than two feet away, but never as truly close as this.
“It started when I was five,” he says, breaking my heart in that one emotionless statement. “I’m not sure what happened before then. Nothing good, I’m sure. But I remember the training that started at five.”
“Training?” I say, horrified, terrified, but needing this. This connection.
“He said it would make me stronger. That people out in the world would hurt me. That I had to get strong enough to withstand them.”
My stomach turns over. “I’m sorry.”
“We practiced every day in that pool. There were other parts of the training. Other things I had to be ready for. In the other rooms, there’s equipment that—”
“Please stop.” I’ve heard enough for today. For a lifetime. And you only have to listen. He had to live through it. “How do you live with it?”
He looks at me then, his brow cocked in question. “What other choice is there?”
Dying, but I don’t say that. It sounds too dramatic, and besides, I don’t want to die. That’s not what I’m really asking. I’m asking how to stop the nightmares. “I feel safe when you’re with me.”
Because he’s the only one who understands.
No, that’s not entirely true. Even before this happened I felt safe when he was around. Not safe with the way he made my body feel or what he let my father borrow. Safe in that I know no one can touch me when he’s around—not even his father.
Damon is the only man on earth who would be glad to see Jonathan Scott. That would mean he could kill him. Or worse, probably. He might use some of that equipment.
“You shouldn’t,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I let you down.”
“No, you got me out of there.”
“Don’t. Don’t pretend like I did you any fucking favors. What you went through before I got there… That’s been harder to live with than anything that came before.”
It’s more than feeling safe. I finally feel warm when he’s around, my very own heat source. And it wasn’t my body that came out of that pool. It was something reptilian. Cold blooded. I can’t keep myself warm; I need him to do it for me.
“Stay with me,” I ask, my voice breaking. “Like that first night. When you were with me, I didn’t have the nightmares. You keep them away.”
You keep him away.
“It’s during nights that he comes out of hiding,” Damon says, his voice tortured. “That’s when I need to look for him. It’s my only chance to find him.”
“I need you more,” I whisper.
He makes a low growling sound. “Don’t fight me on this. I almost lost you.”
“You’re losing me now.”
His jaw clenches, a muscle moving beneath three days’ growth. “Once I’m done I’ll stay with you. I’ll protect you. But I need to do this first. I need to kill him.”
He can’t let it go. His anger has dug a hollow through him, as surely as little feet beneath the swing. “More than kill him, I’m guessing.”
It’s a merciless smile he gives me. “More than that.”
This is his addiction. No needles or cards. Hating his father. Hunting him.
And he was choosing it over me.
“No,” I say, almost desperate. “If you do this you’ll become him. That’s what he wants. That’s what he’s always wanted.”
“Maybe I could have escaped it,” Damon says, almost melancholy. “Except he touched you. And there’s no way I can let that stand. No way I can let him live.”
Which is exactly why Jonathan Scott had taken me.
Somehow, he had known that.
Damon stands, almost pushing back against the sunlight, as if the rays hurt him. And I realize with horror that they might. How much sunlight did he get as a child? “I hope one day I’m the man you deserve.”
“And until then?” I ask, the knot in my throat so thick and so rough.
“Until then I’ll make this right the only way I know how.”
Chapter Seventeen
Gabriel Miller’s house is a sprawling modern mansion, designed with so many twists and turns they must be intentional. He wants people to be lost, to be intimidated, and it works.
I have a path of breadcrumbs using the abstract art decorating the cherry wood walls—splashes of red against swaths of black. Pops of yellow. I can make it to the kitchen on my own, not that I go there often.
And I can find Avery’s room when I need her, although I never do at night.
Gabriel keeps her well occupied in the evenings when he returns from searching for Jonathan Scott. Whether I have nightmares or restless insomnia, I don’t follow the hushed words and the moans down the hallway.
Those times are the hardest, when I feel so alone my chest aches.
This is what I always feared. Mama leaving me. Daddy, too. He chose his addiction over my safety. I can’t decide whether that makes him weak or just human.
My only solace comes from a stack of books on the side table.
The only books remotely mathematical in nature are about stock charts and economics. They’re even more dry and obtuse than the automotive books, but I revel in them like they’re sun after a long rain.
There are a few books I remember were on the syllabus in English class this year. Grapes of Wrath doesn’t hold my interest, but I keep it there anyway. It serves the same purpose as my self-enforced bedtime in that trailer—pretending like there’s a grownup to guide me.
I wander down to the library after lunch, carrying the stack of books.
A fire crackles beneath the large marble mantel. Someone must be here. I take a step backward, prepared to leave. Avery peers around the wide leather wing of an armchair. “Hey, you. Don’t go.”