Grayson

Gray cinderblock and iron bars. A trap of my own design. So familiar it should feel consoling—but I pace the length of the holding cell. A wild animal. This time it’s different. Because this time, there’s someone on the outside that matters.

I underestimated Nelson.

For that, I deserve my consequences. And I’ll willingly serve out my sentence and walk death row with my head held high, as long as London remains free and unharmed.

As long as a disgrace like Nelson doesn’t get anywhere near her.

It’s the loss of information that’s torturing me. Where she is…what’s happening to her. If I call the slovenly cop over and tell him there’s an unhinged FBI agent out there with his sights set on my psychologist, would he believe me? Or would I put her at even greater risk?

My design is simple: get caught, and escape. It’s what I do. The never-ending cycle of my fucking existence. Until I go bleeding mad. With short intervals where I get to touch her…taste her…experience the sweet glimpse of heaven through her—the unexpected variable that interrupted my routine.

She changed everything.

I’m a devil with a heart. Pure lunacy. But then, even the devil loves passionately, ardently, coveting this world…so much so that he rebuffed heaven. A manic laugh starts at the base of my throat, and I’m not sure I can stop it.

They’ve stripped me of my clothes, leaving me with jogging pants and a plain white T-shirt. Nothing left in the cell that I can use—they’re not sure what’s safe and what’s not—they’ve taken everything. Only a thin cot mattress and toilet with a sink atop in the holding cell.

I search again, going over every inch. Trying to find a change, upgrade, a revision, or something I overlooked before.

I’ve studied the schematic of this building, of this cage, for months. I compared every detail and possible outcome. And I know that there’s no way out. Not without London.

I was wrong to hinge so much on her, but then this was the least likely result. Planning for a potential outcome is different than expecting it. Truthfully, she wasn’t supposed to be involved at all. Just her existence has changed the course, and I don’t know if I can ever control it again.

London said our aim was too high. Nelson was too big of a mark. I’m not sure if it was my pride or desperation to be with her that did us in—but here I am. Again. I laugh. Push my palms over my head, as if I can stop the painful webbing cluttering my brain.

We didn’t choose Nelson; he chose us. He put himself in our path and made it possible. Only I wanted it too badly—I’ve never wanted anything before her, never craved to be free until her golden-flecked eyes really saw me.

And then she appears. My angel of mercy. Clearing the maddening fog.

“Fifteen minutes,” the guard accompanying London says. “Three feet away from the cell at all times. Try anything funny, and you’re out. You got that, Sullivan?” he directs this toward me.

I nod once, and the guard steps away, giving us the illusion of privacy.

I can’t take my eyes off her. In a matter of seconds, I’ve analyzed every cell of her body, looking for evidence of pain or suffering. She’s too well collected, her wall erected to keep everyone out.

“Seems like I’m destined to visit you behind bars,” she says. Her voice is raw, strained. I’m not sure if it’s the statement or the action of talking that causes her pain, but she’s hurting.

“Remove the scarf.”

“No,” she says, averting her eyes briefly. “Not yet. I need to talk to you first, and I need you to hear me.”

Fury boils my blood. I stalk toward the row of bars and link my hands around the cold iron to douse the flames. “I’m listening.”

She looks down at her hands. Her thumb traces the inked key and the scar along her palm. “Why did you choose me, Grayson?”

When she finds my eyes again, I hold her gaze, unrepentant.

“I want the truth,” she demands.

The truth? Would she believe me if I told her that I didn’t realize the reason at first. That I was consumed by her, obsessed with the unknown—that she frightened me as much as she mesmerized me. Scrape the reasons back layer by layer, until only one, blindingly obvious motive sparkles with clarity. “Because you’re the best.”

My response neither shocks nor insults her. I’ve confirmed what she’s already puzzled out. “Schizophrenia runs in your family,” she says, pulling the seams to unravel the truth of me. “After our first session, I decided that you came to me because you wanted me to save your life. I wasn’t too far off, was I?”

I breathe in deeply, savoring her scent. I set her free so she could lock my demons away. “There’s give and take in every relationship, doc.”

“There is,” she says on a breathy whisper. Then her eyes drill me. “I’ve studied your brain scans repeatedly. I’ve shown you the proof of them. There are no signs of schizophrenia, Grayson. Your fear of inheriting your mother’s mental illness only goes so far.”

So she’s discovered Mother dearest. “And how is Becky these days?”

“Nonresponsive.”

I nod slowly, absorbing the information.

London doesn’t stop. “After your official diagnosis,” she says, “you could’ve left. Ended the sessions. You didn’t need me, not in that way anymore. You’re feeding a deluded fear of an illness that doesn’t exist. May never exist—”

“It will,” I cut her off.

She wets her lips. “And when it doesn’t, when you never fall victim to your madness, how will I fit into your puzzle then?”

I can’t help the smile that steals across my face. “Do you honestly believe you’re expendable to me?”

She shrugs with a shake of her head. “I believe that everyone becomes expendable when their usefulness runs its course. You chose me because I was the best?” she says in a mocking tone. “No, Grayson. You chose me because I was good enough, and I had a secret you could exploit. A means of manipulation for if and when our arrangement was no longer beneficial to you.”

I don’t deny it.

Her arms hug her slim waist. “Why didn’t you just kill me? Why?” she demands.

I breathe out slowly. “Oh, London. Don’t tempt a man. It’s cruel.”

“Where are the copies of my patient tapes?” she suddenly asks.

My expression hardens. “With your confession footage, of course.”

My admission doesn’t faze her, either. I figured she’d eventually put it together; I wasn’t hiding it from her—more like saving the best for last.

“Insurance policy?” She cranes an eyebrow.

I huff a humorless laugh. “Not the way you think. I was protecting you.”

“From whom?”

“From yourself,” I say. “From Lydia, apparently. We’re human, London. We waver. We doubt ourselves. I couldn’t risk losing you.”

She nods harshly. “You couldn’t risk losing your investment. After all, you put in over a year of hard work. What good would Dr. Noble be to your cause if she was broken?”

I run my fingers up the bar, wishing I could touch her. She’s fire right now.

At my silence, she looks down the corridor. The guard is surfing his phone. London lowers her voice. “Manipulation is like foreplay to you.”

I chuckle. “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll give you flowers.”

Her eyes spear me. “Next time?”

The way she says it, so incredulously, sends a current of livid heat whipping across my skin. “Why are you here?”

She doesn’t answer right away. The question hovers between us, a livewire that, if severed, will detonate our suddenly fragile connection. “Because I saw your home, Grayson.” Her eyes glisten, forcing me to drop my gaze. “I saw where you were raised…how you were raised. Since the moment you designed your first trap, setting yourself free, you’ve been seeking an answer. I understand what my initial purpose was to you. Fear of your mother’s illness, of losing your mind, made you cling to the hope that I could treat you. But there’s something else. What are you searching for?”

I move back from the bars, putting more distance between us. It’s a physical pain that I still have yet to comprehend when she’s too far away. The pain feels real. Tangible. I use it.

“Five minutes!” the guard shouts.

“Maybe it’s a curse,” I say, voice low, searching. “Maybe it’s my punishment. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s chaos theory, and nothing has any rhyme or reason at all. But whatever the purpose of this insanity, it’s the design for my life. And I have spent a lifetime reworking that design. Remastering the puzzle…and the only answer I’ve ever been given is you.” I step closer. “You’re the closest thing to freedom I’ve ever tasted.”

“You’ll never be free. You’re doomed to repeat this self-inflicted cycle forever. The madness won’t take you—these bars will. You keep putting yourself here again and again, trying to escape, but you’re still locked in that dark room.”

“Get the fuck out of my head, doc.”

She studies me, undeterred. “If you fear it enough, you’ll manifest it. You’re mind will make sure of that.” She takes her glasses off, letting me see her eyes. “And when that day comes, I’m not sure I can help you.”

“You have to.”

“Because you helped me?”

“Yes. It’s the price. The tradeoff.” I tilt my head. “Are you not grateful for everything I’ve shown you? If you could take it all back, would you?”

She shakes her head. “No. I wouldn’t, but I don’t know how—”

“You will.” My hands clench into fists. “If the day comes where you have to kill me, you will.”

A horrified expression crosses her face, but it’s gone just as quickly. She’s thought of this before. She’s had to. We’re as much of a threat to each other as we are each other’s sick salvation.

Even if my mother’s illness doesn’t claim me, my love for London might.

Love is madness.

“If you can’t help me, then you have no choice but to end me, London. Promise me that now.”

“Maybe I couldn’t…” She trails off, lost in thought. “But Lydia could.”

A slow smile curls my lips. “Then I guess we should keep her around, after all.”

“Lydia Prescott is just as important as the boy who’s still locked in that dark room under a greenhouse.” She swallows hard, wincing. “As your doctor, as the woman who loves you, I’m telling you to embrace him. He’s not your enemy. Stop trying to escape, Grayson.”

My nostrils flare. Heat creeps up my spine. Resentment singes the edges of my vision in vibrating waves of red. “Strip all the layers away,” I say. “I suppose it’s only fair. Seems these bars just brings out the honesty in us, baby.”

She nods, as if recalling her experience in the cage where I locked her up, forcing her to remember the past she tried to keep buried. “A lock and a key,” she says. “We are an inevitability.”

My smile stretches. “Till death?”

She answers by removing the scarf. I notice every nuance, slide of hand, and when she slips her hand under the material to free if from around her neck, she retrieves an object from the gaudy locket beneath.

The guard at the end of the hall missed the action, but I didn’t. Only I can’t focus on what she’s wrapping in the scarf. I can only see the welts, the bruises—the dark fingerprints marking her neck.

I grip the bars so hard my fingers ache.

I will kill him.

I know this as clearly as I know the sky is fucking blue.

London reads the tension thrumming through me and says, “No. We still need him.” She glances at the guard. He’s watching us. “It’s my choice. Mine.”

Rage lashes at my insides. “Then you better get to him first.”

Despite my attempts to be more than—better than—mortal, I’m no god. I’m blood and bone and London is steeped in my marrow. So deep I can feel her becoming a part of me. The pain won’t ever stop. The compulsions won’t ever stop. I’m human and I’m weak, and she’s still my only chance at freedom. My need for her won’t stop.

The guard stands.

I release the bars, my hands burning. “Give me the scarf.”

Her throat bruised and swollen, London takes a shallow breath. “Did you plan this?” she asks. “Back then. Before. Did you plan all this out in such meticulous detail that every possible outcome had its own contingency? Or are we that fated?”

“Like a bad Shakespearean tragedy,” I tell her. I have over a hundred different locks memorized. The second I saw the tattooed key on her hand, I knew exactly which lock manufacturer it belonged to. From there, it was only a matter of obtaining blueprints. Getting a record of which jails and holding cells in Maine used the same manufacturer. “I chose Rockland for more than its scenic beauty,” is all I say aloud to her.

Her soft lips part. Her gaze shifts to the bars of the cell, her eyes following the iron all the way up. The cell in her basement is made by the same company who installed the cells in her father’s police station all those years ago. I know this, too, because I made sure I knew it. And that jail cell manufacturer is the same one who installed the cell I’m in right now.

She smiles knowingly. “We’re a fucked-up kind of inevitability. Not fated. Doomed.”

She’s probably right. Good things don’t emerge from basements and cellars… Dark things do. Demons burned by the light.

“You’re still beautiful,” I say, my voice thick with the accent I try to conceal. “My dark angel.”

Her gaze comes into focus on me. “How did you know I would connect it?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t. That’s the fated part, London. The variable between us I’ve never been able to break down and analyze. We’re inexorable. Inescapable. The one prison I don’t want to escape.”

She looks at the scarf in her hand, staring past the material to the key she’s hidden within. “It may not work.”

No. It might not. It probably shouldn’t. The chances that the key used to open her childhood cage would be a match to this cell is highly unlikely. I’ve already done the math. Calculated the odds. But like us, it can be warped and twisted into something perfect.

With a couple of crude modifications, London’s key will be an exact fit.

“We’re connected on some deeper level,” I say to her. “Through bars and cages and prisons…in the physical sense and the mind. That’s why you could never be expendable to me. You’re my match.”

Does she believe me? Some things can’t be manipulated. What I feel for her is real.

“I’m not the hero, London,” I say. “But I’m not the villain, either.”

“Times up, doctor,” the guard calls out.

London moves quickly. She rushes the cell and thrusts the scarf through the bars. “He’s going to take me,” she whispers. “Let him take me.”

I grasp the scarf and try to touch her hand, desperation clawing painfully to the surface, before she’s snatched away.

“Get her back!”

Two guards push London flush against the wall, giving me only enough time to slip the key between my fingers—like a cheap magic trick.

“Drop it, Sullivan,” the officer orders.

I let the thin material go. The scarf drifts to the cement floor soundlessly.

“Step back,” he instructs me.

As the guards escort London out, I keep sight of her for as long as I can. Until she disappears down the corridor. I move to the back wall of my cell as the cop unlocks the barred door and retrieves the scarf.

“Fucking groupies,” he mutters as he inspects it. He gives it a sniff. “Smells good, though. You got one hot doctor, Sullivan. I’m keeping this.” He sneers at me, and I let him.

Once they leave, I settle in the corner. I run the pad of my thumb along the teeth of the key. Anticipation twists my mouth into a smile. I wait until the jailhouse goes still to start making the alterations to the key, using the edge of the steel sink to file down the teeth.

In less than two hours, an armored truck will arrive with a small army to escort me to prison. They’re taking their time, making the adequate preparations. Making sure I have no chance of escape.

And Nelson is going to take her.

London’s only chance is if Nelson is terrified to touch her.

I work at the key, sweat leaking into my eyes. The burn satisfying.

When it’s time, I go. And I make sure I do enough damage on my way out that Nelson knows I’m coming for blood.