I pat the bed. “Do you want to... I don't know, stay?”
“Part of a new plan of yours?”
Bristling, I dug my nails into the mattress. “No. I'm just lonely.”
The raw pain that attacked his fine features left me stunned. “I know all about that,” he whispered. “Besides you, I haven't really been around anyone other than Lonnie. It's easier to be a recluse.” He stood against the far wall; his head tilted back, eyes at the ceiling.
It came to me in a sudden electric pop. “Am I the only girl you've kidnapped?”
“Yes,” he blurted.
“But—the news! I heard them.” The night that felt so long ago played through my mind. “They said you were the prime suspect in multiple abductions.”
Conway ran his finger along his knee. He twiddled with a loose piece of thread, then ripped it free. “I probably am. That white van was bought for cash, I guarantee it was used for some suspicious shit before Lonnie and I got our hands on it.”
“If it's not true, how can you be so casual about this? People are out there thinking you're some awful creature!”
“They're not wrong.” He tossed the thread aside. I watched it go, forgotten. “How many times do I have to say it? I'm awful, Georgia. I'm a fucking demon. I belong somewhere worse than prison. What do I care if the world thinks I kidnapped one girl or fifteen? I'm guilty enough without them getting the facts straight.”
“It does matter,” I insisted.
He dropped his eyes onto me. “Why, so you can decide for yourself if I'm worth saving? I'll let you in on a secret, Georgia. I'm not worth saving. None of me is.”
I didn't know when I'd started shaking my head, and I didn't know if I could ever stop. “No! Just no! You've done nothing wrong, it's all an act.”
“You think this is a costume?” he asked scathingly. Running his fingers down his chest, he pointed at the door. “This place isn't pretend! This situation isn't a game! You're scared to accept what's true—that I'm your enemy.”
“Prove it.” I stood off the bed in the clean jeans and soft sweater he'd gotten for me on the way back to my room from the bath. But I didn't move closer to him. “If the only thing you've done is kidnap me, then it's up to me to forgive you. And I can! I will! So what the hell is holding you back, how can you keep insisting you're evil when the facts say otherwise?”
“Because of Anna!” he roared, throwing his arms down.
My tongue wouldn't move, but it didn't have to. He knew what I would have said next.
“You asked about her before.” His head swung low, pushed down by something greater than any external force. “She's the proof that I'm worse than scum. The reason I'm so tired of hearing you tell me I'm not a broken, terrible excuse for a human being.”
“Oh, Conway...” Pain moved through my heart for him.
Air rushed from his nose. “She was the first woman my father kidnapped,” he said softly. “The one right before you.”
The tiny drumbeats in my chest exploded. If Anna was the girl before me, that meant...
“Yes,” he said, examining the shock on my face. “She's the one who died.”
“They never found her body,” I whispered. “The police looked everywhere on the property. I don't think they believed me, but I believed you. I was sure she was there.”
Conway's head fell even lower. “My father made me bury her in the woods, miles from the house. It'd be hard for anyone to find her bones.”
But not for you, I thought, sensing his regret. “Conway, how did it happen? How did she die?”
“I killed her.”
A whistling began in my ears. “What?”
Conway approached me as slowly, one toe in front of the other. His eyes were hollow. “I killed her, Georgia.” Another step. “I was supposed to keep her alive, that was what he asked me to do, and it was a job I fucking hated but it was better than... than anything else he could have asked of me.”
My shoulders thumped into the plaster. Was this how Lonnie had felt when I'd swung at him with my shard of glass? Conway was acting erratic.
Another step. He was so close. “I couldn't handle listening to her cry anymore, nothing I said or did soothed her. I left to clear my head, I just needed some damn space.” His expression exploded like brittle steel. His shoulders began to shake. “When I came back later, she was dead.” He wrapped his fingers in his hair, his voice cracking. “Anna suffocated herself. Tangled her face in the bed sheets.”
That's why he never gave me sheets or blankets. Grasping the reasons behind Facile's decisions turned my bones into jelly. What was worse was realizing that Conway had followed his guidance.
“Do you understand how badly she must have wanted to escape, if she could have done that to herself?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said solemnly. “I do.”
“Exactly. Fuck, of course you get it.” He turned away, his head thrashing. “Dad blamed me. He was right to, you know? It was my fucking fault she died. Anna could have... maybe, like you, she could have... If I'd realized sooner I could have saved her. But I was too scared. I was a useless coward then, just like I am now.”
He was pleading with me to hate him. At the same time, he was begging me to understand. And I did—as messed up as this all was, I really did get what he was telling me. Anna's death had weighed on him this whole time.
Thanks to her he'd gone out of his way to free me.
Curling my arms around his stone-hard body, I hugged Conway from behind. “It wasn't your fault! It was an accident! You can't let this drag you down forever.”
He didn't toss me aside, but he didn't soften, either. “You think it matters if I wasn't the one who pushed her face into the mattress? Georgia, my sins have been building every year and they haven't stopped.”
A flicker of resentment turned my voice cold. “You could stop one of them right now.”
He pulled away, turning to watch me. “I can't set you free. It's not that easy.”
“Why, because you enjoy breaking me apart?” I clawed the air between us. “Just listen to yourself! Anna is a huge regret to this day, you saved me because you were afraid I'd turn out like her. So how the hell can you drag me here and do this all again?”
“You don't understand,” he said, biting each vowel. His teeth remained bared, eyes wild. Lost. “I can't handle it!”
“Handle what?”
“The thought of anyone else I love dying.”
We both froze. He'd been breathing heavily, but now he stopped breathing at all. His pupils were hard to see in the wide expanse of his eyes. “You love me?” I asked.
His hands closed on mine, yanking me against his chest. He clung to me like he expected me to fade away. “Of course I do. Ever since the night you cried while asking me to be your first kiss. I felt a warmth grow in me that I'd never experienced before. It's been there ever since.”
He loves me.
Conway bruised my lips with his, digging his fingers into my hair. He was a man intent on leaving marks across my whole being. It would have been easy to get lost in this moment. But my life was never meant to be easy.
Pressing my elbows upwards, I broke his hold, backing away. “No. Just—no.” Hot tears squeezed from the corners of my eyes. My righteous anger wasn't enough to will them away. “If you loved me—if you loved me the way I love you, you'd help me.”
The shock in his face had my heart crumbling into dust. “I can't.”
“What does your father have over you that's controlling you like this?” When he gaped at me, full of wretched pain, I knew I was right. “Tell me. Please, just help me understand why.”
“It would be so much easier for us both if you would just hate me,” he said softly.
“Your mistake was thinking I was ever capable of hating you.”
Every part of his face that could move did—the bridge of his nose crinkled, the rows in his forehead deepened, the fine lines at the edges of his eyes bloomed. He was a black hole upon himself, absorbing my feelings and unable to deny them any longer.
On stiff legs he came back to me. From his pocket he pulled out a phone; I'd never seen it until now. “Before I show you this,” he said, typing in a pass code, “I need you to know that I hoped to keep it a secret forever. I really, truly wanted you to loath me. I never deserved your pity—I never wanted it.” He paused, then he handed me the device. “Don't let this shift your opinion of me into a positive light. Men like me don't deserve that. I made every choice that got us here, and I'll answer for all of them in the afterlife.”
Shaking under his watchful eyes, I held the phone gingerly.
I didn't know what I expected to see when I looked at the screen.