27
The tiredness and the craving for drugs evaporate from my system as I pace toward a heavily tinted, black car flashing to signal it’s open.
Nic tails me out of the house in his comfy attire: black joggers and a slack tank boasting all his tattoos and macho muscles. He’s wearing a big, gold watch on his left wrist, passively checking the time as if in a rush to be somewhere.
Once I’m settled in the passenger seat of the car, he jumps in behind the wheel, fires up the engine, and speeds off the estate to take me to Charlie.
I try not to think about what’s going to happen when I see him, assuring myself it will be okay. Now that I know what’s wrong—and I’m certain he hasn’t left me—I can try to help him. I can get Charlie back on track and everything else will follow suit. We’ll find James, hopefully locate and butcher Robert, and our world’s axis will level out.
Nic pulls onto a shadowed country lane while sending numerous messages from his phone, I imagine warning his brother of my looming presence. He slows the pace when the lane becomes narrow, overgrown in sky clawing trees. A full moon peeks through the branches, hitting the blacked-out windshield in electric white rays. The road surface is uneven, bumpy with potholes. I hold the handle above the passenger door to steady my bouncing, mentally taking note of where we’re heading. It can’t be more than a mile from Charlie’s house when we come to a mammoth, brick wall covered in prickly metal fencing. It stretches far beyond what I can see on either side of tall, iron gates. A fortress.
“This is the safe house,” Nic says, glancing left over his shoulder at me. “Charlie won’t be pleased that I’ve brought you here when we’re not even under attack.”
I stare out the window, ignoring him before I hit him. He and his brother lied. They insisted that Charlie was either in France or acted like they didn’t know of his location. They could have spared me a week of hell, but chose not to, so I choose to keep my fucking mouth shut.
“Do you know what this place is, Blaire?” He yanks up the squeaky handbrake just as the iron gates buzz open. “This is where our most dangerous men reside in England—men Charlie won’t have at the house because you’re there. They’re murderers and psychos, all living on top of each other, hungrily anticipating battle.” His voice is deep and gravelly, blackening as he tries to move my emotions by telling me this isn’t the place for me. “As you’ll soon see, the men overindulge in captive whores and drugs, something I’m sure you detest.”
Why would he think that?
I sneer at an image of Charlie spilling all my secrets to his family.
“Some bring their pet wives to keep them company, Blaire. The minute you walk through the door, you’ll see it all. You shouldn’t fucking be here.”
I look right at him, eyes lazy and unfazed. “I’ve been with Maksim-Markov since I was eight years old.” I don’t need to elaborate on that. He knows damn well what I mean. “Are you going to drive in or shall I get out and walk?”
He kisses his teeth in irritation, lets down the handbrake, and steers through the gates. I notice the veins in his tattooed hands are pulsing, evidence of his frustration, but he shouldn’t be frustrated about bringing me here. I am familiar with hell.
The redbrick building is as wide as it is tall, appearing to touch the black sky with its pitched roof. It’s lacking in windows, surrounded by more prickly fencing. Los Zetas guard every shadow, each one loftier and larger than the next. Nic rolls down his window, drapes an arm out over the frame, and nods at a few of them.
“¿Vienes a jugar?” someone asks Nic if he’s come to play, but Nic shakes his head.
“This is Blaire”—he thumb-points at me—“is Charlie here? I’ve texted, but he hasn’t replied.”
“Wow,” the dark eyed man ducks to say hello, “tis’ nice to meet you, Señorita Blaire. Damn, if we’d have known you were coming, we’d have prepared.”
Prepared?
I pull the collar of my hoodie up and around my mouth, unsure of how to respond.
“She doesn’t say much”—Nic cocks a shrug—“Charlie in there or what?”
“Yeah, Señor Charlie is inside. Want me to shut things down before you go in? Tis’ getting pretty wild.”
“I’ll bet.” Nic huffs, shooting me an ironic glance. “You don’t need to shut things down, man. My brother won’t keep her here long.”
My nerves peak at the idea that he’s going to send me packing before I’ve barely crossed the threshold—but I won’t let him. He’s going to hear me out, even if I have to fight to the fucking death.
We pull up next to Charlie’s black Range Rover, and I’m out of the car before Nic kills the engine, kicking my door shut. The ground under my feet pounds from the hardcore, Latino music coming from inside the building, and it makes my blood boil to know I’ve been stressing for seven fucking days while he’s been here enjoying music and God knows what else.
God knows what else... I gulp back a jealous heave.
I peer about for a door, spotting one tucked under a leafy archway. It leads onto a shadowed passage where smoke tints the air in lazy, gray streaks. It stinks of potent herbs.
Scorching body heat comes up beside me, and I flinch until I see it’s just Nic. “Sure you want to go in there?” he asks, nodding ahead.
“I’m sure.”
Ignoring several doors, we follow the sound of pounding music to the very end, walking out onto an enormous, open courtyard. It’s decorated in wooden benches and bushy plant pots lining every edge, under soft mood lighting. I don’t know what I was expecting to find—armed men, or maybe a bordello—but this certainly wasn’t it. The energy is strife, bustling with the sorest sights: naked girls, some bloody and bruised chained up on podiums, while others are being forced to serve in the most debauched fashion. Cock sucking. Fucking. Caning.
Petrified screams pierce over the music, coming from a young girl taking one hell of a beating. She’s bent over cuffed to a bench, thick welts covering her body from her shoulders to her butt—minus the kidney area. The man in the mask caning her black and blue seems to know what he’s doing, but that doesn’t make seeing it any easier.
Disregarding the sights, I scan for Charlie. There’s an open bar across from where I’m standing, drogas y licor written across the top in florescent red lighting. Older women dressed in leather gear tend the station, serving Los Zetas with alcohol, smoking joints, and glass trays mounted in dusty, white cocaine.
My mouth dries with hatred at the mere idea that Charlie would seek mental refuge in a place like this. This is hell—Maksim’s idea of heaven.
“Hey, man!” A large guy comes up to us, wearing a pair of leather pants with his cock bulging at the seams. I don’t know where to look. “Got yourself a redhead mamacita?”
“This is Señorita Blaire,” Nic says, making the guy pale in an instant. He then tells him to fuck off in their own language before his tattooed hand appears in my line of vision, pointing in the direction of an iron staircase. “You’ll find Charlie up there,” he says in my ear, so I can hear him over the music. His warm breath tickles my neck, and I step away to put some distance between us, heading for the staircase.
It leads up onto a vine decorated balcony top that circles and overlooks the courtyard. There are at least twenty rooms up here with numbered plaques hanging above each door. They go off in every direction, sectioned off by thick, red drapes.
On instinct, I glance down at the debauched, bustling courtyard. I spot Nic leaning idly at the bar, looking up at me shaking his head. He gestures left with three fingers, signaling at the numbered plaques above the doors. Clocking onto his hint, I pace for room three, pull back the curtain, and enter another corridor. I sneak down, following a thin row of lights on the ceiling, leaving behind the thumping music for more tranquil, sensual Latino tunes. I turn left at the end and enter a heavy wooden door. I have to shove with my knee to get it open, letting out a thick smog. Choking on a breath, I realize what the potent, herby stench is: cannabis.
I want to be angry at Charlie for taking drugs, but I feel like a hypocrite since I was having cravings not half an hour ago.
I shove the door closed and project a wide view of the smoky room, uncomfortable under the amatory music. Dim, red moon lighting burns the high, stone ceiling, pulsing in tune with the sounds. It’s a large, open space, dominated by a half-moon leather seating arrangement set around a paddle bench that’s armed with cuffs.
Sharp hairs come up all over my body, as I sense it in here—painful sexual acts.
Stiletto scuffs mar the stone floors, and deep scratches blemish the polished wood on the paddle bench. The walls are covered in purple drapes, except for the one at the back. It’s exposed redbrick. There’s a tiny girl standing there facing away from me, arms slack at her sides.
My blood pressure soars at the sight of her—and it bubbles about to boil over when Charlie ducks in through an open archway behind one of the drapes.
———
Charlie pauses dead in his tracks, nostrils flaring at the sight of me.
I’m furious to see he’s high on liquor and drugs, clasping a glass of brandy in one hand and a fat joint in his other, pinched between his fingers. I can’t tell if he’s angry or shocked by my presence, but he’s pulsing with lethal energy, commanding the mood in the room.
I don’t say anything right away. I couldn’t speak if my life depended on it. I barely even register the two henchmen standing at Charlie’s sides, blinking at me like idiots with their mouths hanging open. I’m too wired, focused on that girl, some little suka homing in on my life.
Through the smoke, I can see dark, copper colored hair pours down her spine, nearly covering her boney ass. Her toothpick fingers wiggle at her sides, an act of nervousness. She attempts to peer back at me but flinches to resume position. Definitely nervous, and she should be because if she thinks she’s walking out of here alive, she’s seriously mistaken.
Horribly engrossed, I study her clothes: tight, black sports trousers, white trainers, and a casual black sports top clinging to her narrow ribcage. She’s a lightly tan, Latino señorita. Not exactly my doppelganger, but Charlie has tried to imitate me.
“Who the fuck is she?!” I finally scream through the room, breaking our mute state, and the henchmen step back with caution. Charlie doesn’t move an inch, reserving himself for whatever reason. “By God,” I hiss, holding his strangely deadpan gaze while mine is ablaze with insanity, “you had better say something, Charlie...!”
“Leave, now,” he orders in Spanish to the men, the raspy notes in his voice unbelievably calm.
The men grab their drinks from a corner table, head-bow, and walk past without looking at me. I glare to watch them go, then I glare over at Charlie. He watches me back through the heavy blueness of his eyes, creating a dark orb of silence around us, even over the music. It makes me feel spidery and prickly. It makes me feel...anxious.
To chase away the intensity of his presence, I scan his appearance, not really sure what I’m looking for. His glossy, black hair is tidy, pulled away from his fiercely handsome face in a ponytail, and he’s wearing the usual: fitted jeans, tanned boots, a long-sleeved black sweater, and a large silver watch clasped around his veiny, left wrist. His body is still buff and trim, a machine of muscle, so I know he’s in a good physical state of health.
What has he been doing for seven fucking days?
“You too, Edita,” he says, addressing her by name. “Leave.”
“Not a fucking chance.” I grab her arm as she tries to slip past me. A timid squeal escapes her lips, and her eyes drop to her feet like she’s not allowed to make eye contact.
I try to swallow but stop halfway in fear that I’m going to choke on my heavy tongue. Maksim conditioned me to be like this, meek and silent under his govern, so he could feel mighty by dominating himself over me.
I want to puke at Charlie’s obvious intentions.
“What are you doing here, baby?”
Baby!
“Is that a trick fucking question?” I shout, blazing in anger, but again, he doesn’t react. He merely stands there observing me, head tipped to the side. “What do you have to say, Charlie? Get the fuck out? I don’t want you here?” I mimic what he said to me word for word in a deep, sarcastic voice.
He shakes his head, blinking slowly.
“Good,” I growl. “Because I’m not going anywhere this time.”
“I’m sorry for the way I shouted at you last week,” he says softly, the power of his eyes glancing between mine. “Truly. My intentions were never to drag you down to my mood level.”
I scowl at him, offended. He didn’t just shout at me. He threw me out of his office!
He strolls across the room to flick a switch on the wall, causing a suction sound to come from the air vent near the door. It begins clearing the smog, cleaning and cooling the air. Charlie then stubs out his joint in a crystal ashtray on a side table, knocks back the rest of his drink, and puts the glass down. He moves to switch off the stereo hanging above a corner unit, drowning us in real silence. I wait on pins and needles for him to speak but he doesn’t pivot to me right away. He remains there, arched at the neck, staring down at something on the floor.
“Charlie, what the hell is going on?” My Russian accent slices through our quietness, dripping in apprehension. “Have you been here with her this whole week?” I tug at the girl, enjoying her squealing resistance. “Why wouldn’t you return my text messages?”
“Nothing’s going on, baby. I just needed some space.”
“Needed some space?!” My voice hits ceiling high. “I’ve been worried sick about you and James, since you just pissed off for a whole week, and I find you here, stoned, with her, taking some space?” I drag the girl forward a step, causing her to yelp again. “Who the hell is she?!”
Charlie finally turns on his feet, smoothing a hand down his chest in an act of reservation. “She isn’t what you think.”
“No?” My eyebrows shoot up. “What am I thinking?” You’re fucking her. You left me for her! My stomach coils with dread at the mere thought of it.
“She’s just a visual.” He gestures a dismissive hand, then spits in Spanish that she must leave, right now.
“She’s a, what?” I ask, snatching her back a step. “Ohhh no, I want you here, suka. I want to know what your deal is. Sit down.” I shove her onto the couch, and her long red hair slips off her head, spilling down her scrawny frame onto the floor at her feet.
Things rarely shock me, but the wig makes my jaw drop.
She curls up in the corner with sluggish movements, and a docile moan escapes her lips. She’s stoned, too. I fucking know it. A stomach-churning image of her and Charlie sitting here getting high together ignites my jealousy. It’s like razor prickles in my belly. I could scream I’m so furious.
“Have you been fucking him?” I kick the couch when she doesn’t answer, making her flinch. “Have you been fucking her, Charlie?”
He shakes his head, maintaining his cool, but I flip. I go for her, and Charlie lunges at me. He grabs my wrists, telling me to stop and listen, but I twist out of his hold and boot him in the stomach with a deafening scream, knocking him into a unit of objects. I bend over the girl, battling through her pathetic attempt until I finally grip her jaw in both hands and snap her neck. It causes one hell of a crack, making my body rush with the strangest feeling: liberation. Ecstasy educed liberation.
I exhale, high from murder, while she sprawls out lifelessly on the couch with her head bent to the side, eyes emptying of life.
“What have you done?!” Charlie dashes to his feet, but I step in front of him like a wild Russian wall. “She did nothing wrong!” His hands wave about in a craze, face screwed with lunacy. “Dios mío, I paid her to stand there and look like you!”
He, what?
Rage explodes behind my eyes. I draw back and smack him so hard his head whips to the side, the sound ringing through the space between us. “You go near any woman, and I will fucking kill them!” I shout so hard it burns my throat. “I should snap your fucking neck for what you’ve put me through this last week!”
He kneads his anew, bristly jaw, staring to the side until his eyes find mine, pulsing with indignation.
“Is this how you want us to be, huh?” I flash a glance at the dead girl, abhorring how broken my voice sounds. “Me belonging totally to you while you momentarily belong to whoever your cock is buried in?” I gulp out a whisper, “Just like it was with Maksim.”
Charlie’s expression drops, mood coming down a mile. I feel it as strongly as I see it, realization hitting him like a thunderbolt. “No...” He shakes his head, disgusted by what he’s done to me. “Don’t say that, Blaire. We...we will never be like that.”
“We already are! Look!” I jab a finger in her direction, but he takes my hand, actually trembling to hold me. His touch scalds, creating a stir of emotions in my belly, and I hate it.
“I haven’t laid a finger on her,” he says softly, curling his hands around my fist. “I wouldn’t, Blaire. I fucking swear it! Regardless of what you might think, I haven’t wanted another woman since I laid eyes on you. I haven’t been with anyone else since I bought you from Maksim.”
I don’t believe him, and it hurts. Fuck, thinking about him with other people hurts right here in my chest. My eyes sting as my chin quivers to say, “I hate you so much right now.”
“Ohhh, baby, don’t say that.” He steps up to me but I step back, pulling out of his grasp to cuddle my middle. “Blaire, please...”
“I do hate you,” I snivel, smudging a tear from my nose. “I don’t even know if James is okay, no thanks to you. I trusted you, Charlie.” I blink up at him through watery eyes. “I swore to hold back on all questions for two weeks, for you, and look at what you’ve done.”
His mouth tightens as he swallows past what looks like a lump in his throat. “Lo siento.” I’m sorry.
“Sorry won’t save my brother!” I scream, tensing on every word.
“James is fine.” The backs of Charlie’s fingers brush my cheek to catch a tear, sending a wave of emotions through me. “I promise, your brother is okay. You shouldn’t be worrying about him, Blaire. We had an agreement.”
I scoff. As if that matters anymore.
I step away when he tries to touch me again, blocking him with my shoulder.
“Blaire, baby, c’mon. Let me hold you. I fucking miss you.”
“No,” I say to the floor. “You sought refuge in this place with her when I was there for you, Charlie. I called your phone.” My eyes flicker up to his, stomach panging at the sight of him. I miss him, too, even though he’s here. “Why didn’t you come to me? Why did you come here to her? Don’t you love me anymore?”
“What?! Don’t be so silly.” He walks to me, backing me in to a wall so I can’t get away from him. “I love you more than I love anyone, Blaire.” He stoops at the knees so we’re eye to eye, staring for prolonged seconds. “You know I do.”
Shaking my head, I shrink into myself. I try to refuse him, but his rough hands cradle my cheeks. They’re large and warm and...home. My heart squeezes against knowing better.
“Why...why did you go, Charlie?”
His eyes chase between mine in a painful, long moment of silence. “I stayed away because I don’t want you to see that side of me.”
That, side of him?
His admission sparks my curiosity like wildfire. I go over and over in my mind trying to figure out what he means, but I can’t come to a conclusion.
“What side of you?” I ask, but he doesn’t fucking answer. His eyes shut down. His hands slip away from my face, and now, he’s the one to wander back a few paces.
I brood, demanding his reason, anything at this stage. “I won’t stop, Charlie.” I follow him in his silence around the room, tugging at his arm. “I’ll go on and on and on, in your sleep if I have to, so just tell me what you’re talking about.”
“The monster!” he spins around to yell in my face, causing me to cringe in reaction. “When I slaughter people, I like it. After, I like causing more pain—specifically on women. And I...I...” He stops and starts on his words, building to the anticipation, making my heart race its way out of my chest.
“What?” I gasp to ask. “Tell me.”
“When you barged in on my moment of peace last week, I wanted to hurt you, Blaire.”
My racing heart bottoms out of me as the one thing I never thought Charlie would do to me almost becomes my reality.
I subconsciously step away, putting distance between us in caution and defense. “Stop it. You-you’re not like that,” I insist, though I feel like I’m trying to convince myself. “You’re being stupid. You-you couldn’t hurt me.”
“In my heart, I don’t want to hurt you. I know it’d ruin what we have.” I grab my stomach as he says that, heaving with fear that we’re breakable. “I can’t be around you,” he acknowledges, adding fuel to my rising panic. “When I’m in that murky place, you have to understand, I just...I just can’t be around you. I can’t risk being around you.”
Risk?
I glance away, feeling ill that this is happening. When Nic agreed to bring me here tonight, I never in a million years expected this. Charlie is many things, but he’s not a monster. I tell him that he’s not. “I trust you, you know I do—you made me!” I shout with despair, pointing out on every word I say. “You, severed the link between me and Maksim. You, made me trust you. And I do trust you, Charlie.”
“Your trust isn’t the problem. I don’t trust myself!” He punches his own chest as an act of passion. “You don’t know the other side of me.”
“What side of you?” I tense all over with frustration. “Stop talking in damn riddles and just tell me what’s happening!”
“I loathed women before you,” he confesses without hesitation, staring me right in the eyes. “Thought they were nothing but toys to play with. Hurt. Take revenge on. And I did in tenfold. You heard Celine,” he gestures out to emphasize her, “she told you in detail how I liked to hurt her. She wasn’t exaggerating.”
I’m silently gaping at him, sucking in deep breaths until I whisper, “You said you’d never do that to me.”
“I know I did. I don’t want to—I didn’t want to.” He battles to explain what’s wrong with him, wiping his mouth when he takes long pauses. “I thought it was all past tense. I thought falling in love with you fixed me somehow, since I’ve never had the uncontrollable urge to make you cry. But when we got back from Dover, I personally butchered someone for the first time in months, and after, I wanted to make a woman cry.”
My cheeks turn white, hairs pricking all over my body. I try to swallow, but I can’t. I try to process what he’s saying, but I just can’t.
“I wanted to cause a woman unimaginable pain,” he continues adding to my horror. “I wanted to squeeze delicate little throats and literally hold lives in my hands.” He knots his fingers together and performs the act midair, the veins in his hands pumping. It’s fucking petrifying to watch.
“Why?” I barely hear myself ask, and I know I shouldn’t ask, but I can’t stop myself. “Why do you like hurting women?” I pull his hands apart to make him look at me. “Tell me, please? I-I want to understand.”
We gaze for an age, both desperate beyond desolation to fix what is so clearly broken.
“You know what I did to my máma...” he says, and he doesn’t need to elaborate. I know he butchered her for her heart, so that’s probably why butchering people triggers his demons. I also presume he loathes women because his mother committed the one act a parent should never commit on their child: she sold his little sister to a criminal, who was likely a human trafficker.
The fact that he knows why he’s fucked up sends icy chills ripping through my body—and I suddenly realize why he’s stockpiling medication for disorders like bipolar. It’s to battle his darkness.
Pulling back again, I rub my arms, trying to warm myself from the outside in. This is...horrific.
“I’m sorry, Blaire,” he says, scorching with guilt. “I didn’t want to burden you with my demons. That’s why I left. I wanted to keep you safe.”
Well, he didn’t keep me safe. He became the devil of my mind, crafting a black place of total loneliness for seven, miserable days.
“You’ve never hurt me, Charlie, not really.” I gaze up at him, so desperate to go back to before. “We’ve fucked around loads of times, and you nearly always know when to stop. Even when I barged in on you in your darkest hour, you didn’t physically hurt me.” Because he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. “I know you wouldn’t.”
He looks me dead in the eyes, to say, “Now, I do want to hurt you, and I would.”
“No.” I shake my head, retreating into myself. “You don’t mean that.”
“No?” He grabs my arm and yanks it out, so I’m no longer in the comfort of holding myself. “Want to see how far I’d like to push you before you break, hmm? Bite you. Belt you. Shove my whole fucking fist up your—”
Belt me!
Through clenched teeth, I warn, “Get your fucking hand off me before I snap it. No joke.”
He lets me go right then and holds up his hands like I’ve got him at gunpoint. I step away, glaring at him from under my eyebrows. I’m not scared of Charlie or traveling into his darkness, I just won’t let him hit me. Maksim did that for ten years, and it’s not something I enjoyed.
“Do you crave it daily and hide it from me?” I ask, lifting my chin so my voice comes out strong. Before things get out of hand—before he tries to push my limits—I figure I need all the facts about his demons so I’m always ready for them, so I can find a way to control them. “Are you that addicted to hurting women?”
“No. Not anymore. The desire spurs when I get blood on my hands.” He lifts his hands to show me, as if he can see blood on his them right now. Then his eyes droop in a mixture of sadness, happiness, and pity, as he says, “Time with you seems to be my cure. Maybe I’ll learn how to take a better dose, and this won’t happen anymore.”
The wind is knocked out of me with a powerful urge to sob for him consuming my body like another entity. I gulp when it reaches my throat. I am no one’s cure to anything. I bring out wickedness in people. Maksim and Charlie are evidence to the fact. Even James fucked himself over because he claimed to love me.
“I’ve been trying to train myself to be around you while I’m in that dark frame of mind”—Charlie gestures at the dead girl, and now she makes sense—“I was gonna try the other night, too, before I kicked you outa my office.”
“What?”
He nods a couple of times, saying he’d planned on coming to bed and telling me that he needed me. “I needed to feel close to the only thing in this world that softens me. I needed to feel close to you, Blaire. Since this thing happened between us, since you saved me from myself, I’ve realized that’s the only way to stop my monster...I have to focus on something good.”
“Then why didn’t you come to me?” I squeak, barely holding back the tears. My throat is on fire with the biggest lump.
“You wouldn’t have let me in,” he huffs, shrugging at a loss. “You never let me in.”
A tiny sob escapes my lips. This is so unfair. How can he say that when he didn’t even give me a chance to let him in?
“I ended up brooding in my office,” he whispers, glowering with bewilderment. “Should I go to her? Shouldn’t I go to her? But you came in before I could decide, and the first question on your tongue was James. I knew then my despair wouldn’t matter.”
“That’s absolute bullshit!” I scream at him. “I was trying to break the ice. You felt...different. Dark and different. Charlie, I didn’t know what else to say! You know I don’t know how to communicate properly!”
“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugs. “It was already too late. Above my want to hurt you to satisfy my monster, I got jealous.”
Jealous? My mouth drops open, flabbergasted by his admission. How can he get jealous of James? He’s my brother.
“I deal with that jealousy every fucking day, you caring about James more than you care about me, but right then, I couldn’t handle it. It was swallowing me whole.” His hands clasp at his stomach, highlighting exactly where he felt the jealousy was swallowing him. “I was terrified of myself. I was almost certain that if you had stayed one more second past what I could handle, I would have hurt you, badly. That’s why I threw you outa my office.”
He threw me out because he was almost certain he’d hurt me? He’s insane. He didn’t actually know. He didn’t give himself a fucking chance to know.
“This is unjust,” I croak the words. “You should have spoken to me. If you had just told me—if you had just tried to tell me—I would have listened. If you needed a distraction, I would have given you one. I was there...”
A moment shifts between us as he bends at the knees and leans so close I can feel his brandy spiced breath on my face. “And what if I had snapped and raped you or beat you, hmm—like I used to rape and beat Celine and many other women who let me act out my desires? Would you have forgiven me, Blaire?” I feel meek as his full lips press to my cheek, sending my heart crazy with nerves. “Would you have told me it was okay, and promised to be there for me always?”
I try to muster up my voice to tell him, yes! I would have! But my mouth is bone dry. He’s frightening the living daylights out of me like Maksim used to.
“You can’t even open up to me about the deepest, most darkest parts of you,” he whispers in my ear, “so how can you possibly expect me to believe that you’d forgive me of anything I’d do in my blackest hour, hmm?”
Another huge, pulsing lump expands in my throat, and I want to cry. For him. For us. I can’t even look at him. I sink into my shoulders, staring at the dead girl’s feet.
“This thing we have is one way,” Charlie whispers, deeper now. “I give you my everything, and you give me whatever Maksim would allow you to give. I mean, fuck, Blaire, I had to forcefully make love to you for the first time to get past Maksim’s conditioning.”
His name on Charlie’s lips chokes me twice, and the fact that he’s right cuts deep. I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how to salvage this.
“I love you far too much to ever risk breaking you,” he says, “so if I need headspace to ensure that effect, you will give it to me.”
Tears finally slip down my cheeks, and I nod, knowing he’s just fighting to keep us safe. I need to fight for us, too, but how? How can I show him that he means everything to me? How can I let him in?