Page 39 of Locke

His curiosity ebbed away, replaced with that dark, excited glint from before. He pulled back from my body, drawing further away. He prowled around the bed like a pacing animal.

“Get up,” he demanded. “Show me more of your fight. Because I sensed it. I felt it when you stood and stared at me in that club.”

My blood ran cold, my heart skipping a beat as I realized it was him in the corner of that room, looking back at me. That I had sensed him, too, and I had been drawn to his aura long before I knew who he was. Just as quickly, I remembered the heat of a stare I could only feel on my skin, and I felt roused out of a fog.

I could see him clearly now.

Cut from the same cloth.

And it suddenly made sense.

The men he killed; the raw loathing I felt from him; the deep pain he was so brilliant at hiding from the world.

Because Locke was known to be a monster.

A cunt that ruined lives.

A murderous savage that never let a crime against him go unpunished.

Of course. Of course it was him staring back at me.

I slowly crawled off the bed, the tears streaming down my face. It felt like someone had ripped the tourniquet free, and there it was, all my ugly and anger pouring out of me, feral and rotted like black blood from an infected wound.

I stumbled to my sore feet, my skin pebbled with goosebumps. Trepidation struck me, but I pushed myself forward. I circled this monstrous man who was now standing before me, watching my every move. I looked him over, deciding I’d rip his gauze off and tear open that wound. I wanted him bleeding and hurting and traumatized by the pain I was capable of inflicting. I’d scratch his fucking eyes out next, or at least sink my nails deeper this time to scar him. Let him walk around with a reminder that this little broken prey before him now had spent the last half of her life sharpening her small claws. For assholes like the men he pretended to be. For men that had power they did not know how to yield. For abusers and murderers and horrid, fiendish fathers that stole the light out of a child’s life and left their broken sisters to carry on.

There was no justice in this life.

People like Locke would always get away with their wrongs.

But maybe I could search for that balm to my pain by proving to this beastly man that I was stronger than I used to be. That I’d been broken, but I had repaired myself, and the pieces were chipped and there were holes everywhere, but it was solid enough to stand before him now and tell him, “Just this one time, I’ll give you that. Then you’re going to let me go.”

He tilted his head to the side, his gaze penetrating. “You think I’d truly let you go?”

I shook my head. “If you want to keep chasing me, you can do that, but I’ll keep running, and Locke, you’re going to let me go after I give you this.”

Because he needed this, too.

And it had to do with those men he killed before me.

A broken being could scent another broken being out.

It was how we found each other in the dark and never the light. Because us broken things didn’t like the light. We hid our wounds because normal people didn’t understand. They just viewed us as freaks of nature.

“What happened to you?” he asked me then.

“What happened to you?” I retorted right back, ice in my tone as I looked over his torso, my gaze lingering on the scars.

He nodded once in understanding. “We keep our secrets then.”

“What are we without our secrets?”

His eyes dimmed, a melancholic look shrouding him as he whispered, “At the mercy of every monster who wants to recover our pain.”

I said nothing, and we took a moment to relive our horror.

To fuel us.

To look at each other with a new purpose in mind.

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