Page 17 of Borden 3

“I’m still running. I came here, and I think I made it out. I roam the streets at night, like you do.”

My heart dipped. “I don’t do this often.”

“I see you out all the time.”

My spine stiffened. I didn’t speak, the realisation that I’d been watched by him and didn’t know it—

“I don’t follow you around, if that’s what you’re assuming,” he snapped now, a flash of annoyance passing over him as he glimpsed at me. “But you don’t stop, and it’s hard to avoid you around here. Especially when you’re crying in an alleyway, and you should be more careful. Good people don’t prowl around at night.”

“Don’t you prowl around at night?”

He smiled, and it was gentle, though his words delivered the total opposite effect. “I do.”

Now I was irritated. “I suppose I should be careful around you.”

“I don’t hurt girls.”

The past is a tricky thing. You can look back at this exact moment with a bit more clarity. You can read between the lines. You can say to Past Emma, “He doesn’t physically hurt girls. But what might he do to them emotionally?”

Past Emma overlooked this entirely.

She was young.

She was naive.

She was desperate.

“It’s going to be light soon,” he said next, peering up at the night sky. I peered at him. “Let me walk you home.”

I swallowed, a refusal at the tip of my tongue. Instead, I swallowed it down. An unlikely moment for me. I would have pushed anyone away for trying to get close. Because what the hell in common could I possibly have with them? How could they possibly know the chasm that was growing inside of me? The rage and the sadness. The betrayal and sense of loss.

But I knew, right then and there, as he rose up to his feet, wincing from the pain in his back, that this boy understood.

And when he extended his out to me and said, “I want to see you more. I want to know you, Emma.”

I took his hand and whispered, “Okay.”

Chapter Seven

Emma

“Boo.”

Teetering on another nightmare, I opened my eyes minutes after Borden left. I tried to nap. I really did. But it was impossible. I tossed and turned, and then stopped to stare at the corner in my bedroom, convinced the corner was staring back at me. Unease settled inside me. Paranoia sounded so loud in the silence.

After a sigh, I left the bed and showered. I shaved my whole body, determined not to feel like a cactus for Borden’s tongue later. My body was sore from his maddening fucks, but I welcomed the feeling. If he could leave behind his touch, it didn’t feel so lonely on my own. It was when I was whole again, my body unblemished, the pain absent, that I began to spiral.

I needed Borden.

I needed my son.

I needed Granny.

I needed my work and the routine it gave me.

But it felt like I needed something else, too. I just didn’t know what.

“Boo,” I whispered softly just before I submerged my face in the shower, welcoming the hot rivulets down my body.

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