Page 71 of Captive Souls

“Woodland fairies sure as fuck didn’t,” he replied gruffly, puncturing through my soft thoughts like a serrated blade.

I chuckled at the hostile tone, directly at odds with the romantic gesture.

One I had never thought in a million years that Knox would be capable of. It might’ve been a simple, human, romantic gesture, cooking dinner for someone you were dating in the normal world. But I understood it was something pivotal for Knox. It was him wrestling against all his instincts, his coldness, his brutality, to do something nice for me. To show that he could do this. To show both me, and probably more importantly himself, that he was capable of this.

I fought very hard to keep the tears out of my eyes.

My feet carried themselves forward as I surveyed the plates, the glasses, biting my lip.

“I can’t drink that.” I nodded to the glass. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but I also needed to share the one piece of myself I’d been hiding. Not exactly on purpose, but I’d been holding back. Was it because I still considered it a weakness and didn’t want to show that to Knox? Was it because I was embarrassed? Or was it simply because we’d kind of had a lot going on, and there hadn’t been the right moment for it?

A mix of the three, most likely.

His expression didn’t change, but I could’ve sworn I saw something resembling ‘male panic’ in his eyes—my term for a kind of panic that was reserved for the man who inadvertently said his girlfriend looked fat, accidently admitted he thought another woman was attractive or forgot an anniversary.

That was the kind of flash I saw in Knox’s usually inexpressive eyes.

I found it incredibly endearing, and a sign that this man actually cared about me.

That even the villain was not immune to something as simple as male panic. Even brutes feared a woman insulted.

“If it’s the wrong kind of vintage—”

“It’s the perfect vintage, I’m sure,” I told him, cutting him off before he could spiral. Though an evil part of me wanted to watch that. Revel in something as human as rambling from him. But putting him out of his misery was kinder. And despite his penchant for cruelty to me, all I wanted to give him was kindness. To show him he couldn’t scare me off. “I’m just unable to enjoy it, since I’m sober. In recovery. Ten years.”

Knox stared at me. Clearly, I had managed to catch him by surprise. It was vaguely satisfying.

That satisfaction helped with the nerves I felt while exposing this last soft, vulnerable part of myself.

I tucked my hair behind my ears. “Something I should’ve shared before now, to be fair, since it’s something I like to dropon the first date, but we didn’t exactly date, did we? Unless you count dragging me out of Central Park against my will our first date.”

Knox’s expression remained that blank kind of shock, almost as if he didn’t know what to say. “You’re sober.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s the family curse. My mother, my aunt, my grandmother. Interestingly, the women in our family are the ones who kill themselves or ruin their lives with booze. Then again, it was the women in our family who had to shoulder nasty, violent men who all but caged them in the house to clean, cook and pop out children. Not that I had that excuse for my problem. I had plenty others, though.”

I’d been in the program long enough to poke fun at my faults, my addiction. It was the only way you got through. You carried the anvil of addiction long enough, you’d collapse under its weight. You had to find a way to make it light in order to survive. Or at least I did.

Most people tended to become slightly awkward or uncomfortable when I said I was sober, either doing everything they could not to ask questions or asking far too many. Neither overly bothered me; I knew people’s discomfort with my problem was a sign of something they were battling themselves.

I waited for Knox’s reaction, more curious than anything.

He stared at me for a few long moments before he took the two glasses and the bottle, moving to the sink where he promptly poured them down the drain before rinsing them with water.

I watched the whole thing, vaguely amused.

“That’s rather dramatic,” I told him when he turned. “I have the problem, not you. You can enjoy a glass, or a bottle of wine in front of me without feeling guilty.”

One moment Knox was at the sink, the next he was on me, his long legs crossing the distance between us in a few quick strides.

One of his hands clutched my hip, the other cupped my cheek. “Your problems are my problems, Piper.”

I wanted to roll my eyes, but he was just so intense about it. And the intensity with which he spoke after a week of almost indifference socked me in the gut. “Not this one,” I whispered. “And it’s not a problem anymore. I can exist around alcohol; you can enjoy it.”

His grip tightened. “I can’t enjoy something that almost destroyed you.”

I smiled. “It didn’t almost destroy—”

“It did,” he said plainly. “I see past your mask, Piper. I know you. And I consider myself an expert in destruction. I see it. And no way in fuck do I care about booze more than you. You don’t drink, I don’t drink.”

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