Page 26 of The Heart of Midnight

Like you’d let me shower if you were.

It wouldn’t make any sense unless he figures it’ll be easier if I wash all of his DNA off me myself instead of having to do it after I’m dead.

He doesn’t say much as he leads me around the other side of the bed to a door I hadn’t noticed previously. It’s a bathroom just large enough for a walk-in shower, toilet, and a pedestal sink. “Do what you need. You have ten minutes.”

“Yes, Sir,” I say a little too sarcastically, but I can’t help but be bitter at how this night has progressed. Should I have kept my mouth shut to begin with? Probably. But I really thought we’d have some beautiful moment where the truth set us free and we’d admit we’ve always been it for each other. How naive of me.

After I use every minute of the ten that he offered, I walk out completely naked, dripping on his floor as I scan around for a towel. “Do you think a towel is a weapon or something?”

I stand there unabashedly as he checks out my body and points to the bed. “I set one out for you, and some clean clothes.”

“Thanks.” I walk past him toward the towel and begin to dry off, biting back a smile at the way he’s looking at me. “Keep having those thoughts about me and your cum will end up between my legs again.” I toss on his shirt and my panties before toweling off my hair. “This definitely isn’t what I expected when I imagined myself in your shirt in the past.”

“It’s not exactly what I had in mind either. Lay back down.”

“Can’t you just leave my hands untied? It’s not like I can get out of this room.”

I tuck them under my thighs like it might stop him, but he grabs them anyway and ties me back up the same way I was before. Trying to fight him is useless.

“You’re never getting out of this room, Avery. You’d better make your peace with that now.”

The frustrated noise I release comes from deep in my soul as I glare daggers at him. “What are you so afraid of? I don’t care what you say, you know I could have turned you in at any moment. Sure, you didn’t put a camera outside my window, but we have both watched the recording of us from my bedroom. Icould have shown it to the cops if I wanted to turn you in, and yet I didn’t.”

“Why not?” he asks, rushing the words out like they’ve been trapped inside him for months. “You should’ve turned me in.”

Should I have? Again, probably. “Because you made me feel alive for the first fucking time in my life,” I admit. “I’ve always felt broken, always been told I had issues for craving what I crave. I thought no one in the world could ever give it to me and then you did. I was upset you left me after, but then you came back, and I knew — I just knew it was what we both needed. It didn’t feel like a crime no matter what society tells us.”

He stares at me for so long, I have to look away. “You are broken. But who among us isn’t?”

That’s something I can work with. “Exactly, so why can’t we just be broken together? Why consider killing the one person who truly sees you and accepts you?”

“Because you don’t see me and you’d never accept me. Not really. You think you know me, Avery, but you don’t know anything about me.”

Rolling my eyes, I collapse back on the bed and sigh up at the ceiling. Getting him to hear me seems almost impossible, but I’m not blind, I can see that he wants to. He’s just far too used to having to hide. “I know what you’ve shown me. That you’re kind, warm, soft, and caring. You’d drop anything if I needed you, and you protect me fiercely, even if it’s from yourself. That’s why you hide, that’s why you only show me your heart in the dark. Why you only truly let me see you at midnight behind a mask.”

“And it’s the only reason you’re still alive. Why I can’t just climb on top of you and get rid of the problem right now,” he mutters. “Why I’m fucking hesitating.”

“Then why entertain it at all?” I plead. “Why?”

His jaw flexes as he takes a step back. “Because you’re a loose end. You’ve watched enough true crime documentaries to know what that means.”

“You’re so hardheaded.” Like I’m not. “Nothing about me is loose.”

“I’ll bring you breakfast in a couple hours,” he deflects. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Ugh, fine.”

I roll over so I don’t have to watch him leave, but that doesn’t mean I don’t count every single step he takes as he retreats. I haven’t broken down his walls yet, and it’s only a matter of time before the scales tip one way or the other. As I stare at the camera feeds of my house, I can’t help but believe everything will be fine.

He cares for me, I just have to make him remember it.

Seventeen

Scar

Maybe I should’ve just let it go. Feigned ignorance, gaslit her into thinking she was crazy. Anything to stop the chain of events I find myself in now. Kill her, don’t kill her. Prison, suicide by cop. I could just leave her here and get on the first flight out before anyone knows what’s happening. She’d still be alive, and by the time someone finds her down here, I’ll be sitting pretty on a beach in The Maldives. Even if she tells, it’ll be too late.

It’s the most rational of all the options. I can see that. But there’s a voice in my head reminding me that if I let her live and disappear, one day, she’ll find herself submitting to another man. If I let that happen, then all the men I’ve murdered for touching her died for nothing. I don’t like wasted kills. Sure, the women I’ve taken were innocent, but they still served a purpose. They fed the monster inside me, sated him. But the men she dated? They had to die so she’d stay mine. Useless if she ends up with someone else.

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