Page 34 of Possession

That shuts him down completely.

I watch it happen. I see the way he withdraws, goes cold, blocks me out as he starts hitting the bag again.

Fuck.

I don’t like being shut out. It makes me feel like I used to feel in Frank’s house, simultaneously invisible and in the way.

It’s a feeling that was so much a part of my life that it basically became my identity. It’s been so fucking nice to not feel that way that I’m not prepared for it to sweep back in. Even though I’m sure I look like a total brat, I get up from the floor and go to lie down on the mattress, facing the wall. I know I’m overreacting, but I can’t help it.

His fists keep thudding against the punching bag, but there are pauses. Brief at first then longer. Then his bare feet start moving toward me.

He stops at the edge of the mattress. For a while he just stands there, then he lets out a huff. The mattress shifts. I feel contact with my lower back but that’s all. I look over my shoulder. He’s sitting on the edge of the mattress with his backto me. His knees are drawn up with his elbows resting on them. One hand is scrubbing the back of his head. He’s frustrated.

Guilt has me rolling his way. This wasn’t about me. He’s not trying to make me invisible. I know that. He’s just struggling.

My body half curls around him. His deep inhalation tells me that he’s acknowledging that I’m there, accepting it.

I almost tell him that I’m sorry, but he’s gone still in that way of his, like he’s thinking. I don’t want to intrude. After a while, he says, “I’m …”

He’s silent for so long that I start to think my mind was playing tricks on me. Maybe he didn’t speak? I thought he said—

“I’m …fuck.” His hands scrub roughly at his face. I can feel him shaking. I curl my hand around his hip, aching for him, not sure what to do.

I don’t get a chance to decide, and neither does he—because a door opens noisily. It’s not the guardroom door. It’s farther off. Up. It’s the door at the top of the stairwell, the one I first descended from the balcony when Frank tried to sell me to the man who owns this place.

As several sets of footsteps come down the stairs, my fingers curl around the waistband of his sweats. I want him to stay here, to stay with me. I want this to not be happening because I’m sure it’s not good.

But he knows better than to pretend. He pulls out of my grip and gets up. He gives me a warning look to stay.

He’s on his feet and waiting at the bars when the owner, Oscar Crowley, enters the basement with Briggs and O’Neil on his heels.

Crowley is wearing a suit jacket over his t-shirt. His hands are in his jeans pockets, his jacket open and parted around them, like he’s tough and cool. Easy to be that on the other side of the bars. He stops well back from them and looks through.

“Well, Beast? Ready for another fight?”

I sit halfway up. Is he fucking serious? His wounds from the last fight aren’t healed yet.

He looks back at Crowley through the bars. I see it then. I understand it then.

The shift in his demeanor is subtle. It’s the stillness of him. The readiness. The alertness.

He becomes, again, a predator.

He becomes, again, not quite human.

I see him accept it. I see him comfortable in it, almost relieved by it.

This, I realize abruptly, is why he doesn’t speak.

He’s spent so long not being treated as human that he’s embraced it. He’s survived, maybe, because of it.

I mean, what could he possibly say to the people who’ve caged him, tortured him, forced him to fight like … a beast?

And with me, he’s becoming human again. It’s been happening so slowly, so naturally, that I didn’t notice it. But I see it as it vanishes.

Crowley takes a step forward and is met with a growl. He stops.

Briggs says, “He’s fine. Definitely doesn’t need his fucking nursemaid.”

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