Page 41 of In Her Shadow

“Because I couldn’t see you from here.” He hits me with a boyish grin as he tucks some of my hair behind my ear. “Eloise, I have been obsessed with you since you were a ten-year-old little girl who spoke to a lonely little boy in the park. You gave that little boy a reason to step away from his fears and face the world. You saved me from being a recluse, and you made this monster inside me. A monster who can protect you. Everything I’ve done since that day, Eloise, has been for you,” he whispers softly.

“Ren?” I try to take in what he’s saying, but it’s all too vague.

“I was nine when three armed men broke into our family home,” he starts to explain. “I heard the gunshots from my bedroom, and when I ran out into the hall, Otto grabbed me and hid me in one of the closets. I sat in that closet for hours, not brave enough to come out. When I eventually did, I found both my parents dead, and Otto in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Docs managed to save him, but my parents were gone.”

“I’m so sorry.” I see the pain of a nine-year-old, scared boy on his face, and it breaks my heart. “Did they catch the people who did it?” I ask, unable to imagine how terrifying all that must have been for him.

“No, but years later I did.” All his pain turns into a sinister smile before he continues.

“I took my parents' death real hard; refused to go to school, I didn’t even want to leave the house. Knowing those men were out there, petrified me. I was scared of my own damn shadow. Uncle Stefan was named as my guardian in my parents will; he moved in, started making all the decisions. For the business, and for me. Stefan never had kids of his own, or if he has, he’s never claimed them. He’s not a patient man, but he’s a fair one. The bastard can be hard sometimes, but I can’t hate him because if it weren't for him, I’d never have met you.” His lips twitch into a smile again.

“So we’ve met before?” I think back to what he said about the park.

“I’d stopped talking, I wasn’t leaving the house. I guess my uncle was worried about me not socializing, the way I should be. Once a week, he’d make one of the house maids take me out to the park for an hour.” Ren shakes his head. “I hated every fucking second of it. Being there just reminded me of how lonely I was. I just kept my head down so none of the other kids ever offered to play with me. I was pale, and I didn’t speak or make eye contact. Just sat on grass, picking at the blades, wondering how it would feel to be normal again.”

“That sounds tough.”

“It was. I dreaded those fucking trips to the park. Hated them. Until one day, I was sitting there, picking at that same patch of grass, and a girl sat beside me.” He wraps a loose thread from the hem of my dress around his finger.

“You were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, even back then, when your teeth were too big for your head, and your knees were all scraped. You talked… a lot.” He raises one of his eyebrows at me.

“Sounds like something I’d do.” I bite my lip, starting to relax despite the fact that he’s still got me tied to this bed.

“You told me all about your life. Which school you went to, who your best friend was, and why you decided you only needed one, unlike Corrine Matthews, who will claim she’s best friends with everyone when really no one likes her.”

I stare back at him, mesmerized that he can remember all this, I’d forgotten all about Corrine Matthews.

“You told me that you didn’t wanna be a nurse or a teacher like most girls your age did. You wanted to be just like your mom.”

“That sounds like something I’d say too.” I start crying happy tears when I think about her again. She always had such a soft, calm nature and a way of making everything feel like it was going to be okay.

“You told me you were gonna have a house full of kids when you were older. Bake cakes every day for them to come home from school to, and how you’d make up different voices for all the characters in their bedtime stories. You made that intolerable hour pass far too fast.” He slides his thumb over my lip and cradles my cheek, and I naturally lean into his palm.

“Ren, that was years ago, you can’t have been following me all this time. I’d have known.”

“The next week, I was so excited to go to that park, desperate to see you again. I wanted to learn more about your life,every little detail of it.But when I got there, you weren’t there.”

“Wait, I grew up in Fairbanks, that park would have been miles from here.”

“I grew up in Fairbanks, too. It was closer to the city for Dad to commute, and my uncle moved in after my parents died, so I could stay there. This place was more of a weekend retreat.”

“A weekend retreat?” I giggle as I look around the room. Everything about it is over the top and expensive, even this four-poster bed I’m tied to. Not to mention that the en-suite is almost the size of my whole apartment.

“After two more weeks of going to the park and not seeing you there, I knew I had to do something; so I started walking to your school at the end of the day, waiting across the street, just so I could get a little glimpse of you leaving.”

I stare at him and shake my head in amazement. How did I not notice?

“One day, I saw that your usual friends weren’t with you, and I hated the idea of you walking home alone. I’d heard enough bad shit on the news about men in vans pulling up beside young girls and taking them away. I wasn’t gonna have you be one of them. I wasn’t much of a fighter back then, but I figured I could at least have taken a number plate or something." He shrugs, and I laugh, feeling myself fall a little harder in love with him despite the madness of this situation.

“I watched you home, and once I knew where you lived, things just kinda escalated. I’d sneak out at night so I could sit beneath your window and listen to you talk to Katelyn on the phone. I was there when you told her about your mom being sick.” He uses his thumb to wipe away my tears when they start flowing again. “I heard how sad you were, and I wanted to fix it. I wanted to climb through that window and wrap my arms tight around you because I knew how it felt to lose someone you love, and I never,everwanted you to feel it.”

“Ren?” I shake my head in disbelief.

“I was there pretty much every night. Through all those phone calls and all your tears, I was there,” he assures me.

“Why did you never talk to me again? Surely you could have bumped into me on my way home from school or something?” I ask, wishing that he had.

“Because I was scared. You put on such a good front for everyone. You were holding it together, and I was never capable of doing that. I told myself that the smile you faked to convince everyone else that you were okay was convincing you too, and I didn’t want to drag you into my darkness. I was so empty inside, I’d lost all feeling for anybody or anything. Except for you.”

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