Page 224 of Craving Venom

I don’t even blink.

The camera’s angle is wide enough to cover her bed, desk, closet, even the pile of laundry by the vent. I installed it myself. The night after Halloween. While she was sleeping. That night, I had to see. Had to know what she looked like when she thought she was alone.

So I watched. And I kept watching.

“Why are there so many monitors?” Mark finally asks, snapping me halfway out of it.

“We track targets.” Terry cracks open a can of something fizzy. “Movements, threats, leverage. Some of these feeds are high-risk zones. Others are insurance. You know. In case someone needs watching.”

I tune it all out.

My body moves before I can stop it. I drift toward the monitor, believing somehow that being right in front of her image could erase the impossible distance still keeping her out of reach.

Her jacket sleeve is falling off the bed.

Her lip is chewed red.

I could walk into that room right now. Pull her shoes off. Undo her tights. Slide the hoodie over her arms and tuck her beneath the blankets she forgets to use. Wipe the mascara from under her lashes. Clear the water bottles and Advil wrappers from her floor.

I’ve done it before.

She doesn’t know that. But I have.

Terry’s beside me now. I don’t look at him, but I know that silence. That watchful curiosity that only comes from a man who’s already done everything once before and still chooses to stick around and see what happens next.

“There are seven stages,” he starts. “To love.”

“Uh huh.”

I don’t ask him to explain.

But he’s in his mid-thirties, and guys his age can’t help themselves.

“First isattraction. It’s chemical, instinctual, and impossible to ignore, like gravity with a hard-on, pulling you in whether you’re ready or not.”

I glance at him from the corner of my eye.

“Then comesaddiction. The high you chase when you’re not near her. The ache in your cock when her voice is in your ear and her pussy’s not under your tongue.”

He ticks off his fingers.

“Possession. The one that makes you jealous when someone else says her name. The feeling that makes you fantasize about slitting throats for just looking at her.”

“Then comeslove,” he says, dragging the word out. “Which is just the eye of the hurricane, really. The false peace between explosions. The shit poets try to sell, but it’s really just another step before the collapse.”

He counts another off on his fingers.

“Trust. That’s the brutal one. That’s when you let her near the parts of you no one sees. The memories. The trigger points. The guilt. That’s when she could stab you in the chest and you’d still pull the blade in deeper just to feel her hand again.”

He lifts the can to his lips and raises it slowly as though the taste might drown the truth he just spoke.

“Devotion. That’s when her pain is your pain. When her tears burn your lungs more than smoke ever could. That’s when you’d rather lose the war than watch her bleed for your choices.”

“Wait,” I stop him. “If it’s seven stages of ‘love’”—I air-quote the word with a crooked finger—”shouldn’t love be the last one?”

“What is love if it’s notmadness?”

I glance at him, but his eyes are already on Faith through the screen. My fingers brush the corner of the monitor. Stupid thing buzzes under my palm like it wants to reject me. But my hand stays there, hovering over her cheek. She slides deeper into the mattress like she knows someone’s watching, and trusts that they won’t hurt her in her sleep.

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