Page 119 of The Hunter
He had a point, a point that was beginning to make terrible sense. Tears threatened again, and Millie began to hate how many times he’d made her cry. Millie blinked, tears searing hot paths down her cheeks. Why did she always do this? See the impossible and reach for it? Ignore the obstacles in her way? Just assume that she could make something better, greater, just by wishing it so?
Christopher didn’t look at her again, but his nostrils flared and his muscles were clenched and turgid as he gathered the rest of his things. “I’m a creature of the darkness, Millie, and you belong in the spotlight.” He reached for the door and opened it, pausing before he left. “But you were right, for what it’s worth… I did enjoy dancing with you that night.”
Millie made a strangled sound as the door closed softly behind him. She’d been accurate when she’d told Farah earlier that her heart was only bruised.
Because now, it was well and truly broken.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
Pain was something Christopher had learned to deal with at an early age. Where so-called normal folk sought comfort and warmth, he’d spent much of his youth just trying to make things a little less intolerable. Comfort made you weak. Hunger made you strong. No matter how horrific, nothing was unbearable, because as long as one was alive, then obviously, it could be borne. Every moment was naught but a moment. Every day was naught but a day. The sun would rise in the morning, night would fall, and the earth would turn around.
These were things that Christopher knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
People would die. Sometimes because of him, other times in spite of him. The species would propagate. The innocent would suffer. The powerful would build monuments. The world’s religions would spill each other’s blood, ironically in the name of a God of love. The rich would amass more money. The poor would crawl on top of each other to reach for a piece of bread. Women and boys would sell themselves in the streets.
The sun would rise in the morning, and he would feel pain. Night would fall, and his chest would be a cavern of empty loneliness. The earth would turn around, and his blood would threaten to cease flowing, for it hurt too much to pump it through his veins.
These were the things that Christopher Argent knew.
He’d gone to see Millie again at the theater today, watched her hungrily from the shadows during the early-afternoon dress rehearsal of the play she was debuting this very night. A dramatic comedy about a courtesan and a married lawyer. It seemed she and the director/playwright were very affectionate with each other.
Thomas Bancroft. It gave Christopher dark pleasure to imagine the top five ways in which he’d love to execute the man. Unbeknownst to the playwright, each fantasy became more bloody every time Millie laughed at one of his quips.
Seven times. She laughed seven times at the man. She touched him twice.He’dtouched her five times whilst adjusting her stage position, putting his hand on her back when they looked over a script together, plucking an errant feather out of her bodice that had drifted there from her headdress. That time, he’d grazed the skin of Millie’s bare shoulder and Christopher could tell by the way Bancroft bit down on his lip that he’d done it on purpose.
Was this the kind of man Millie was generally attracted to? Dark curls, soulful brown eyes, lean and elegant with aristocratic features. An easy smile. A gentle touch.
It would be hard for Bancroft to touch her without a hand, Christopher mused, thinking of sawing it off the bastard’s thin wrist and tossing it in the Thames.
Christopher had made it almost a fortnight this time without having to see her. Well, half of a fortnight. Almost half. Five days. He’d made it five excruciating days without gazing upon the light inexplicably shimmering from her dark eyes. Without hearing the lilt of her mesmerizing contralto. Five days without taking a full breath into his lungs.
Before that the longest he’d gone was three, so… progress, he supposed.
Everything hurt. Everything hurt so much he’d begun to do what he’d watched countless others do in an attempt to alleviate pain. He’d sought comfort for what things he could control. He’d even taken to sleeping in a bed. It had been overwhelming at first, but once he’d had Welton procure some bed curtains that blocked out the spacious room, he drew them against the light and found that an enclosed bed was, indeed, better than the hard floor of his closet.
He hadn’t worked in a handful of weeks, not since his last night with her. He’d go to the theater instead, buy a ticket, sit in the shadows and drink in the sight of her, whisper her lines that he’d memorized. His hands would twitch when someone touched her. His jaw would clench when she was kissed.
Sometimes he’d wish he’d never met her, that he didn’t have the memory of her creamy skin singed into his fingertips. That she’d never reached into his soul and confirmed its existence. There’d been a reason he’d buried it in the first place. And now that she’d found it, it belonged to her.
And she’d offered to keep it.God, why would she do such a thing?
Now, as he stalked through the gray of the London evening, Christopher was careful not to blink. For whenever his eyes closed, he would see her naked in front of him, lily-white skin smeared with the blood he couldn’t wash off his hands. He would see her drowning in it. Tears of crimson pouring from her eyes as she begged him,pleadedwith him to wash it away. The more he touched her, the more filth and gore covered her.
He dreamed about it at night. Held her dying heart in his hands while she looked on, horrified, knowing that her heart was just another one of his countless casualties.
For the first time in his life, he’d done the decent thing, hadn’t he? He’d pushed her away.
The truth of what he’d said to her in his training room hadn’t diminished. Just because he hadn’t killed her, didn’t mean he wouldn’t someday destroy her. What did he know about being a man? About being a husband or a father? She and her son were the first people he’d cared about in almost twenty years. The force of his newfound emotion for her would have damaged her eventually, he was certain of it. No one should carry the weight of his past. No one should have to share his empty life. Especially not Millie or Jakub. They werealive. And he couldn’t say that he ever truly had been. For surely he’d never had much of a life, and the one he’d lived was tainted with evil deeds.
So he’d let her go.
The reality of it stole his strength, and he leaned against a gate with his shoulder, willing his lungs to expand.
What a bloody lie. He’d not let her go in the least. He’d allowedherto lethimgo, because apparently, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from seeing her.
She’d hated him at first. He’d perched on the ledge outside her window on Drury Lane like a gargoyle and listened when young Jakub asked to see him, ached when she made up ridiculous reasons for them not to.
Her tears when she’d been alone had almost been his undoing. She’d cried. Overhim.He’d never been a suicidal man, but listening to her soft sobs had nearly driven him to jump. That she or Jakub would have been the one to find his broken body was what had stopped him from acting on the impulse.
