Page 82 of Daddy's Muse
I pressed my face back into his shirt, choking on a sob. “I don’t want to lose you, Pappa. I can’t. I can’t do this without you.”
“You won’t,” he murmured, wrapping me up again, rocking me gently as if he could sway away the weight of what we both knew. “You never will.”
His words echoed inside me like a lullaby and a threat at the same time. My chest was still painfully tight, my eyes sore from crying, but I felt myself clinging to the part I wanted to believe.
The part that promised I wouldn’t lose him.
I buried my face against him, letting myself go slack in his arms. It was easier this way—easier to focus on the beating of his heart, the gentle movement of our bodies, and the way his voice softened when he whispered.
“That’s it. No worries, no fears. Just me taking care of you. That’s all you have to think about.”
My body curled tighter into his, and for a while, I could almost believe it. I could nearly forget the dark edges pressing in around my memories. I sucked in a shaky breath and nodded, clinging to him like he was the only thing keeping me from drowning.
Pappa would take care of me. Pappa wouldn’t let anything bad happen.
If I just stayed here, in this smallness, maybe I could keep that truth real.
Maybe time would dull the pain.
God, what had I gotten myself into?
My boyfriend had just confessed to being a serial killer, and yet my most pressing concern wasn’t the people he’d killed or the violence he was steeped in. No. My primary concern was how to accept what he’d done in order to stay with him.
21
Bodin
He begged me to make it stop, and gods help me, I would’ve ripped my own heart from my chest if it could’ve spared him that pain.
When he’d whispered Bryan’s name, everything inside me had gone haywire. For a heartbeat, I wanted to lie, to paint a softer truth, but I could tell by the look in his eye that he already knew. If I had lied, tried to convince him that nothing had happened, he would’ve accepted it, but it still would’ve eaten him alive eventually.
So I told him.
I gave him the truth that would break him, because I needed him to know I hadn’t failed him, that every choice I’d made had been for him, and that I wouldn’t hide the twisted parts of my soul from him any longer.
And when he asked me how I knew I wouldn’t be caught… when he looked up at me with those wide, wet eyes and asked how I could promise him that the police wouldn’t take me away—what else could I say but the truth again?
Because they never have.
I saw the terror that answer carved into him. I felt the way his whole body shook against me as though I’d become something monstrous in his arms.
And when he whispered, “How do I know you won’t hurt me too?”it was as though he’d taken a blade and plunged it through my ribs.
I had to make him understand.
I’d never loved anyone, never wanted to keep anyone, never cared—not until him.Thatwas the difference.Thatwas why he was safe. He had to believe that, because it was the truest thing I’d ever spoken.
Without him, there was no me.
There was only darkness.
And as he wept into my chest, as his words broke against me like waves against stone, I rocked him, murmuring every reassurance I could think of. I told him what I needed him to hold onto, even if it came out more like a vow than a comfort.
But the look in his eyes lingered, raw and searching, like he wasn’t sure whether he was in the arms of his protector or his captor.
I couldn’t let that doubt grow. I couldn’t let it fester.
So I held him tighter, cradled him in my arms, and whispered again and again until the words sank into his skin.
