Page 84 of Depraved
“How long were they here? Watching me?”
“We found them two days after you were brought to my home.”
“So, you’ve known where they were all this time? You lied to me.”
“I didn’t think I had a choice…I was right.”
I turn and look around, noticing little things, like the empty pack of menthols on the counter—the brand my brother smokes. The ones he was smoking when he called me the other night.
My eyes jump to the small kitchenette and see the empty bottles of Bushmills cheap Irish whiskey that litter the countertops, and I can smell my father’s breath on my neck again. He was always such a sick bastard when he was drunk, loving to knock me around. Come to think of it, he was just as sick when he was sober.
“Why did you bring me here?” I bite out angrily, hating all the emotions brewing inside of me. “If they’re gone, what does any of this matter?”
Dante levels a glare at me. “Because I need you to make up your fucking mind. Tonight, my brother told me to give you a reason to stay. And I kept thinking about what I could say that would be reason enough. Because it’s clear that I’m not.”
His voice is shredded with contempt when he says it. I can feel all the hurt I’m causing him. And it almost breaks me. This rough, cruel, domineering man is begging for me to need him. To choose him. Because god knows his mother didn’t.
No matter which way I turn, my decisions hurt people.
I take a step toward him, ready to beg him not to hurt anymore, but he shakes his head. “No, don’t do that. Don’t act like you care. It’s funny—I thought if I told you how I feel…but you know how I feel. I know you do. And just now…down in the car, when you said sorry. That’s when I saw your lie.”
All I can do is shake my head as the lump forms in my throat.
“If you loved me, you could never walk away,” he accuses.
My voice answers in a whisper. “If you loved me, you could never let me become a monster.”
He laughs and tightens his fists with all the energy and intensity of a caged animal, but I don’t stop talking now that my voice has found its way out.
“You’re the only reason I want to stay. But think about what that means, Dante. How do you know they won’t come back? Try something? I can’t risk hurting the people you love, all the same people who I’ve come to love. But goddammit, all I want to do is turn my back on them because of how I feel about you.” Tears prick at my eyes as I will him to hear me. “And that makes me a monster.”
Dante laughs menacingly and punches the flimsy Formica countertop. He looks at me, tensing his jaw, rage behind his eyes. “You don’t fucking get it. You still don’t understand. Look around, Sarah,” he roars, opening his arms wide. “You’re so fucking afraid of these pricks and what they could do that you don’t see that I’m the scariest goddamn monster you know. I’m the fucking nightmare, and I was yours.”
His arms drop as his chest heaves in breaths. My hands cover my mouth, holding in all the words I want to argue with, everything I want to hurl at him to prove him wrong, to push back and scream at him.
I hold it all in.
Because it’s now, in this moment, that I realize I’ve withheld the one thing Dante has been needing from me. My submission.
He wants me to turn my back on everything and everyone, to make him my singular focus, and to let him handle the rest because he can. And he will. I’m not alone unless I choose to be. He’d protect everyone for me.
That’s his “I love you.”
Dante’s face is a mask of anger and hurt…and it’s the latter that’s scary. It makes him cruel. He wants me to hurt because I’ve ripped out his heart, but I can put it back together.
He walks over to me and takes my ponytail in his hand, letting it weave through his fingers as he looks down at me.
“Maybe you need to be reminded of how cold it is without me.”
Oh, my beautifully broken man. He’d try and starve me because I won’t let him feed me.
I narrow my eyes and shake my head. “Ormaybe,I need to remind you who you’re speaking to. You won’t issue threats to me. Unless you want me to shoot back…” I pat his shoulder and nod, sliding my hand down his arm to his hand, our fingers intertwining. “I’m with you. I choose you, Dante. And I’m sorry that I forgot my place, but you forgot it, too.”
His head bows as he exhales a shaky breath.
“It will never be under you, because I belong next to you.” He looks at me with regret, and I lock my eyes with his. “Bringing me here, making me come this close to the people who I despise…you will never do that again,” I state resolutely, bringing his hand to my lips and pressing a kiss there. “Punish me in our bedroom, but because you love me, you’ll never do that in our life.”
I can see how much he hates what he just did, but it’s no more than what I feel for bringing him to this place. We’re both broken in our own fucked-up ways. I want to save him, and he wants to save me, but one of us has to give.
