Page 34 of Light As A Feather
“I’ve lived here longer than you. This is as much my house, if not more. You have no dominion over me.”
“Deed’s in my name.”
“Perhaps, but your lease on your body is only temporary.”
“Is that a threat?”
“A reminder.” The entity crosses his arms over his chest. “Besides, what’s a deed when I’ve secured the deal of a lifetime?” I can’t help but tense up as he turns his leering smile on me. “Although you do diminish your worth, Little Dove, allowing yet another man to make use of you.” He lets out a long sigh. “I have my work cut out for me, but one day, you’ll learn how to be the kind of woman I need.”
“She ismine. And you would do well to watch the threats you make unless you want me to take joy in tearing you apart until you are nothing but a madman trapped in a cell of bones.” Ivan’svery presence darkens, his form blurring with a pitch black energy and his features contorting with rage, but it dissipates just as quickly as it arrived.
“You expect me to fear a man who preys on little girls?”
“Seventeen is hardly a girl.” He aims for casual dismissal, but his features twitch with restraint as his leash of control pulls taut.
“I was a child. Nothing you say will change that.” His heightening anger feeds my own seething.
“Tell me, Little Dove. Do the fragile technicalities make you feel better? Does the flimsy shelter they provide help you sleep at night?” His disgust transforms into a sickly smug smile. “I would think not. You’re no innocent who was forced into this arrangement. We both know it, but does he?” Ivan paces the room with ease, the upper hand reestablished.
“Don’t,” I spat as the clammy hands of panic ring my neck. Hawthorne steps closer to me reflexively, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“You spin your little stories in that pretty head of yours, speak them as truth with those seductress lips, always weaving them around yourself as the victim, but we both know the threads you conveniently leave out. What are you so afraid of?” Stopping his pacing, he turns to face me, and our eyes meet, his knowing gaze spearing like a blade to the chest.
“I know what it is, what you spend all of your time agonizing over. Will he still love you the same? Will he still risk his life if he knew what you’ve promised me? And I agree, your concerns are founded. You’re hard to love as it is. He wouldn’t want you if he knew that you’ll never be able to give yourself to him completely.” Each blade-tipped word pierces me further, tearing through skin and fat and muscle to my core where we both know what lies beneath. My greatest shame, those darkest pieces ofmy soul. His eagerness to bleed out all the goodness in me is sickening, sweat pouring over me as my stomach sours.
“Fuck. You.”
“So brave with him here to stand between us, but you and I both know he’ll never be able to keep us apart.” With that ominous threat, he disappears through the wall.
Even though Thorne remains silent, the weight of his questions piles up on my shoulders. They yell their demand for answers against my temples. They tear pieces away like I’m nothing more than crepe paper. Or maybe that’s just my projection because when I finally muster the courage to look at him, there’s no righteous fury painted in harsh strokes across that beautiful face, only concern, only the desire to understand.
“Do you see now? I told you I wasn’t the person you remembered.” My breathing is shallow and ragged as I try to speak past the broken shards of myself that want to come spewing out of me along with the truth. “Ilethim have me. He didn’t take anything. He didn’t steal me away. The blame, this burden ismine. Do you understand?”
Ivan is intent on unravelling me until there is nothing to keep me here, but I’m determined to be the ruin of myself.
We’re charting the course for my destruction. There’s no question of whether this will all fall apart and he’ll finally be able to take me; it’s about when and on whose terms. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll keep the tattered remnants of my autonomy till the bitter end.
“Idon’t accept that.” In our thirties, in our twenties, in our teens, it’s all the same. There will always be an undeniable need for me to protect Sol, and she’ll always try to push me away, even when we both know she wants to pull me close.
“What?”
“I said, I don’t accept that.” Taking her hands in mine, I bring them to my lips. “You’re mine, Sol. For as long as I can remember. This is not your burden to bear alone. What hurts you, hurts me.” I pick her up and set her on the counter because I can’t stand to see the tension of pain in her features a second longer. “What threatens you, threatens me.”
“You’re so fucking stubborn.”
“Stubborn? Maybe. Determined? Absolutely. I love you, Sol. But beyond everything he’s done to you—which I fully intend to make him pay for—he came for me, too. This is personal.” There’s a stray tear trailing down her cheek, her deep well ofemotion overflowing despite her best efforts. I catch it on the side of my finger, allowing that tangible evidence of her suffering to soak into my skin, to become part of me. The feeling and the reality aligning. “But he got more than he bargained for, and that’ll be his undoing, I’m sure of it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Stop being so damn cryptic and?—”
We both fall still and silent when the front door opens. The quiet tread of sneakers is the only sound as anticipation charges the air between us.
I know who’s coming, but what I don’t know is how she’s going to take his arrival.
“What the hell happened in here?” Jayden says through a whistle, eyes going wide as he takes in the utter chaos that’s erupted in my usually pristine kitchen.
“I’ll give you one guess,” I sigh.
“Damn, you really pissed this one off, didn’t you?”
