Page 69 of Glitter Rose
Not to sprint to her door and tear it open.
Paris.
I’ll get you out of here.
SIXTEEN
PARIS
The footsteps in the hallway make my stomach clench. Heavy. Measured. Mike’s stride, coming for another ‘visit.’
That asshole forgot my breakfast.
Will he go through with it this time? Make me beg for food?
I curl around my pillow, back to the door, bracing for his voice, his hands, the stench of cigarettes and entitlement. Yesterday, I scrubbed until my skin turned raw under the shower to get rid of it, but nothing feels clean anymore.
Not in this place.
The lock turns with a metallic click that sends ice through my veins. I squeeze my eyes shut, like a child hiding from monsters. If I don’t look, maybe he’ll leave the food and go. The door hinges creak, then close. The lock clicks again.
My muscles coil tight enough to snap.
“Paris.”
Not Mike’s voice. A ghost’s voice. A dream’s voice.
His voice.
I don’t move. Can’t. If I turn around and he’s not there, I’ll shatter into pieces too small to ever find again.
“Paris, look at me.”
I bury my head deeper in the pillow. I’ve finally cracked. Four months of Gabriel’s experiments, Mike’s threats, isolation, and hunger have finally broken my brain. The voice is too perfect, too much like memory to be real.
“Princess.”
My heart stops. Restarts. Races. That stupid, perfect word.
“Please.” His voice again, closer now. The mattress dips slightly behind me. A hand brushes my shoulder. “It’s me.”
I whirl around so fast my vision blurs, the world spinning until it crystallizes around one impossible truth.
He’s here.
Knox kneels at my bed, gray eyes locked on mine. His jaw darkened with stubble, hair shorter than before, face thinner but unmistakably him.
Real enough to touch. Real enough to?—
“Knox?” My voice breaks on his name.
He nods once, and something inside me shatters.
I launch myself at him, crashing into his chest with enough force to knock us both backward onto the floor. His arms encircle me immediately, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other locked around my waist.
If this is madness, I choose it over sanity.
I bury my face in his neck, breathing in his scent that no hallucination could recreate. “Please don’t disappear.”
