Page 45 of In Too Deep

“Yeah, I watch you a lot when you’re not looking. I like it. I like looking at you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re everything I could have ever wanted, and you’re mine. I like to look at beautiful things, Little Lamb. I’ve told you that.”

“Where would we go?” I sigh now and pull her into my chest.

“I don’t know yet. I’ve already transferred all my money into your account,” I admit. Sage pulls back and looks at me strangely.

“What? Why?”

“Because everything I have, everything I am is for you.”

“I don’t want your money, Ares.” I chuckle now.

“You don’t?”

“No. I don’t care about money.”

“What do you care about?”

“You.” That’s my girl. And I can honestly stand here and be man enough to say that if she wanted to take all my fucking money right now and walk away from me, I’d let her. Then, I’d hunt her down because she is mine, and nothing is going to change that.

23

The secrets of Bellmont run deep. I’ve come to realize that too late. I’ve dug deeper into the world that those before my father created, and I don’t like what I see.

I stand in front of the mirror and look at my reflection. Is this the man I was meant to be? Is this what a twenty-one-year-old is? I don’t know life outside these walls. I don’t know what normal would look like. But I can’t keep living this way, can I? Won’t I eventually break or become something I’m not? Or am I already too far gone?

I look into my eyes and see the darkness in me. I see the anger, the hate, the need. He made me this way. He made me what I am today, and I can’t say I totally hate the man staring back at me. But at the same time, I can’t go on being who he made me out to be. There’s a whole world outside these walls, and I want to see it with Sage.

“Would you teach me to be normal?” I ask her as she sits on the edge of the bathtub next to me.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re normal, Sage. You did normal things before I stole you.”

“I didn’t do much of anything. I went to a few classes because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.”

“What do you want to do with your life?” I ask, turning to face her now as I lean my hip against the sink and cross my arms over my chest.

“I wanted to travel. I wanted to see different parts of the world.”

“And what stopped you?”

“I don’t really know. I guess I just didn’t want to do it alone,” she replies.

“Do you still want that?”

“It would be nice,” she says with a smile.

“Then we’ll do it. We’ll travel,” I tell her.

“Do you want to do that?”

“I want whatever you want, Sage.”

“That’s not how it works, Ares. You have to have your dreams and your wants, too. You want to be normal, as you call it, then you have to think of the things you want.”

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