Текст книги "Pretty When You Cry "

Автор книги: Skye Warren

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Chapter Twenty-Six

I’m lying in the bedroom of a penthouse suite in the closest city to Harmony Hills, the same city where the social worker once took me, the same city where I first caught a bus. Large enough that we can be anonymous, though I didn’t ask how they managed to bring Sarah Elizabeth here. She’s currently tied up in the bed in the other room, a gag around her mouth.

It’s hard to imagine how this day could have gone worse. A man is dead. A girl is kidnapped. And I’ve learned something horrible, something that explains everything about me.

I did come from evil, and I do have a demon inside me—but not because I’m a woman. Not because I have breasts and a vagina. Not even because I like to get spanked by a man I call Daddy. No, I’m evil because of what’s running through my veins.

His blood.

His genes.

His teachings.

I’m a product of my nature and some very controlling, depraved nurture. It’s not something I can ever escape. It’s inside. Leader Allen is inside me.

Ivan comes in and washes his hands at the bathroom sink, his back to me.

“What are you going to do with her?”

He turns slightly. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t understand why you took her. Won’t that only link us to Leader Allen’s murder even more?”

“I had room service deliver some fruit and pastries. It’s outside on a tray. Let me bring it inside.”

“No. Stop. I’m not a child. I’m not a little girl you need to feed and spank and put to bed on time. I’m asking you questions, and I deserve answers.”

His eyes grow cold. “Fine, you want answers? We took her because she’d have been dead by now if we’d left her. The people there are going to go on a witch hunt when they find him—and she was standing there, holding a shotgun, in shock, wanting to put more bullet holes into a dead man.”

I swallow hard because he’s right. He may have never met the other men and women in Harmony Hills, but he understands how they work. Just like he understands how I work. We’re followers. Sheep. “Is Luca okay?”

“He’ll live.”

“Why did he take Sarah Elizabeth?”

“We’re going to question her. She was close to Leader Allen. She might have heard something.”

“I want to be there when you talk to her,” I say quickly. I know how intimidating Ivan can be. And I don’t think he’d hurt her. He knows that she’s innocent even if she knows something. But he can get feral when it comes to the Grand.

I expect him to fight me, but he simply nods. “Come then.”

I follow him into the other room.

Sarah Elizabeth’s eyes are cloudy as she watches us come in. There’s a small dark vial on her nightstand, and I realize that’s how they kept her asleep through all this. Did he use it on me too? Or is this sluggishness just part of the shock from this morning?

Ivan settles into a chair in the corner, and I stand awkwardly in the center of the room, trying to figure out where to go. It feels like choosing sides. How they’re treating her isn’t right. But the Grand needs to be safe again.

Then Luca comes in, and I realize why Ivan is sitting. Luca has a bandage across his stomach and no shirt on. He looks angry. He looks terrifying as he pulls a folding knife from his pocket, and I gasp. Sarah Elizabeth gasps too, and squirms away on the bed. With her hands bound behind her back and her ankles tied together, she doesn’t get far.

Her gaze is wide now, all sleep drained from them, and so are mine.

Luca grasps her hip, and she goes very still.

I can see her chest rising and falling from beneath the shift. I can see more of her body than I expected to, the shadowed outline of her breasts, the dark circles of her nipples. I never realized how revealing the shifts were. Or maybe it just seemed normal to me back then.

With a rough jerk, Luca slices through the gag around Sarah Elizabeth’s mouth. She coughs the fabric onto the bed and then spits into his face, making him laugh. It’s a cruel sound, and I realize I’ve never seen Luca perform his job—as a bodyguard, as an enforcer. He’s occasionally been stern with me, but in the end, no matter how much I protested and pretended, I was too obedient to need anything worse. There’s blood seeping through the white gauze, making him look savage. He’s a wounded animal, and wounded animals lash out.

Sarah Elizabeth has no intention of being obedient. She’s glaring at Luca like she’d shoot him again if she were still holding that shotgun. “Let me go.”

“Not until you tell me who he sent to fuck with Candy.”

Her gaze snaps to mine. “I don’t know anything about that. He never told me.”

I can see plain as day that she knows the truth. Whatever happened to toughen her up, to make her sad, to make her wield that gun, it didn’t manage to make her a better liar. Ivan watches the proceedings from the corner, expression intent but remote.

Luca studies the tip of his knife. “I’m sure he didn’t tell you.” Then he turns to her, using the knife to wave in her direction, as casually as if he held nothing at all. The metal catches the reflection from the lamp. “But you would have heard something. You lived in the same house as him.”

Her eyes are on the knife. “I don’t—”

“It’s okay,” Luca says softly, even more sinister for how reassuring he sounds. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he will.

“I—” Her voice breaks, and fear has replaced the defiance in her eyes. This is the expression Leader Allen would have seen when he taught her how to pray.

It makes me angry. “She said she doesn’t know. Leave her alone.”

Ivan stands, drawing all our attention. He has a way of commanding a room with just a look. The look he gives me now tells me to shut the hell up. He sits on the edge of the bed, resting a hand on her shoulder.

She freezes, and I can see her pulse jump in her throat.

“Sarah Elizabeth,” Ivan says softly, testing out her name. Then he focuses on her. “You have to understand, the Grand is my business. The people who work there, I’m responsible for them. And I should watch over them, shouldn’t I?”

Her head nods slowly, eyes never leaving his.

“Someone broke in and left threatening messages. I can’t let that go on. I can’t let anyone get hurt. Can I?”

She shakes her head no, just as slow. Her eyes are wide. There’s still fear, but it’s tempered with something else. Understanding. Because Ivan protects me the way Leader Allen never would have protected her.

He leans down and whispers something in her ear. I can’t make it out, and I glance at Luca. I expect him to be annoyed that his interrogation was interrupted or maybe just in pure business mode, but he’s watching them both with a brooding expression. No, he’s watching her with a brooding expression.

She swallows hard, looking up at the ceiling. Then at me. “He would talk about you sometimes. He didn’t like how…devout I was.”

The way she says the words leaves a chill in the air. Every one of us here knows what she means. It has nothing to do with faith.

“He said that you would be better, that he was going to find you, bring you back.”

I shiver at the thought of being in that room again. The truth is, I don’t believe he could have contained me. I would have gotten out or died trying. I’m different than I was before. Different than Sarah Elizabeth, because she’s never been outside. She’s never tasted freedom. We were born in captivity, bred and raised to be what he wanted.

“Why didn’t he just…take me?” I whisper.

“He said you had demons guarding you.”

Ivan raises his eyebrow. Of the names he’s been called, demon wouldn’t be the worst one. And he was guarding me. By sending his men to shadow me, he made sure I was safe. Watched over. Even when I ran away, he found me.

Does that make it okay, then, that he doesn’t let me leave?

Sarah Elizabeth presses her face almost into the pillow, as if ashamed. “He said he was going to draw her out. He would call her home. And I—I’m so sorry. I wanted him to. I thought when he got you back, he would want you enough that he would leave me alone. I’m sorry.”

“Who did he send?” Ivan asks.

“My brother. My brother, Alex. He’s never been… never been quite right. Something was always off about him. It was some kind of test Leader Allen sent him on, but the last time he left, he didn’t come back.”

She’s crying by the end of it, sobbing into the pillow. She looks so small curled up on the bed, her wrists and ankles still bound, helpless. Of course she would want him to leave her alone.

“Thank you,” Ivan says gently. Then he turns to Luca, “She’s all yours.”

I follow him into the spacious living area of the suite. “What does that mean? She’s all yours?”

Ivan pours himself a drink. “It means exactly what it sounds like. He can decide what to do with her. She shot him.”

My mouth is open because I can’t quite comprehend this. Even as harshly as he’s treated me, the way he’s dragged me back, the truth is that I always wanted it. This is different. Sarah Elizabeth doesn’t want anything Luca would do to her. And she only shot him because she was afraid. “You have to let her go now. She told you what you wanted to know.”

He takes a sip from the crystal-cut glass. “I never said I’d release her.”

It enrages me, the way he moves people around like we’re dolls in cardboard houses. He has no respect for her—and none for me. In one fast motion, I knock the cup out of his hand. Amber liquid flies through the air and splashes against the cotton-white rug. The crystal glass lands noiselessly on top of it, then rolls onto the marble floor.

Ivan looks at the spilled alcohol, as remote as ever. He takes a step toward me, and I can’t help but shrink back. Of course he catches me. He catches me by the chin, his thumb and forefinger holding me still with that single point of contact.

His eyes are frigid as he stares at me. “He wants her. I’m sure you could tell. You always did know how to read men. Allen taught you that much at least.”

I flinch. “It’s not right,” I whisper.

He places a tender kiss on my forehead. “I reward loyalty, little one. You would do well to remember that. Now go stand in the corner until I feel like spanking your pretty ass for spilling my drink.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The last times I tried to run, the odds were against me. A lesser man might not have been able to find me at all—and definitely not as quickly as Ivan. He has a web that includes dirty cops, kingpins, and good old-fashioned paid informants.

Of course, that was in Tanglewood.

We aren’t there right now. Ivan still has money and weapons. Not to mention that intimidating, persuasive charm. He will be able to track me better than most men, but not like he could back home. No one in this city even knows who I am. They definitely aren’t going to call him in a twisted version of bros before hos. There will be no GPS to track, not on a random cab that he’ll never be able to find.

Ivan owns every piece of hay in the haystack that is Tanglewood, so finding this needle was easy for him. But here…God, here. We can get lost here. Never to be found.

Food arrives under silver-domed lids on a wheeled cart. The bellhop takes one look at Ivan and Luca and starts sweating. He’s gone the second the tip hits his palm.

The dining table seats exactly four people: Ivan. Luca. Myself. And an angry Sarah Elizabeth with her wrists rubbed red. At least Luca untied her for dinner. I’m not sure I could have even gone along with the false decorum if she had been tied up, hands behind her back while Luca fed her.

As it is, I’m the picture of a flirty hostess. I bring each plate to the table and open it with a flourish. “What would you like to drink?” I ask Ivan.

The look he gives me isn’t fooled for a second. I have years of experience fooling men. Ooh, that’s so interesting. I’d love to hear more. You’re my favorite client. They eat that shit up. Ivan just gives me a measured look. The same look all his enemies get, because that’s all I am. Not a beloved wife or even a cherished lover. I’m someone to bend to his will. All he’s doing now is waiting for me to reveal a weakness.

I smile. “A gin and tonic?”

“A bottle of the wine for the table,” he says, and he’s definitely suspicious. He would prefer a gin and tonic over merlot any day. He stands and retrieves a bottle from the bar, along with a bottle opener. I sit down, as serene as ever.

He will never see me sweat. Never see me hesitate. He taught me too well for that. Ivan’s lessons were very different than Leader Allen’s, but they were lessons nonetheless. Leader Allen wanted me to be a subservient, eager follower. Ivan wants me to be a brat, someone he can correct. In the end, what both of them taught me was how to mold myself into whatever a man wants. I do it so well that I think there’s nothing left of me. I don’t know what I’d be like without a man to please, without someone’s command to fight or obey.

It’s the woman Ivan wants who sits at the table, submissive except for the private moments where he wants a reason to punish me. He knows me well enough to know it’s a game. That knowledge won’t help him, though. Not tonight.

Sarah Elizabeth barely touches her food, but I eat everything on my plate. We’ll stop for food only when it’s convenient, not when we’re hungry. I can’t tell her that. So we eat in relative silence. The only breaks are when Ivan and Luca murmur over their plans, a limo ride we’ll never take and a plane we’ll never catch.

Luca doesn’t eat at all. He looks fatigued, the lines of his face drawn tight with pain. He won’t take any pain medication because that would make him fall asleep. That’s fine by me. Now I don’t have to worry that I’ll overdose him.

My chance comes right after dinner.

“I think I’ll have that gin and tonic,” Ivan says to me.

“Of course.” His wineglass is only half empty. I stand with a demure smile. “Luca?”

His dark gaze flicks to Sarah Elizabeth and then away. “Sure, why not.” Then under his breath, “What else would a lowlife thug do but drink.”

I can’t help but smile at that. It sounds like Sarah Elizabeth has been giving as good as she’s getting.

Mixing the drinks only takes a few minutes.

Slipping it in the drinks takes a half second—and a flick of my wrist.

Waiting for the drugs to work…now, that does test my patience. Partly because I know Ivan will understand what I’ve done in the seconds before he passes out. Of course he would figure it out when he woke up to find me gone anyway, but somehow it’s those first seconds before that worry me most. It will be a true betrayal, in the way that running away never was.

The vial had been gone from the nightstand, stowed safely in Ivan’s trousers. So I did what I’ve done for years. I traded my body for what I needed. I let him spank me and fuck me. I gave him a good show, and when he was too sated with climax to notice, when he’d let his guard down the way he could only do for me, I stole the little bottle.

I see the moment recognition passes over his face, cutting through the chemical-induced exhaustion. His gaze flits to mine. There’s a slight incline of his head that might be an acknowledgment of what I’ve done. Or it might be goodbye.

Or it might just be the drugs taking effect, dragging him into unconsciousness. His large body slumps to the floor with a sickening thud.

The first thing I do is check his vital signs. Strong. The second thing I do is arrange him so that he’ll be more comfortable when he wakes up—flat on his back, arms at his side, a pillow from the couch under his head.

Sarah Elizabeth is staring at me, mouth open in shock.

Okay, I guess it would be kind of weird to see two grown men suddenly fall asleep. Especially considering what else happened today. “They’re just asleep,” I say gently.

“But…but why? I thought you and him were together.”

Together. That’s one word for what we were. Depraved. Toxic. And beautiful.

“I couldn’t let them keep you against your will,” I tell her honestly. “Not after what you had been through with Leader Allen. Now come on. We need to cover a lot of ground.”

We gather supplies from the hotel room—and from the men themselves. Money from Ivan’s wallet, a knife from Luca’s pocket. Then we’re heading downstairs, hailing a cab. Vanishing into the night. We’re five blocks away before Sarah Elizabeth asks the question she’s been holding in.

“You could stay behind. He would be mad that you let me go… but he wouldn’t hurt you. Would he?”

“Not like you think,” I mutter. But he would hurt me. “The truth is that I needed to go myself, whether you were here or not. I need to… be my own person.”

Not his little one, as much as it hurt to know I’d never hear those softly spoken words again.

By the time Luca and Ivan would regain consciousness in the morning, we are already four hundred miles away. We change clothes and hair colors and accents. Even knowing we’ve made it safely away, I continue looking over my shoulder. There’s both trepidation and hope in those backward glances, but it doesn’t matter.

Ivan doesn’t find me.

We took the one surefire way I know to disappear—those anonymous gray buses.

And Ivan himself told me where to go.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Don’t,” I say, taking the basket away. Beth sticks her tongue out at me but lets me take it from her. She knows she isn’t supposed to be lifting heavy things at this point, but she likes to stay active.

“Fine,” she says. “If you insist on being a worrywart, I’ll go turn that last batch into a pie. They’re already going soft.”

“Yes, please.” I love this girl’s baking. Sarah Elizabeth goes by Beth now. She’s a happy, playful young woman who bears little resemblance to the timid girl we spirited away all those months ago. However, one thing that remains from her old life is her love of all things domestic. Especially baking. And I can’t say that I’ve complained.

Meanwhile I’m better suited to hard labor, whether that’s working a pole or picking peaches from trees. Both leave me exhausted and sore, but the peaches have the added bonus of producing pie.

The ground around the cottage is hard-packed dirt, cool against my bare soles. No hand-sewn linen shoes for me. No stilettos either.

Sarah Elizabeth and I made it all the way to the coast, to the little countryside town where a boy was abused and neglected. Where he fought with everyone he met. Of course no one knows our connection to this place. Ivan’s grandmother passed away a long time ago, her only presence an empty house outside of town.

We rented a little cottage six months ago, servant’s lodging for the main house. The landowner never comes here, the local agent told us. I already knew that. This is the one place Ivan will never look for us. The one place he’ll never return.

I’m lost to him, but in another way, I’m found. I learn that I can survive on my own. I learn that I miss the relentless, almost reckless passion of a man. And I learn that as much as I miss it, I don’t need it after all.

We tell people we’re sisters. Picking peaches pays most of the rent. Sarah Elizabeth sells what she bakes to pay for food and other necessities.

It’s a good life, a quiet life.

A lonely life.

Physical work means I can fall asleep at night, instead of remembering. Remembering Leader Allen and his last words to me, his revelation. Or was it a confession? Whether he is or isn’t my father, he’s gone now, forever.

I remember the Grand too, more than I’d like. And Ivan.

So it seems like a mirage when I see him.

I notice the silhouette immediately, a rare break in the sideways sunlight. The shadow turns into a man. And the man turns into…him.

The basket turns to lead and slips out of my hand. Peaches tumble to the ground and roll toward him.

I can’t see his face, but I recognize the breadth of his shoulders and the lean lines of his hips. I recognize the cut of his suit and the elegant shape of his shoes. I even recognize his hair, the way he forces it down, as if he can control every single strand—but a few in the back always point up if he’s had a long day. Like now.

It’s a relief to see that he’s stayed the same. I feel so different than what I was before. My hair is cut to my shoulders, shorter than it’s ever been, and dyed auburn. The sun has brought out freckles on my shoulders, on my chest. The dress I’m wearing is modest and feminine, the ruffle hemline just below my ankles. I am not the girl who cowered in Harmony Hills. I am not the stripper who danced in the Grand.

I am a different person now, a different woman—standing in front of the man I still love.

His eyes are a clear grey, like a winter sky. “Here?” he asks.

In this place where he was tortured and abandoned.

In the place he found beauty and peace.

“Here,” I answer.

He nods, just once. “I’d like to have a word with you.”

A word. He wants more than a word. He wants to bring me back like I’m a wayward child to be led by the hand. For years I hoped my mother would somehow find me, that she would care enough to come after me. Now Ivan wants to do that for me, wants to be the caretaker I didn’t have, but it’s too late. I grew up in between the flashing stage lights and daily spankings. Or maybe I only grew up when I left.

His voice is the one that sounds different. He’s still dominant. That is part of his core, not a skin he can slough off. But all the same he sounds…careful. As if this is important.

As if I’m important.

It makes me feel somehow formal. “Would you like to come in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He steps forward, and the light breaks over him, illuminating the patrician nose and high cheekbones, the firm lips and pale eyes. His face still flashes in my mind in the seconds before I come, rubbing myself with my fingers, desperately trying to think of something else—someone else.

He looks exactly as I remembered him. Except for his suit, which is more rumpled and less starched than I’ve ever seen it, as if he’s slept in it overnight. It makes me think of how he would have looked when he first put it on, crisp and handsome. Then he might have thought about our conversations, about the place he swore never to go, and realized where I’d come. Would he have placed a call to the local agent to find out there were two girls renting the cottage on his land? Maybe, but he wouldn’t have stopped to confirm. He clearly came straight away, rushed over, desperate.

Something inside me warms at the thought of him hungry to see me.

The door isn’t locked. I give it a small nudge, and it swings forward.

At least Sarah Elizabeth is around back. I suppose I should be sending her some kind of warning to run, to hide. I’m in some kind of trance—seeing him here doesn’t feel real. I could almost be rubbing myself, in bed, alone, climaxing to the thought of him. That seems more likely.

At least until he brushes by me—solid, warm, with that faint Ivan musk.

Real.

I bring him into the cottage. So much for a warning signal. He obviously found us. If he had planned a smash-and-grab job, he’d already have done so.

The cottage has exposed rafters and whitewashed walls. Lavender dries on the wall, upside down, scenting the air and calming me. This place may be small, but it’s mine in a way no place has ever been. Not Harmony Hills. And definitely not the Grand. Those places had belonged to men, and I’d belonged to them too.

Ivan’s gray eyes take in every inch of the space, from the overturned crates serving as chairs around a rustic table to the gingham curtain hanging in the middle of the room, half hiding a daybed. At first Sarah Elizabeth and I shared the bedroom, but I moved out so that she could be more comfortable in her final months—and to give her more room when the baby is born.

Nerves flutter in my stomach. What will Ivan think of this house?

His voice is quiet when he speaks. “It’s beautiful.”

More than quiet, he sounds almost reverent. And I know he doesn’t just mean the cottage. He means the life I’ve built here. He means me.

“Thanks,” I say softly, feeling shy.

He clears his throat. “Candace—”

“How is Lola? And the girls?” I have to interrupt him. I can’t let him finish. I’m afraid of what he’ll say, what he’ll ask me. I’m dreading saying no.

A slight nod tells me he knows exactly why I stopped him, but he’s letting it go. For now. “Good. We found Bianca.”

My heart thumps. It had hurt to leave, even if I’d had no real ties to most of them. Maybe if I could have said goodbye. “Is she okay?”

“She got in deep with a dealer. He was affiliated with Fedor. We’re working it out.”

Relief and gratitude form a knot in my throat. “Thank you.”

His expression turns stark. “I apologize that I let you think I wouldn’t help.”

He doesn’t just mean Bianca. “I always knew you would help me, Ivan. Sometimes the price was just too high.”

He’s silent a moment. The past whispers between us, spankings and orders and a rough bloody fuck on his bed—somehow beautiful in its brutality.

He nods once, eyes filled with pain. “I’m sorry for that too.”

My eyebrows shoot up. He should sound like a stranger, speaking those foreign words. But he doesn’t. He apologizes like he does everything else—with the entire force of his will.

“Is that why you came?” I’m the one careful now. I’m the one with something to lose. “To say sorry?”

“That. And other things.”

Other things, other things. My imagination can fill in some heartbreaking other things. My hands are shaking as I go to the sideboard. “Do you want a drink?”

A pause. “Candace.”

I rummage through old, empty liquor bottles, glass soft with dust. There’s a bottle of wine I popped when we first moved in. The scent of vinegar makes my nose scrunch up. “Maybe not.”

“Candy.”

I swallow hard. He never calls me that. I force my hands to my sides, still turned away. “Yes?”

“Would you come sit down?”

Dread. That’s what I’m feeling as I turn and face him. And regret. And love. God, is this what love is? It feels like there’s a hole in my chest, because there are only two ways this ends. I can be his property or nothing at all.

The cushions have no strength left. They sink as I sit down, pushing me closer to Ivan. Why is this sofa so tiny? It didn’t seem that way when Sarah Elizabeth and I would chat late into the night, drinking grape juice instead of stale wine.

I hold myself stiffly, keeping one inch away from him. Without that inch I’ll feel his strength, his solidity. Without that inch, I’d have nothing left to hold myself back with. A strip of air is the only thing keeping me safe.

And he knows it. His pale eyes take in my posture, my expression. He looks down at the space between us, and something like defeat crosses his hard features. Then he closes his eyes as if making a decision.

“I’ve brought you a gift,” he says, pulling something from his coat pocket. A slip of paper. “I’m not sure if you want it, but if not, I’m sure my agent in the city can help you dispose of it.”

I take the paper as if it might catch fire. It does burn my fingers, just that faint heat from his body. My hands are trembling so much it’s hard to read, but then I do. And then the paper goes the same way as the basket, right out of my fingers. Not tumbling and rolling this time. It floats gently to the ground.

The deed to the Grand. That’s what he gave me.

I can’t—Why would he—

He stands, voice grave, eyes not quite meeting mine. “I’m glad to see you doing so well, Candace. I thought… Well, the country seems to suit you.”

Then he’s standing, walking away, leaving only the faint impression of expensive fabric and constrained power. I can only stare at the place where he had been, wondering, praying. He’d asked me once, What do you want then?

Something to call mine.

Then I’m standing up, saying his name. He’s already made it to the door, long strides taken quickly. I have to shout, and it echoes back to me from the walls. He stops walking but doesn’t turn. Not until I run toward him, bare feet slapping the floor, graceless and terrified. He’s leaving.

And he’s leaving his heart behind. It’s a hollow man who faces away from me, shoulders tense. He’s leaving his heart behind, that’s what he’s telling me by giving me the Grand. He had a hundred businesses, some of them more lucrative, almost all of them more glamorous than a seedy strip club in the poor part of Tanglewood. It was his heart, and he gave it to me.

“Ivan, wait,” I say, catching up to him. “Please.”

He turns, only halfway. Listening. Waiting. Hoping? “What is it?”

“Take me with you.”

If I’d been hoping for him to take me in his arms, I’d be disappointed. He laughs, a rough sound. “You’re happy here, Candace. Stay happy.”

“No, I’m—” But I can’t lie, not about this. I am happy here, happier than I’ve ever been. My own place, my own place. My own body to dress and move and touch how I please. It’s something I’ve never had before. “I want to be with you.”

He turns to me then, letting me see the ravage on his face, the utter desolation. “You want a mirage. I’m the man you left behind, little one. That will never change.”

My breath catches. Little one. “I don’t need you to change.”

One eyebrow rises, disbelieving. “No? Then why did you leave?”

“Because…” I take a deep breath. “Because I needed to change.”

His gaze sweeps over me, cataloging every change. “Maybe you’re right. I thought you were beautiful before. Now you look even more beautiful. More than that, you look happy.”

He gives me the compliment with such an easy grace, it steals my words. He’d been so closed off before, holding me so tight I couldn’t breathe. Now he’s giving me the Grand, he’s giving me his kindness. He’s so open, and with a sinking heart, I realize this might be the end. Only now can he be this open, when he’s leaving it all behind. He’s finally opening his fist, only for me to realize how much I needed the crush of him, letting me go when I realize how much I want to stay.

My lower lip trembles. Tears fill my eyes. “I’m your little one.”

His expression softens a fraction. “I know.”

“Then how can you walk away?”

“How can I do anything else? I came here to beg for you back, to tell you I could be different, be better. That I wouldn’t need to treat you like a little girl. But I can’t do any of that.” He stalks away two steps and then returns. “Fuck, look at you. You’ve never looked so happy, so innocent. And so damn little.”