Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Though happy was far too simple and pedestrian a word for what I was with Knox. It wasn’t exactly true happiness. The dynamics between us were far too gnarled and complicated and threaded with trauma to make our relationship happy.
But those dynamics were the very things that tangled into the core of me, making me understand that no matter what inevitably happened when the world rushed in, I would always be Knox’s.
Though it couldn’t be that simple below this mountain. Even without the pressing threat of Stone—which was pretty hard to think of a solution to—I was a kindergarten teacher with a normal life. Knox was a killer and a man who I knew would be unable to fundamentally operate in the normal world. What would introducing him to my friends look like? Dinners? Takeout and Netflix? Could he be satisfied with a life free of what fed the darkest sides of him?
And though I ached to heal him so that he didn’t need to feed himself pain and suffering—I hadn’t missed two new lines of scabbing over cuts that had appeared on his body—I had to admit that I didn’t fall in love with the sides of him that were normal. I fell for him because of his depravity.
It was all much too complicated, and I wasn’t brave enough to face it. Instead, I chose to drown in Knox. For however long I had him.
“What would you have done?” I’d asked the night before, tangled in bed, staring at the ceiling, my body aching from the attention of his licentiousness, which was near insatiable.
He’d been denying himself pleasure for years, so he had a lot to catch up on. Not that I was complaining.
“If you had been given the opportunity to pursue your passions, have whatever passes for a normal life?” I continued my question. He always waited patiently in the silences that I put between sentences, a quirk of mine that annoyed previous boyfriends to no end. Not Knox. He gave the impression that he’d wait in the valleys of my words for a lifetime.
“If someone hadn’t stolen that future from you,” I added through my teeth. I still breathed in venom when I thought of how Knox had been abused. Though I was an expert in knowing no amount of vehemence could change the actions of monsters, especially not dead ones.
It was maybe an unfair question, akin to someone asking me who I’d be if I hadn’t had a father who’d murdered my mother. But I wanted to know Knox beneath his layers of coldness, his bloodthirstiness. I understood there was more to him, a never-ending depth.
He ran his hand along my hip. It was colored with bruises the same size and shape of his finger pads, evidence of the way he held me, as if he wanted to imprint his touch onto my bones.
I truly hoped I wore his bruises for the rest of my life. That every day I’d wake up with a mottling of black and blue in intimate places, proof of just how hard he was holding on to me.
I, too, was learning to bathe in his silences before he answered my questions. If he did. He didn’t always respond to me. Not because he was ignoring me but because he didn’t have words. Usually he did very well by communicating with me through actions.
I thought that he might not answer this time. That I was asking him to be too vulnerable, not just with me but with himself.
“A painter.” His voice was ice cold, a sign that he was covering up his true feelings.
My heart skipped at that large victory he gave me.
“A painter?” I repeated, using considerable effort to keep my voice smooth, even.
He nodded once. I waited for more explanation beyond that, but in Knox-like fashion, he didn’t give me one.
Which was fine because I had all the information I needed.
Later, we were at the bottom of the mountain on a supply run. Together. He hadn’t so much as asked me but made it a forgone conclusion that I’d be coming. That he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. I felt the same.
The warning of The Devil card lingered in the back of my mind, about an intoxicating, addicting attraction that would be my destruction.
I had experience with that. I’d conquered addiction before—as well as anyone could. But Knox was no substance, and there was no way I could quit him.
I pushed those thoughts from my mind and made a plan instead.
“I need you to put some trust in me,” I said when Knox stopped the car.
“I trust you with my life,” he replied instantly. He was still gripping the steering wheel. “But not with yours. That’s too precious.”
My throat seized with his words, both with the value he put on my life and the intensity in which he spoke. It was almost stifling, the new obsession he had with me. Or maybe it was an obsession that had been there all along, a beast only recently let out of its cage.