“You didn’t make me yours for my benefit, Saint,” I hissed. “You wanted me broken and keeping my letters proves you’re still trying to break me.”
His eyebrows rose. “I did want that, yes. But I’m not trying to break you anymore, Tatum, I’ve seen the power in you, I’ve seen what you truly are. Now…I’m shaping you.”
I tutted, looking away from him. “Think what you like, Saint. You can try to break me, shape me or whatever else. But the one thing you will never, ever manage to do, is keep me.”
Something shattered in his gaze and his throat rose and fell as he stared at me. I wrapped my arms around my body as I shivered, the cold inching into my actual soul.
“We’ll see about that,” he muttered, then stepped aside. “Go shower upstairs. Clothes will be waiting for you when you’re done then we will start stage two of your punishment. And for the love of fucking Christ, if you wear those shoes inside and trail mud through my home, you will regret it.”
I strode past him, hurrying around the building and kicking off my shoes on the porch before heading inside. The whole place had been freaking cleaned from top to bottom. Like what I’d done had never even happened. Rebecca.
Blake looked over his shoulder at me from his armchair, his eyes widening at the sight of me soaking wet and covered in mud. I walked upstairs before he could say a word and slammed the door behind me as I entered the bathroom.
When I was warmed through from a long shower, my anger finally started to ease too. The way Saint had looked at me kept playing on my mind. Like he cared if I left. Actually cared.
Not just because he wanted to bully and hurt me. I wasn’t even mad about his punishments; I’d expected no less after everything I’d done, but there was always going to be a deep wound in me over what Saint had done in the past. Despite my revenge, it was impossible to let go of that. But then…he hadn’t burned my letters, even if he was keeping them from me. Maybe this was his way of regaining control over the situation. He’d revealed a vulnerability to me by showing me they were still intact. He’d proven he wasn’t heartless. That a living, functioning organ really did beat in his chest. And it felt things. Things that made him spend time forging my letters, pre-empting the whole burning thing instead of just callously doing it. And if I really, really thought about it, I had to acknowledge that the punishments he gave me these days didn’t hurt like they used to.
Gah, I can’t start reasoning with a madman.
Maybe some of this anger wasn’t just for him, maybe it was aimed at myself. Because as much as I didn’t want to admit it, at some point, I’d started to forgive them. If they weren’t monsters right down to their rotten cores, then that made them human. It made them redeemable. And I was in a war with the part of me that was acknowledging that. Letting them in, piece by beautiful, terrible piece. They were crawling deeper under my skin. So I needed to hold onto my hate for Saint more than anything, because he was the ringleader. If I started to understand him, sympathise with him, then I would be on a slippery slope. And I did not want to even think about what was waiting for me at the bottom of that slope.
I dried my hair then exited the bathroom in a towel, finding a dark red sweater dress waiting on the bed with some delicate black lingerie, stockings and suspenders. I put it all on and it clung to my figure like a dream. How did he find stuff that fit me so well? I was never uncomfortable, nothing was ever too tight or too big. It was just right. All of it. Did he measure me in my freaking sleep one time??
I headed downstairs to the sound of explosions as Blake played his favourite zombie game and I glanced at Kyan on the couch who was fast asleep with his arm slung over his eyes. He never seemed that interested in gaming lately and more and more people around campus were meeting the destruction of his fists. His knuckles were busted up nearly every day and I’d taken to tending to them after the burn on his chest had healed. I didn’t want to acknowledge the little voice in the back of my head saying that was because I liked looking after him and I didn’t want it to stop. Frankly, a small burn on his chest had not needed the rapt attention I’d given it for days on end. But he hadn’t complained. He kept showing up after that with bloody knuckles, sitting in the same chair at the same time daily as he waited for me to fix him up. It had become our routine, but that time had come and gone this morning because of the drama and I was kind of miffed to have missed out on it. The few minutes where I bathed his wounds was the only time that we weren’t at each other’s throats. And the only time we were in each other’s personal space flesh against flesh.
After he’d shown me his beautiful sketches and told me he was mine, he’d immediately started acting like none of it had happened again. He kept his distance, returned to sleeping on the couch when it was my turn in his bed
