Page 118 of Reverie

“Some wear rings, like my father and Morris Winthrope. Others have tattoos.” I think about the commissioner and the black smudge behind his ear.

“Then there are the symbols that appear elsewhere, like the floor of the vault in Isla Cara.” When Leo and I went there the last time, we opened the vault and found what we expected to find and more—on the floor in the center of the room was the same eye, but with additional features than what’s on the ring my father wore.

“There’s something there,” I say.

Misha sits up in his chair, and Luna begins to sketch the symbols on her legal pad.

Amelia turns to me. “This is the closest we’ve been to any type of breakthrough in a very long time.”

She reaches across the table and puts her scarred hand upon mine.

“Thank you, Hunter,” she says.

I let her hand stay.

FIFTEEN

WINTER

Ihaven’t seen Hunter in two weeks.

Quite literally, I haven’t laid my eyes on him in fourteen days.

Not when I searched for him to go to my sonogram across the compound in the medical bay. Not when I tried to give him the latest pictures of our baby. Not when I looked for him to share about the late night August, Ella, and I had and what August confessed about how he’s been feeling about Blair’s death.

Fourteen days have passed.

And I haven’t been able to think of anything else except Hunter. I try, try, try to force my brain to focus on any other topic, but it’s impossible.

I’ve fallen into obsession.

I can’t sleep. I have this unsettled feeling deep in my chest, as if at any moment I could tip over the brink of literal heartbreak. When I breathe, I think of Hunter. When I move, I think of Hunter. When I’m still, I think of Hunter.

And even though I know what’s happening—that I’m flowing down a path of paranoia and perseveration—I’m helpless to stop myself. So every night, I pull his clothes from the closetand cocoon myself with them. I spray his cologne on his shirts and pretend he’s with me. I pretend that we’re back at Amelia Manor, making pizza and playing video games with August.

I allow myself to pretend...and deny the fact that I’m in a dangerous place where the line between love and obsession is indistinct—practically invisible.

I’ve never felt this way about anyone, but I'm familiar with the hallmarks of my mental illness: compulsion, obsession, hypomania.

When will this stop being so damn hard?

My love for Hunter is poisoning me. I can recognize this truth in a distant part of myself—the part that can be rational and objective and self-honoring.

But I can’t stop thinking of him. I can’t let myself feel anything but the pressing, chronic need to have him by me. To see his face. To feel his body pressed against mine.

To be loved by him.

I want him however I can get him, even if that means I have him with an ocean full of darkness.

I was raped.

When he said those words, my heart splintered into a million pieces. When he spilled the parts of his past in that bathroom at the Appleton Country Club, I knew there was more. I could feel it in how his protection of me morphed into something darker in the days following my abduction.

I could sense it in his overwhelming need to control everything.

We’re not dissimilar, he and I. He puts things, people, events into neat little boxes. He forces everything to fit in the parameters he’s set for himself and those around him.

He never wants anyone else to get hurt, even if he’s destroyed bit by bit in an effort to protect them.