Page 74 of When Sinners Fear

Did he not mean any of the things he said to me earlier tonight? I stare at him as doubt and pain ebb and flow around my body. I didn’t consider that he wouldn’t come with me. I thought … What? Some heroic move? Some rationale where all this disappears and we’re just two people?

I nod quietly, accepting the distance between us, and move towards the jet. If I have to do this alone, I will. It will be easier.

“A car will be waiting for you when you get there. It’ll take you wherever you want to go. There will also be a phone, some cash, and other incidentals for you.”

Don’t turn around. Don’t.

He grabs my wrist before I can climb the first step, though, and slams his lips against mine, kissing me deeply. It’s filled with a longing I’m scared to recognise myself. The hold is fierce and desperate, and for a minute I’m swayed back to staying, to talking, to not thinking, but he pulls back before the thought takes hold and rests his forehead on mine.

“Try to forget, Peyton. Live.” His lips brush over the top of my head before he turns and walks back to his car. I watch him the entire way – his stronger gait, his broad shoulders. His bloodstained hands. He doesn’t look back, though.Not one glance.

CHAPTER TWENTY - SEVEN

KNOX

“It was impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.”

The Tell Tale Heart – Poe.

Closing the book, I stare up at the third-floor window and watch the light go out. It isn’t impossible to say – I know exactly how it happened. I know because of the ache inside when I walked away from her in New York. Poe said, in The Purloined Letter –As a poet and a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

Reasoning. I’ve always been good at that. It’s what makes me as sinister as I am. I plot and I weave and I plan our carnage, all before inflicting the damage my nature needs to disperse. I am, to all intents and purposes, the premeditated determiner behind us all – the list giver. But with her I couldn't rationalise anything – not one damn thing. It can't be denied now, though. A heart I thought untouchable, near dead in its villainous logic, has been breached.

It’s taken a few weeks of clear time without her, but I know because she’s still with me day and night – still burdening me, still ingrained in me. Care turned to love somehow. Protection turned to need. Dark tried turning into some kind of light. For her. They fought with each other. One pulled me back to where I should be, and the other dreamed of angelic eyes that questioned me.

My obscurity won. It had to.

For her sake.

She’ll try to sleep now, like she has done for the few weeks without me. Those nightmares will still haunt her like they haunt me, though. She’s woken these last three nights. Lights off, lights on again a few hours later. I’m in there with her every moment of those nightmares because I caused them. I can feel her pain in my fingers still and hear her screams inside me.

I opened the car door the first two nights when the lights went on, ready to go to her and pull her back to me. I craved it like nothing before as if her pain belonged to me. I stopped myself, though. This is her world again. I’m not part of it. She’ll find her way, and she’ll deal with her nightmares until they’re little more than moments that pass by. She has to, because the tragedy of living in the past will limit her forward momentum.

Still, I’ll wait here until that light goes back on again. I’ll drink my coffee and watch her room and then I’ll live those memories with her from afar. I’ll listen to her whimpers in my head, and I’ll glorify the moans I remember for my own benefit. And then I’ll think of a bed and softness, of waking next to her and feeling her fingers on my chest.

One hour becomes two, and two turns into three. No one knows I’m here. The tracking is turned off on my car, and my phone’s tracking is equally as dead. I don’t want family finding me at the moment. I want to be lost with her again, on dirty ground and living a time I’ll never erase. And if I can’t be back there then I’ll remember and give it the energy it deserves.

And then I’ll try to move on.

Without her by me it’s all wrong lately, unsettling. I can’t think it through correctly, can’t feel it. Nothing seems real without her somehow. My hand is empty. My thoughts are undisciplined. My books, it seems, are far from balanced.

I sent one text to Abel before I left, that’s all.

Need space. One week.

I didn’t need space. I needed a space with her in it.

Lighting a smoke, I get out, lean on the hood, and wait. A glow surfaces in her room not long after. I smirk, then scowl at my own self-interest. My hand rubs at my dick almost instantly, though, as if we’re connected again. I imagine her there, legs spread wide as she fucks herself and thinks about me. A phone call is all it would take, or me taking what I want rather than offering a decency I didn’t think I owned. I’m not decent. Never have been. I’m self-centred and hungry as hell. I’m also fucking screwed when it comes to her, apparently – constantly confused.

Eventually, the sun breaks the horizon, and the old building begins lighting up brick by brick. I get back in the car as trees start casting shadows. They creep and crawl, and the lights of other rooms flick on one by one. I keep watching, waiting, until I finally see her hurrying down the steps towards the pavement so she can get to her study. Black pants, high waisted, and a long, light blue coat hiding what’s underneath. She can’t hide that from me. I know every inch of her body and her sensations. It's me that woke it all up.

I watch her scan her gaze around and behind her constantly, as if checking for threats. Her hair catches the light, blue eyes trained on everything and nothing. The only threat for her here is me, and I’ll always be that for her whether I’m here or not. I’m a memory on her skin, a recollection of disturbing beginnings and innocence lost.

The thought makes me smile, despite the fact that I shouldn’t. My tongue roams my lips, and I force my back against the seat. I could move, take, devour. Instead, I wait until she’s in the main building – safe – and then I think of her through her day. She’s brighter in the daylight, unhaunted. She studies, she works, she smiles. All without me.

Time to leave.

~