by Stella Hart
I’d officially lost it.
My door opened a moment later, and Alex entered with a plate of eggs and toast. Plastic cutlery so I couldn’t hurt him or myself. He crossed the room, put the plate on my bedside table, then sat on the bed, pointedly refusing to touch me. “Good morning. Did you dream about anything?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, sir.”
“Remember anything new about the mansion, or anything else?”
I swallowed hard, hating that I had to disappoint him, and hating myself for hating it. That was a mouthful. No wonder I was losing it. “No, sir,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Something crossed his face, a flash of emotion, but it was gone before I could pinpoint it. “What are you sorry for?” he asked.
My heart began to race. This was more than he’d said to me in days. “For disappointing you,” I murmured. “For not remembering anything else about the Circle. I know you want to track them down.”
“That isn’t your fault. We just need to give it more time. Memories are a tricky thing,” he said kindly. It didn’t change the fact that he probably wouldn’t want to keep me much longer now that I’d seemingly run out of use. “Anything else?”
“What do you mean, sir?” I asked.
“Is there anything else you’re sorry for? Now that you’ve had time to think.”
I looked down at my lap, playing with a loose thread on my blanket. I knew what he was getting at. He was angling for an apology from me in regard to my escape attempt last week. I couldn’t give that to him, though. As much as I’d resigned myself to staying here, and as much as that twisted part of my heart felt ashamed for trying to leave him, that didn’t mean I was actually sorry for trying to gain my freedom. I would never be sorry for wanting that. “No, sir,” I whispered, not meeting his eyes.
“I see.” He was silent for a moment, but he didn’t leave. “So you haven’t changed your mind.”
I shook my head. No point lying. “No, sir.” I sounded like a broken record. “I understand that I belong here because it’s what you want. But that’s all.”
He rubbed his jawline. “Do you hate me, Celeste?”
My eyebrows shot up. The question had come as a shock to me. “I….” I faltered, unsure what to say. “No,” I finally ventured.
He stared at the wall, then looked back at me. “The other day you said you would rather be dead than be here.”
Guilt roiled in my guts. “I didn’t mean that, sir,” I mumbled. It was the truth. I didn’t want to die under any circumstances. It was just something I said in the heat of the moment.
Alex nodded. “Good. Because I can’t let you go.”
Pain pricked at my upper back as he spoke. My nerve issue was bothering me more and more nowadays, even after the short reprieve I had from it when I watched Baldwin die screaming and choking on his own blood the other day.
I knew why the pain had returned. It was from the stress and shame of displeasing Alex recently. I wanted to hate him for what he’d done to me, and what he was probably going to do to me soon, but I still faced the same problem I always had. I simply couldn’t hate him. Every time I saw his face, I was reminded of it, and now I knew exactly why.
The stark realization had hit me somewhere around lunchtime three days ago. I wasn’t falling for Alex anymore. I’d already fallen for him. Fallen so hard that I couldn’t bring myself to hate him even though he was a monster.
He would probably kill me soon, just like he did to the last girl, but even then I couldn’t hate him. Even if I had managed to escape the other day, part of me would’ve wanted to come crawling back, begging for his forgiveness. Part of my heart would’ve been ripped out, left right here with Alex.
It was utterly senseless, tore my soul in two, broke my fragile heart into pieces, threatened to devour me whole… but I loved him.
I was in love with a monster.
14
Alex
With a frown, I reclined on my study chair, watching Celeste on the camera feed on my computer screen. She’d barely touched her breakfast since I left her room, and she was sitting on her bed, staring into space.
Something had happened in her internal world, and whatever it was, I knew it was all my fault. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where I went wrong, but something had made her snap. She was acting completely submissive to me, but this wasn’t like all the other times she’d submitted. She seemed dead behind the eyes now, just going through the motions. I hated it. Hated that I’d made her into this with all my fucked up shit.
Had I misjudged her that badly? Misread who she was and tried to force her into being someone she wasn’t? Perhaps. At this point I had no fucking idea. All I knew for sure was that I hated seeing her this broken, and I hated myself for whatever I’d done to cause it.
I actually missed her trying to fight me. I missed that spark of personality I saw in her every time she told me to fuck off or that she didn’t belong here. I didn’t see it anymore. It was gone, along with the light in her eyes.
My fault.
I did this to her. I wanted her to submit, but not like this. Not to this extent where she was dull, colorless, weak.
Somewhere along the line, I’d seriously fucked up. I thought I’d done the right thing in bringing her here and setting all the rules to keep her safe, and it seemed to work for a while, but apparently all I’d succeeded in doing in the end was turning her into an empty shell. I made her too afraid to fight back, and she was right to be afraid, because she would be punished if she ever argued or tried to leave. Those were the rules I gave her, after all.
At the time, I told myself it was all for her benefit; that I needed to do something drastic to ensure her loyalty, even if it meant doing the unthinkable and imprisoning her under a harsh set of rules. But it was obviously too much. She hated being here now, and I was sure she also hated me, despite her words to the contrary.
I couldn’t fucking stand it. I wanted her to want to be here. I wanted her to care for me the way I cared for her, but now… now I feared she never would. I’d spent the last week leaving her to her own devices in the hope that she’d come around and realize the mistake she made when she tried to leave, but she’d only withdrawn further and further into her shell. At this rate, she’d never come out.
We were going backwards, and it was all my fucking fault.
I already knew that the only way to truly own her body and her soul was if I made her fall in love with me. But after what I’d done, how I’d hurt her, how could she ever love me? I was a fucking monster. I killed people, and I felt nothing but joy when I did it. I wasn’t going to apologize for that, because I wasn’t sorry. But it wasn’t something most people could deal with in the end, even someone as sweet and understanding as Celeste.
Even if she did accept all the killings, she still couldn’t accept all of me, considering the way I’d gone about things with her, despite the fact that I genuinely believed I was doing the right thing at the time. I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. If I never brought her here, she’d be in terrible pain. And if I brought her here and told her everything from the beginning, I risked breaking her mind irreparably. No, there was no other way to go about things… and yet, I still felt as if I’d done something wrong. I felt like I’d failed.
I sighed and leaned back, my mind momentarily flashing back to a pleasant memory. I’d never been happier than the day Celeste chose to stay, just like I knew she would at the time. But that was all down the drain now. The wind had changed, and she wanted out all over again.
Being a ruthless killer all these years had obviously warped my mind, made me too detached to properly observe things from anyone else’s point of view, including hers. It also made it nigh impossible to see when I was wrong, so I still couldn’t see exactly where I’d fucked everything up. Couldn’t see the exact moment when she’d suddenly decided that I could no longer be trusted.
I wished I could simply set her free to make her happy agai
n, but it wasn’t in my nature to do so. It was too dangerous. She needed to learn that once and for all.
I still needed to do something, though. Needed to try and help her be happy again, help her accept her place here with me.
I mulled it over in the back of my mind while I finished stacks of paperwork from the hospital for the next few hours. When I was done, I went into the kitchen and prepared an early dinner. I set the table for two along with some candles and flowers, and then I went and fetched Celeste from her room.
She seemed surprised that I was letting her out, but she didn’t say anything. She simply kept her head bowed, avoiding eye contact with me as she followed my order to sit down.
Her face was pale, and her cheeks were beginning to look hollow. She’d been refusing to finish her food lately, but I was sure she wouldn’t say no to this. I gestured at the bowl in front of her. “Risotto with parmesan and truffle oil. One of your favorites, right?”
She nodded. “Thank you, sir,” she mumbled.
Even though I knew she loved this particular meal, she barely touched it, aimlessly moving her fork around the bowl instead. I sighed, then cleared my throat. “I wanted to say a few things, Celeste.”
She didn’t look up, her fork still stirring cheesy globs of rice around her bowl, over and over. “Yes, sir?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I know I’m not an easy man. There are certain things I don’t talk about much, because I find it difficult. I don’t open up easily, so to speak.” I half expected her to make a face at that, something like ‘well, duh!’ but her expression remained vacant and unreadable. I sighed and went on. “When I brought you here, I honestly thought I was doing the right thing with everything I did and the way I held off from telling you the truth at first. I thought I was helping you.”
“I know, sir,” she murmured.
“I was wrong.”
She finally looked up at me, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. For the first time in days, she was displaying some semblance of emotion again.
I held up one palm. “I made a mistake. No, I made a lot of mistakes. The way I treated you, the things I did….” I hesitated for a second. “Like I said, I believed I was doing the right thing. But I hurt you. I regret that, and I’m sorry. I want to start making things right. So from now on, there are no more punishments, not unless you want it, like that day when you specifically asked me to take you into the playroom.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You… you won’t hurt me? Ever?”
I held both palms up now. “Not unless you ask. In fact, I will not touch you in any way unless you ask for it. Okay?”
I expected her shoulders to lift a little at that, but they didn’t, and her face went blank again. She didn’t believe me. “Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me that unless you want to. No more of the old rules, Celeste. You can do whatever you like, say whatever you like. Within reason.”
“Okay.” Still nothing, not even another flicker of surprise. She was like a zombie.
“Anything you want, just ask for it. I’ll do my best.” I felt like a fucking teenager begging his girlfriend not to dump him, and I knew I was going soft over her. But I couldn’t stop myself. I needed her eyes to light up again, needed to see nothing but pure adoration in her gaze. I needed her to want to be mine again.
She looked at me, her face still expressionless. “I want freedom.”
I sighed. “Anything but that. I can’t let you go. You know that.”
“There isn’t anything else I want,” she said, pushing her bowl away, leaving the majority of her dinner untouched.
I leaned forward. “There must be something I can do to make you happier.” My face brightened. “Oh, your herbs have recovered. I checked them all earlier. That’s actually what I used for the garnish on the risotto; some of the parsley. You could start going out to the greenhouse every day again. Would you like that?”
She shrugged and didn’t reply.
I tried another tack. “What about that cat shelter you used to donate to? Tomorrow I could go and write them a check for a hundred grand. That’d help a lot of your little feline friends, wouldn’t it? Maybe one day when things have settled, we could even adopt a kitten for you.”
She frowned, as if she couldn’t believe I was actually trying to bribe her into falling for me. “Actually, there is something else I want,” she said quietly. “Honesty. Be honest with me, Alex.”
I held up my hands. “I’m always honest with you. I know you don’t believe me, but I’ve never lied to you.”
There was a tiny spark of something in her eyes, but they went flat again before I could tell what it was. “Can I go back to my room now?” she asked.
I was struck by a sudden feeling that I’d once again done something terribly wrong, but I had no idea what. I nodded at her, guilt stabbing at my guts. “Of course. I’ll put your dinner in the fridge in case you want it later.”
I knew she wouldn’t eat it. She would let it go to waste, just like her breakfast, slowly making herself fade away. I didn’t want to force feed her, but if it came down to it, I might have to. I hoped it would never come to that, though. I hoped I could find a way to help her feel something again, because I had to fix her before she was broken beyond repair.
Before it was too late….
15
Celeste
The world was whirling, spinning, reeling. Literally and figuratively. Alex spun me around and around on the ice, and for the first time in over a week, I almost cracked a smile. Almost.
In an attempt to make me happy and build up my appetite, he’d taken me down to the frozen-over creek on his property to ice-skate all afternoon. Apparently the ice was already thick enough, even though it was only partway through November, seeing as the cold weather had started so early this year. I hadn’t skated in years, and I had to admit, I enjoyed it.
Making me happy was seemingly Alex’s latest pet project—he’d been sucking up to me for the last five days, saying he was sorry for hurting me and offering me almost anything under the sun in return for my affection.
All the rules had gone out the window. I still hadn’t been collared again, and when he was home, I was allowed to go wherever I wanted on the property, as long as he accompanied me. When he was out, I had to be locked back up in my room again, but that wasn’t very frequent, as he’d been taking so much time off work lately.
The changes had thrown me off guard. I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on with Alex, and I felt like my mind was melting under all the confusion. When he looked at me, I saw naked tenderness in his eyes, and for a few seconds every time, it made me think he genuinely loved me even though he’d never said the words. It made me giddy, given my unwanted yet ever-present and strong feelings for him, and I had to look at the photo of Evangeline every day to remind myself to stop feeling anything for him; to remind myself that he couldn’t be trusted.
Every day I was tempted to scream in his face: What about Evangeline Gibson? Who was she? Why did you choose her? What happened to her? But I was too frightened to do so, not knowing what his reaction would be and wanting to preserve my life as long as possible.
If he just admitted that she existed without my prompting, and that he had her with him before me, maybe then I could forgive him and trust that he wasn’t going to hurt me. But he kept telling me there was nothing to admit. Nothing he’d lied about.
The photos said otherwise—he hurt that girl, and she’d definitely been in his house.
I was willing to give him one allowance and accept that I may have overreacted when I jumped to the conclusion that he killed her. My initial thought after reading her note was that she couldn’t stand to be here anymore and possibly committed suicide. Later, I changed my mind and decided it was more likely that Alex killed her after her escape attempt (and that he’d eventually kill me too), but now I was leaning back toward the former option.
Perhaps she did kill herself. Per
haps Alex really did love her, and he was truly devastated when she died. Perhaps he’d learned from the experience and realized he couldn’t hurt a girl so badly if he wanted her to stay with him. Perhaps I was reaping the benefits of that experience, and he really wouldn’t hurt or kill me one day.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Tomorrow, I could be warm and healthy, or I could be cold and dead. There was no way for me to truly know what my future held.
“Are you cold?” Alex asked, coming to a stop on the ice. “Your nose is turning bright pink.”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s freezing out here.”
“I’ll keep you warm.”
His arms circled my waist, and I melted against him before I could stop myself. I closed my eyes, resting my head on his shoulder as I breathed in his musky scent. For a moment, it was easy for me to pretend he was simply my boyfriend, and we were a cute couple on a weekend getaway. After this skating expedition, we’d head back to our rented winter cabin and join our friends for mulled cider and hot chocolate before heading out for a gourmet dinner downtown. Then we’d make love in front of a roaring fire on a thick wooly rug, and afterwards we’d lie there together and make all sorts of plans for our future.
I wanted that fantasy to be real so badly. I wanted to pretend Alex was just that, my sweet, caring boyfriend, and not my ever-mysterious silver-tongued captor.
I suppose, in a weird, twisted sense, he was my boyfriend—we lived together, prepared and ate meals together, spent time together, and he’d taken my virginity and given me countless orgasms. He was the only man who’d ever been in my life in this way; the only man who’d ever brought me such pleasures. If we’d met under different circumstances, I’d probably be hoping for a marriage proposal by now.