Page 36 of The Castle (Endgame 3)
Wood splinters into a million pieces, raining down on my head. Without waiting for the dust to clear, I pull the chair back and slam it hard again. I’m panting, raging, crying. Sobbing as I rip the lavish study apart with my bare hands.Chapter Nineteen“Avery.”
I think I went into a kind of fugue state with the chair, with the statue on the shelf, with a lamp in the corner. The study is in shambles, every cabinet ripped open, all four sides of the walls torn open.
Gabriel steps into the room, and I brace myself for his fury. I cringe away from his violence. Paranoia has its grip in me, deep enough to draw blood. Maybe that’s why I’m bleeding. I touch my cheek, unsurprised when it comes away smeared pink. Tears and blood, the pain a dull throb.
He steps over the remains of his swivel chair, past the innocent-looking globe lying on the floor. When he reaches me, he kneels and brushes the hair from my face.
His expression isn’t angry, though. It’s concerned.
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he says, sounding more emotional than I’ve ever heard him. More moved. As if the prospect of me hurting myself hurts him instead.
“I want to,” I whisper, and that’s when I realize that it’s not him I suspect. It’s not his study I wanted to destroy. It’s my own mind I can’t trust. My own body I want to tear apart, flying shreds of wood and pieces of metal taking chunks of my skin.
He pulls a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabs it to my lip. “Do you need your freedom that much? That you’ll kill yourself trying to get out?”
I wince, only noticing the cut there for the first time. “I’m not trying to get out. I’m trying to stay in.”
And then I burst into tears.
He gathers me into his arms, murmuring words of comfort, words that mean nothing at all. His hold says everything, the tender way that he embraces me, the almost hesitant way that he strokes my hair. He doesn’t want to hurt me. How could I have doubted him?
“I’m sorry,” I sob, too breathless to explain what I mean.
“Don’t be. I hated that painting, too. Who paints red trees?”
I can’t even laugh, too broken by what I just did. Broken long before this. There are hidden wounds on me, inside me, like the one on my lip. Gabriel can see it, but I can’t. Not until he touches me there.
He reaches down to pick up a crumpled piece of paper. His large hand smooths it out. There’s only the sound of my uneven breathing as he reads it.
“Is it true?” I whisper, voice thick with tears. “Is there a price on my head?”
“Yes,” he says evenly, completely without emotion. I know what that means for a man like him. That he’s bracing for the worst. For me to turn away from him.
For me to suspect him, the way I have until now.
I sigh, pressing my face into his broad chest. “Thank you.”
He grows still. “Why?”
“For not telling me. I may not always prefer it, but I know you only kept it a secret so I wouldn’t be afraid. That’s why you kept telling me to stay here, but you didn’t want me to know the details.”
His hands pull me closer, so tight I almost can’t breathe. “I don’t know how to make you stay. I don’t know how to keep you without breaking you.”
“Love me,” I whisper. “That’s what I need.”
One heartbeat passes. Another. His silence echoes around me. His body vibrates with tension. “Last week we found the man who shot up the Oak Room. He held out a little while but ultimately confessed. Unfortunately, he didn’t know anything about where Jonathan Scott was. We made quite sure he didn’t know before disposing of him.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice hoarse. I know what it must have cost him to do that. To torture a man. To kill one, even someone who deserves it.
“Don’t be. I enjoyed it.” He tightens his hold on me. “Your father is right about one thing. It isn’t a good thing that I want you. Nothing good comes from a man like me.”
I turn my face up to his, knowing that he’ll see my eyes red and puffy, that he’ll see the worst of me. His expression reveals a deep-seated pleasure, the kind that comes from physical sensation. God, he likes it. He loves me torn up and angry. He loves the real me, stripped down. Not like I was at the auction, naked and humiliated, freshly made-up and for sale. No, this is the real Avery James.
My palm cups his cheek, feeling the bristle of his hair, the tension of the muscles underneath. “I want you, Gabriel Miller. And maybe you’re the one who should be afraid of that.”
