Page 128 of Ruin
I reach into my pocket.
The collar key is there, small and brass and warm from my body heat.
I've been carrying it since the night Cassius slid it under my apartment door. Through the brunch with Emilia. Through the move to the penthouse. Through the knife scene and the office and the war room and the factory. Through all of it, this key has been in my pocket, and I haven't used it.
I close my fingers around it and hold it tight enough that the metal bites into my palm, and I think about what Emilia said.You chose him every time.
She's right.
I did.
The penthouse isdark when I arrive.
Not empty—I can feel him before I see him, the way I always can, like a frequency my body is tuned to whether I want to be or not.
He's on the couch in the living room.
Whiskey in hand. No lights except the city coming through the windows, and he's a silhouette against the skyline, all sharp edges and shadow.
He watches me come in, and his eyes move over me once.
The black clothes. The rolled-up sleeves. The collar.
My face, which I'm sure looks like something that's been through a war because it has.
He doesn't speak. Doesn't ask how it went or whether Emilia is okay or what she said.
He just waits. The way he waited the night I held a gun to his chest. The way he waited in the office when I crossed the room in his shirt.
Cassius doesn't chase. He holds still and lets me come to him, because he knows, he has always known, that the coming is the choice.
I take the key out of my pocket.
He sees it.
His eyes drop to my hand, to the small brass shape between my fingers, and something crosses his face that's too fast to name. Not fear, exactly. Anticipation. The held breath of a man watching a coin spin in the air.
I walk to the couch, set the key on the coffee table between us. Deliberate. Where we can both see it.
"Emilia is gone," I say.
"I know."
"She can't be part of my life anymore."
"I know."
"You took everything from me." I'm not angry. The anger burned out somewhere on the drive, used itself up, and what's left is something quieter and more honest and harder to fight. "My parents. My innocence. My best friend. My ability to pretend I'm a good person." I reach out and trace the scab on his throat from the knife—healing now, a thin dark line that will probably scar. "You've taken everything I had."
"I know."
"And I'm still here." I look at the key on the table. At the collar on my throat. At the man in the dark who is watching me with an expression that is, for the first time since I've known him, completely unguarded. "In your home. In your life. Wearing your collar. With the key right there and the door right there and every reason in the world to walk through it."
"What does that say about you?" he asks. Not a taunt. A genuine question. Maybe the most genuine question he's ever asked me.
"It says I'm done pretending." I straddle him. The whiskey glass is in the way, so I take it from his hand and set it on the side table without looking, without breaking eye contact, because if I look away I'll lose the nerve and I can't afford to lose the nerve. Not tonight. "It says I'm done fighting a battle that's already been won."
His hands settle on my hips. Gentle. Waiting.
