Page 59 of Beautiful Savage
"This is bullshit and you know it. I'm useful here. I can help."
"This is not a request."
"Stop doing that." Her voice cracks on it, not from tears but from something harder. "Stop using that voice on me like I'm one of your men. Like I'm something to be managed." She steps forward, close enough that I can see the pulse in her throat. "You're scared. Say it. Say that's what this is."
The heat drains out of me. I'm empty, scraped out by the morning and the fight and the truth.
"Say it," she repeats, each syllable coming from deeper down, until her eyes are wet and her hands are shaking and I finally see the cost I'm asking her to pay.
I stare at the wall behind her, a patch of white that's been half-painted for months.
"I'm scared," I say, flat as the drywall. "Happy?"
She snorts, and the sound is almost a relief. "No.I'm not happy." She wipes under her eye with her thumb, annoyed with herself. "You start talking about fear like it's some dirty secret, like nobody else on earth ever felt it."
I try to smile. "I've had a lot of practice hiding it."
She closes the distance, wraps cold hands around my forearm, the one with scar tissue. "I'm not leaving you here to fight alone. I'm not." She waits for me to give ground, and when I don't, her fingers tighten to claws. "If you're scared, fine. But do not send me away."
I pull my arm free, harder than I mean to, and she backs up a step, glaring. "You're safer in Pristine."
She laughs. "Bullshit."
"No, you're safer there. Not safe, never safe. But if they find you here, they'll use you. You've read the whole file. You know what he does to leverage a weakness."
Her eyes widen. She's silent for a count of four. "I'm not afraid for me," she says finally. "I'm afraid for you."
I want to slam my fist through the wall. Instead I pace the length of the kitchen, from the battered fridge to the tiny breakfast table and back. The whole place still smells like toast and coffee and her shampoo, and it makes me want to claw out of my own skin.
She talks into my silence, filling it with the logic she thinks I haven't considered. "If I leave, you'll have to cover twice as much ground yourself. You'll be distracted. You'll waste time worrying about what you can't see. You're better with a second set of eyes, even if those eyes are mine."
I almost laugh, because she's right, but that's exactly the problem.
"I'm not discussing this," I say, and this time it comes out with the old edge. The one that's gotten me through a thousand firefights, the one that makes men run for cover before I pull the trigger.
She stands there, arms crossed. "You think I'm scared of that voice? Get real. You're not my father. I'm not sixteen. And you're not the only one in this apartment with something to lose."
The anger blazes up fast, hot, but behind it's something less clean. "You think I'm enjoying this?" I say, not even sure who I'm talking to. "You think this is some macho, big-dick thing? I've seen what happens to people who matter to men like Hallstein." My voice is hoarse. "If I have to break your arm to get you out, I will."
Her eyes stay on mine, steady and unblinking. The silence is a physical thing, a wall between us. She turns away first, moves to the window, arms crossed, looking down at Calle Ocho. Twenty seconds of her back to me.
"I hate this."
"I know."
"I'm not baggage."
"No."
Another silence. She turns back around, and her jaw is set, but something behind it has shifted. "I'll go. But not because I'm afraid for myself. I'm leaving because you're afraid for me."
"Yes."
She turns toward the bedroom. I watch her pack in efficient silence. Her duffel on the bed plus a second one of mine. Every item she folds is another piece of evidence that I let her too close. From the closet: the jeans and t-shirts she brought from Pristine, clothes that now smell like my detergent. A few things I've bought her since, pajamas she never wears, some new sundresses, a leotard for dancing, leggings and t-shirts.From the dresser: underwear, socks, the small jewelry from her original bag.
She leaves the gold gown hanging in the closet. The dress that made every man in La Sirena want her. The helmet sits on the floor where she dropped it days ago. The riding jacket stays draped over the desk chair. The acrylic paints her father uses, still on the kitchen counter where I put them. She doesn't pack those either.
Every piece she leaves behind is a promise she'll return. She's leaving pieces of herself here because she knows what I refuse to admit. That she belongs to me. Going back as who she was, not who she's become. The woman I've turned her into stays here, waiting.
