Page 70 of Beautiful Savage
My shame brought me here. Not my desire.
The shame that made me deliver that verdict in Papa's living room. The shame that demanded I shrink into smallness. The shame that said being good and small would keep everyone safe.
But being good and small made me vulnerable. Leaving Miami, leaving Gunner, leaving the protection of people who actually knew how to protect. That's what put me in this chair.
My body remembers the truth. How I felt safest when Gunner's massive frame blocked doorways, when his scarred hands held me, when his growl in my ear saidminelike a prayer and promise. Every moment I chose to stay with him, every time I kissed him or danced for him or let him see who I really was. Those were the moments I was protected. Inside his perimeter. Inside his care.
My desires, my exhibitionism was never the danger. That was the safety.
And I threw it away because nineteen years of my mother's fear told me to.
The mythology that's run my life since I was seven goes completely silent. Not gradually. Just stops. My mother's voice,constant for nineteen years, simply isn't there anymore. The silence where it was feels like the first full breath I've taken in my life.
In the silence, only one thought remains, and my whole body knows it's true:
Gunner will come for me.
Not because he has to. Not because of the ultimatum. He'll come because he can't not come.
I remember his face when he said he loved me by that lemon tree. How his whole body went still when I kissed him that first time at the counter. The way he looked at me like I was everything when I danced for him painted in his garden's flowers. How he fucked me like he was trying to climb inside my skin and stay there.
He'll come. I know it the way I know how to balance en pointe, in the body, beneath argument. Absolutely, without question.
And when he does, because he will, I'm never letting the shame speak for me again. Never letting go of him again. Even if we both die trying to keep each other.
The zip ties cut deeper as I test them one more time, blood warming my wrists. The pain feels real, grounding, a promise written in my own blood.
26 - Gunner
Living through the past few days without her has been like wading through concrete.
Empty apartment. Tasteless food. Pointless routines.
Just me, the monster, and I.
This is your fault, she repeats in my mind. Your fault.
The days blur into operations, dry-running the Coral Gables timeline, disposal logistics for the body.
She doesn't call. Her silence is louder than any scream. I don't call her. Look at my phone once, see nothing, put it face down. Even her absence has a shape that fills this room.
Stay away from us.
Sunday afternoon bleeds into evening. The dossier work continues though there's nothing left to refine. Through the window, I see the garden below. Brown bougainvillea blossoms dropping, untended. The beauty I grew for nine years, dying because I can't bear to touch them any more.
Two hours' sleep at most each night for nine days. The face in the bathroom mirror belongs to someone I don't recognize. Hollow, haunted, alone. A man who's been in solitary nine years, had forty days of sunlight, then got thrown back in the dark.
Monday, lunchtime, my phone vibrates face-up on the counter. Logan's number shows on the screen.
I answer, expecting operational updates.
"Nicolas called the security line." Logan's voice is careful, controlled. "He insisted I patch him through to you. Says it's about Daphne."
Everything in me drops. "Put him through."
A click, then Nicolas's voice floods the line. That French-Canadian accent Daphne grew up hearing, but shattered now. Pain from the cottage assault still there, ribs still taped, but now something worse. Terror.
"She's gone." His voice cracks. "Gunner, God help me, she's gone. She left the front door hanging open, gravel spilled in the driveway like she fought them."
