Page 185 of Brutal
Because if I don’t open them, I can stay here a little longer—in that strange place between sleep and waking, before the world becomes real again.
Before I have to say it again inside my own head.
Samson Vexley killed my father.
I love him.
The words arrive anyway.
Not as a shock.
Last night was the shock. Last night was the breaking open. Last night was the moment the ugly truth stood between us and I looked at it—really looked at it—and chose him anyway.
That’s what feels different this morning.
Not that I love him.
Not that he killed my father.
But that I still don’t regret choosing him.
One feeling rises above the rest.
It’s certainty. Dark, terrible certainty. He killed the man who gave me life. And still, if I had to choose again, I would choose the beast.
My eyes open.
I’m in Samson’s bedroom, in Samson’s bed—the bed where I gave myself fully to him.
I almost feel like I’m outside ordinary time, that none of this has truly happened. This place seems older than time in some ways.
Like prisoners maybe lived here.
Or monsters.
Of course not, but secrets do live here. I know that now.
And still I choose the man who’s sleeping beside me.
One arm is bent above his head. The other rests low across his abdomen. His breathing is even, but even asleep, he looks ready to lunge at the next threat. As if some essential part of him never unclenches. Never yields. Never lets go enough to be harmless.
Beauty and the Beast got that wrong, I think.
The beast doesn’t become less dangerous when he loves. He becomes more dangerous, because now he has something to lose.
I look at his handsome face, the hard line of his jaw, the dark lashes against his cheek, his black stubble.
Heat rises in my chest, something almost like pride and something almost like grief.
The bruising along his knuckles has darkened overnight. I think about those same hands on me. On my throat. On my hips. On the wall beside my head. I think about those hands fifteen years ago on a dock in the dark, as he killed without question.
Blind strength.
Not stupid. Not mindless. Just trained. Used.
A man born with power he doesn’t entirely own.
That’s part of what I chose too. Not just the violence in him. Not just the hunger. But the terrible possibility that someone else put that violence where it needed to be and called it his destiny.
