Page 71 of Into Pitch

“Yes.”

“Only there?” I croak out.

“No, not only there.” This answer is softer.

That one hurts more than I thought it would, and I’m not sure why. Maybe because Pitch had felt like a boundary. Sure, it had been monstrous, but I had let myself believe that this part of him I’m both morbidly curious about and fearful of had a containment. To learn that it isn’t shatters the delusion I had already began to try and build to make sense of it all.

“Why?” I whisper, quieter now.

He reaches for his glass, his fingers curling around the fragile edges of it, but he doesn’t drink. He simply trace the sweating of it with the pad of his finger, his gaze locked on my own.

“Because I can, Sadie.”

As if it is as simple as that.

“So you decide who gets to keep breathing on a… whim?” I hiss, brows furrowing as I try to piece together dots that don’t make a lick of sense.

“I decide,” he agrees.

“That’s not arrogant at all,” I snipe.

Another faint smile threatens his mouth. “Arrogance implies doubt.”

I shake my head, pushing my chair back a fraction before I stand. Deciding this is indeed a conversation that requires me to pace it out. He doesn’t move to stop me, his gaze tracking my steps back and forth as I try to swallow down the mountain of shit that just keeps getting higher and higher.

“You’re saying all of this like it’s reasonable.”

“It is from my perspective,” he replies calmly.

I laugh coldly. “And what perspective is that, Alex?”

“One that does not prioritize comfort over outcome.”

I am going to pace myself into a hole in the ground before I figure out the absolute rat trap of his mind.

“And you don’t feel guilty at all? I get you don’t regret it, but not an ounce of guilt?”

“No.”

“Remorse?”

“Nope.”

“Anything at all, Alex? Fuck—anything?” I rasp, trying to find something to cling to. Something that rationalizes why I haven’t run from this man and never stopped. Why I haven’t fought him tooth and nail, and why some part of me so desperately still wants him.

“I feel precise,” he offers me.

“How does this make you better than any other serial killer out there, Alex? How do I… how do I look at you and not see the monster?” I rasp.

Throw me a bone, I want to plead. Make this make sense. Make me see with glasses of rose and not the rationality that so clearly sits on my shoulders.

“It does nothing but makes me honest about what I am, little fox. Hunting for good when I am anything but will only break your heart, and I don’t want to be the man who breaks it. Not in a way that I can’t put back together at least.”

I close my eyes, dragging my hands down my face as I try to stitch together something that doesn’t make me want to start screaming again. Especially since I know now that screaming will get me nowhere but an endless loop of the same result. He’s a brick wall I can spin a truck into at full speed and still would stand sturdy at the end.

It would be admirable if it wasn’t downright terrifying.

“You’re not being honest though, you purposefully omitted parts of the questions I have asked. You’re not telling me everything.”