Page 44 of The King (Masterpiece Duet 1)
“Did he?” I ask, uncertain why Damon would mind. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to give Avery money if he knew she would never be able to repay. But how could he mind the auction? I have no doubt that he profited from it.
“He can be a little protective of women. He’s been that way for as long as I’ve known him.” Something about Gabriel’s golden eyes invites me in, as if he’s imparting an important secret.
“But he owns a strip club.”
“More than one,” Gabriel says with a nod. “And for a girl in a desperate situation, there’s no place safer or more lucrative for her to be. You should have seen how selective he was about the guest list for the auction.”
“Really?” Avery says, sounding surprised.
Dark flecks of gold glint in Gabriel’s eyes. “I don’t think he knew whether to be relieved or worried when I won. He warned me that if I hurt you, I’d have to answer to him.”
“Well,” Avery says, her voice arch. “Then there are a few things I’ll have to tell him about.”
The smile flirting with her lips says she’s only teasing. Though I suspect if I were to dig, Gabriel has done one or two things that hurt her. He clenches a fist in her hair, pulling her back to whisper something else in her ear. She’s scarlet by the time he led her upstairs, giving me a short, “We’ll see you tomorrow. Mrs. B is in the kitchen if you need anything.”
“Go to bed early,” Avery says, her voice trailing into the room as she’s led away. “I know you’re feeling better, but your body is still recovering.”
I put my hand over my mouth to hide my smile, but it’s there, blinding and unstoppable. They’re so sweet together. Almost enough to break through the ice around me, even without Damon Scott around. Almost.
* * *
I read a well-worn copy of Quantitative Risk Analysis late into the night, past dog-ears and highlighted lines. Gabriel knows this book well. Only a few times do I stop and leave notes in the margins, adding to what his sprawling script has written.
Once I correct him, laying out my argument in a few lines, wondering if he’ll ever find this. They’re a different kind of breadcrumb. My kind.
By the time I get to the chapter on volatility in valuation, it’s midnight.
My eyelids slip lower and lower with every slow blink. I can’t think anymore tonight.
Can’t use the numbers to keep away the loneliness.
I reach over and flip off the lamp, dousing the room in shadows. I keep the bathroom light on all night, a holdover from the first days after the attack. From longer than that, if I’m honest. The light that slid between my plastic blinds was a comfort. And the heavy drapes in this house, the tinting on the rooms, the luxury of darkness that rich people seem to crave sometimes feels like a muzzle.
Sleep laps its gentle waves against me. There are no strong currents on the surface. It’s deceptive, how softly it lulls me. How many times will I believe and hope and pray to find peace there? To drift on the lazy river of my mind.
No matter how softly it begins I’m always dragged under.
The dream comes in a tidal wave, wrapping my body in terror.
In my dream I’m back in the mental hospital. In my dream, I never left. The walls are coated with something black and pungent, the floor slick. Pain slices my scalp as he drags me by my hair.
He strides with cool familiarity through the hallways, like he’s been here a million times. Like he lives here. My body may as well be on fire, that’s how much the pain and fear scorch me, that’s how much I scream. In the molten center is the certainty that Damon Scott went through this.
Not something similar. This exactly. In this horrible place.
He knows these walls. These floors.
He knows the cracked placard that says Recreation Room in front of us.
There are a million funhouse horrors that a recreation room might hold. They flash through my brain like a demented slideshow, promising that this will be worse than what came before—worse than the stabbing pain in my body and the shame in my heart. And even so, I could not have predicted this.
I could not have foretold about the pool.
It’s large and rectangular, like the kind at my YMCA. Only instead of pale white concrete it’s made from tile, green and thin and cracked in a thousand places. Nothing that could be operational today. And it’s not operational, strictly speaking. There isn’t water. There couldn’t be water, not with the thick cracks in the concrete. As if the whole foundation has shifted over the decades, nature reclaiming what was hers.
I want to slide into the cracks, even though they’re a couple inches wide. I want to disappear into the center of the earth. He told me I’d want to die, and he’s right, he’s right, he’s right.
