He's so still, I wonder if he's even breathing.
"You broke me," I say, my voice rising. "You tormented me, you blackmailed me, you humiliated me." I tick them off on my fingers, my hands trembling.
He finally moves, just a single, shuddering exhale. "I know."
"You don't know. You can't possibly know," I say, slamming my palms into his chest again, pushing him. Hitting him. Railing against him like that'll make him feel even an ounce of what I have. "You make me hate myself every time I think about you. But I still can't stop thinking about you." My voice cracks, misery pouring through me. "Why can't I stop loving you when you break me every chance you get?"
He lets me push him until his back hits the edge of the desk. His knuckles are white where they grip the side, like he's using it as a prop to keep himself on his feet. For a second, I see behind the mask to the ruined man that lives beneath his skin. To the broken man who doesn't even know how to love himself.
"You know why you can't stop," he rasps. "You know, princess."
I shake my head, defiant, but my voice trembles, betraying me. "I want to hate you. I should hate you."
"I've never wanted to hate you," he says, his voice is so quiet, I almost miss it. "You've been the only thing I've thought about since the day we met."
My hands are balled into fists at my sides, but I'm shaking too much to hit him again. "You said you'd set me free. That you'd let me go after our agreement ended."
He closes his eyes for a beat and then opens them, fixating on me. "I know I did," he says. "But I can't let you go. I fucking can't."
His honesty is worse than any lie he's ever told me. It's naked and ugly and real. It's everything I want and everything I hate.
The thing inside my chest twists, alive and starving. "I hate what you've done to me," I whisper. "I hate it so fucking much."
"I hate myself for it," he says. "Every goddamn day, I hate myself for it, Brielle."
He means it. Somehow, knowing he feels the same pain only makes it worse. Knowing he's as wrecked as I am, and that all of this—the violence, the hunger, the self-destruction, and the pain—was never about hurting me makes it worse. It was always about him trying to hurt himself, like if he could just make me hate him enough, he'd finally, finally be punished enough.
I don't think he realized that the longer he kept his secret, the more he poisoned the well. He couldn't punish himself enough or make me hate him enough, not when he was still hiding the truth, not when it was slowly eating at him, day after day after day.
He reaches up, slow and careful, and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His hand is trembling, just like mine.
I want to slap him, or kiss him, or run. Instead, I just stand there, vibrating with everything I can't say.
He presses his forehead to mine, and I let him. Just for a second.
"I love you," he says. It sounds like a confession, a curse, and a prayer at once.
I close my eyes, but all I can see is the night we crashed, the way he looked at me before the world ended, with so much terror in his gaze. And I see the way he looks at me now, like I'm the only thing left worth saving.
"Why can't you let me go?" I ask.
He laughs, but it's a broken sound. "Why can't you hate me?"
I don't answer. We both already know. Maybe the answer is the same for both of us.
He steps back, runs a shaking hand through his hair, then reaches into his jacket and pulls out his phone.
There's a vulnerability to his movements that's entirely new. There's no arrogance, no predatory focus. He's nervous, maybe even scared. The phone is a shield he's not sure how to use.
He unlocks it, opens an app, then hands it to me.
I stare at the screen, expecting a text, or a note, or maybe a playlist. Instead, it's a video feed.
Of me.
The footage is from my apartment. The timestamp says it's from a little over months ago, right before I went to work for him. It's me, curled up on my couch, reading a battered paperback.
There are other feeds, too—one from the kitchen, another from my bedroom, another from the hallway outside my door.
