I rubbed my hand through my hair. I was jumping the fence here, wasn’t I? We’d known each other for only a couple of days. Had kissed twice, hadn’t even had sex yet.
Where was this obsession coming from then?
I sighed and stared at her.
I knew.
Deep down, I knew why I was reluctant to tell her. I didn’t want her to look at me differently. I wanted her to turn to me for help, for protection, for safety. I wanted to have her buried beneath me, begging for my dick. And even after having her, I would want more—I would want everything.
I kept looking at her, her drying hair, which hid her beautiful heart-shaped face, the line of her long, delicate neck, which fit perfectly in the palm of my hand.
So, this is what it felt like to be obsessed with someone.
Because with her, I didn’t just want the physical stuff.
I wanted her to be mine.
I wanted everything. Forever.
The “white picket fence, a couple of kids, dogs, cats, lazy mornings in bed, sex on the kitchen counter” type of forever.
Most of which I’d never even considered before.
She must have felt my gaze because she looked up, those dark eyes questioning. “What is it?”
The words formed in my throat, heavy with implications. “There’s something you should know about me. About who I am.” Something to shut down any possibility of a future.
“I’m listening.”
I took a deep breath, preparing to reveal a part of myself I rarely acknowledged, even in the privacy of my own thoughts.
“You ever hear of theGladiators?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. “Duh…of course, I’m Italian, plus I’ve seen the movie…but what does that have to do with anything? Are you stalling? Or are you trying to change the topic?”
I stared at my hands, seeing the scars covered by ink that mapped my knuckles, remembering how I’d earned each one.
“Imagine the Colosseum is some dump underground place built during World War II,” I said, my voice dropping lower. “Imagine the gladiators are kids who just drew a shitty hand in life, and the wild animals…well, you don’t need wild animals if you can create them.” I looked up, looked her straight in the eyes—time to face the music.
Her expression sobered as she began to understand where this was going.
“You just need to treat those kids badly enough,” I continued, the words spilling out now. “You need to starve them,you need to beat them, you need to burn them until they want to rip the skin from their bones themselves, and then you need to give them exactly one chance to survive—an opportunity to prove that they’re stronger, that their will to survive is stronger…or maybe that they’re just more broken than the other kids.”
Her face had gone pale. “What are you saying?”
I looked back down at my fists. “I’m saying I’ve fought for my life so many times, I can’t even remember all those kids’ faces that died through my own bare hands.” The confession burned like acid in my throat, but she needed to know. “I’m saying there’s nothing I could do that would be adequate to repent for my sins.”
I laughed—a dry laugh—because even after escaping that hell-hole, my path in life hadn’t led to repenting anything. The opposite, really. I’d piled onto my sins until there was not a chance in hell—nothing worth salvaging.
I looked up and locked eyes with her. “I’m saying you’ve never met anyone as bad, as morally bankrupt as me. I’m saying you should take your family and run. And never look back.”
I expected disgust. Horror. Fear. Any rational response to the monster I’d just revealed myself to be.
“And what if I don’t?” she asked instead, her voice as steady as her eyes locked with mine.
A laugh escaped me—dry, crackly, as if there was tar in my lungs, as black as the picture I’d just revealed. “I’ll just have to give your brothers a call, and you’re off this island faster than you can count to 100.”
“Good thing then I suck at math,” she replied without missing a beat.
