“As much as I enjoy a good domestic reconciliation,” Hook calls down, his voice dry and biting, “the police are about four minutes out and the estate is currently on fire. Might want to move the reunion to the car, Peter.”
Peter doesn’t look up. He just shifts my weight, his arms like iron bands around me, and begins to climb the emergency ladder with a strength born of pure desperation, carrying me out of the dark and back into the cold, cleansing rain.
Part Six
She’s free.
That doesn’t mean she escaped.
The house burned. The monster died. But the dark followed her home—under her skin, in her pulse, in the way she flinches when he touches her too gently. Love didn’t save her. It only taught her how deep obsession can cut when it calls itself protection.
You can leave the cage.
You can’t leave what it turns you into.
Peter
The rain is a relentless, cold hammer against the windshield of the blacked-out SUV, but it’s nothing compared to the storm sitting in the seat next to me.
I’ve spent months imagining this moment. I’ve killed, I’ve bled, and I’ve turned my soul into a hollowed-out shell just to get her back. But now that she’s here, she’s not here. She’s a ghost vibrating at a frequency I can’t reach, her skin a map of bruises and sweat that I’m almost too terrified to touch.
The safe house is a concrete bunker disguised as a luxury cottage, hidden deep enough in the trees that the world feels like a distant, dying memory. I don’t wait for Hook to open the door. I don’t wait for anything. I scoop her up, her body so light it scares the shit out of me, and carry her inside.
“Peter,” she whispers. It’s the first time she’s said my name without screaming it, and it sounds like a death rattle.
“I’m here, Wendy. I’m right here.”
I set her down on the edge of the oversized tub in the master bath. The porcelain is cold, and she flinches, her pupils so blown out they swallow the green of her eyes entirely. She’s shivering—not just from the cold, but from the chemical fire Felix pumped into her veins.
“I need… I need it, Peter,” she rasps. She begins to claw at her own thighs, her nails dragging jagged white lines into the pale, bruised skin of her legs. “Please. My heart is jumping… it’s jumping out of my chest. I can’t… I can’t feel my hands.”
“No,” I say, my voice cracking. I kneel between her legs, the same way that bastard did, but I’m holding her hands, pinning them gently so she stops tearing at herself. “No more, darling. We’re done with that. You’re coming down.”
“It hurts!” she shrieks, a sudden, violent burst of energy making her buck against my grip. She tries to shove me away, her eyes wild and darting toward the corners of the ceiling as if Felix is still watching from the shadows. “You fucking left me! You left me there with him and now you’re taking the only thing that makes the dark go away? You’re just another cage, Peter! You’re just another fucking cage!”
She spits the words at me, her face contorting into a mask of pure hatred. She lunges forward, sinking her teeth into my shoulder, biting down through the fabric of my tactical vest until I feel the sharp, hot sting of her teeth hitting my skin. I don’t pull away. I let her do it. I deserve the pain.
“I’m the only thing that makes the dark go away now,” I growl, pulling her face away from my shoulderand forcing her to look at me. I don’t care that I’m covered in blood. I don’t care that I’m a monster. “Look at me, Wendy. Focus on my voice. Not the drug. Not him. Just me.”
I turn the water on, the steam beginning to rise and fog the mirrors. I start to peel the residue of Felix’s house off her. I’m methodical, my hands shaking as I wash the salt, the honey, and the copper tang of blood from her skin. Every bruise I find is a new reason to burn the world down.
“I wish you stayed dead,” she sobs, her head falling onto my shoulder, her body racking with the first violent tremors of the comedown. She’s weeping now, the fight leaving her as the drug starts to retreat, leaving her hollow. “I wish you never came back. I was fine. I was numb. Why did you have to make me feel this? Why did you make me look at what he did?”
“I’ve got you,” I whisper into her hair, my own tears hitting her wet skin. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her into the spray of the water, clothes and all. “I’ve got you, and I’m never letting you go again. Even if you hate me for every breath you take.”
The steam in the bathroom thickens, turning the air into a heavy, suffocating soup. I’m holding her under the spray, my hands trying to scrub away the scent ofsandalwood and expensive filth, but Wendy isn’t in the shower with me anymore.
Her eyes aren’t seeing the white subway tile or the blood swirling down the drain. They’re darting, tracking something moving in the mist.
“Felix?” she whispers, her voice a hollow, terrifying sound. She jerks her arm back from me like I’m made of white-hot iron. “No… no, I ate it. I ate the bacon. I did what you said. Please don’t put it in my nose again. My heart… it’s too fast, Felix. It’s going to pop.”
“Wendy, it’s Peter,” I rasp, reaching for her waist to keep her from slipping on the wet porcelain. “Look at me. Felix is dead. I killed him. He’s gone.”
She doesn’t hear me. The cocaine is playing tricks with the shadows, turning the steam into his hands. She scrambles toward the back of the tub, her wet hair plastered across her face like a veil of mourning. She’s staring at my chest, but she isn’t seeing the tactical vest or the man who loves her.
“I see the powder on your lips,” she screams, her voice cracking as she claws at the air between us. “You’re going to make me lick it off. You’re going to make me moan while you do it. Stop it! Stop looking at me like I’m a dog!”
“Wendy, stop!” I grab her wrists, trying to pin them before she draws more blood from her own skin.
