Seduction will follow when she’s at her most vulnerable. I’ll humiliate her. I’ll pleasure her. Make her want me despite herself.
Even after eleven years of celibacy, I can do that.
If I listen. If I watch. If I learn her body.
I’ll ruin her by waiting until she’s as attached to me as I once was to her.
Then I’ll tell her to leave. To never come back.
Give her a taste of her own medicine.
Barclay will get his later. Unlike Elowyn, he’ll bleed. He’ll hurt much worse than he does today. While I can’t and won’t ever beat Elowyn, I have no problem making her brother bleed.
But I can’t start until she accepts my offer.
So the question remains. Why hasn’t she?
She should have. I know better than most how it feels to have your life ripped away from you.
During the two years after I left Cobbledale, my world was turned upside down. While I waited for Elowyn to find me, I hid out in New Jersey, surviving on busboy tips and the small life insurance payout my parents left behind.
I kept hoping I’d hear from her eventually, so I worked myself raw. Started building a future that included Elowyn, one where I could actually provide for her. With no high school diploma, I had to think outside the box, so I ended up fixing things the way my parents did. Thrift-store artwork instead of cars.
Every day my old phone stayed silent, my heart took another hit.
Eventually, I got tired of staring at that black screen. Got fed up with hoping.
After two years of her choosing silence, I chose something else—becoming a monster.
Once I gained a reputation as The Restorer and money began rolling in, I worked harder than ever. I sharpened my mind, made smart investments, and turned myself into a millionaire.
The money I’ve accumulated is a weapon now.
Or it would be, if only she’d say yes.
This woman I don’t miss.
The one I definitely don’t love.
I’m just stalking her to get my answers.
With the hood of my sweatshirt pulled low, I linger in a dark corner of the hall. From my hiding place, I watch Elowyn mop the stretch of floor outside the triage area, the one spot in the hospital I’ve haunted for the past few months.
But today, unlike before, I look closer. Maybe I’ve been missing something. Maybe she’s happy here.
It’s not impossible. I haven’t been here too many times. So if she has friends here, they could be what’s keeping her tethered to this life. Like my parents, for example, whose modest income never mattered as long as they got to work side by side.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case with Elowyn.
Same as always, patients and their families pass her by without a second glance. Doctors and nurses barely acknowledge her existence.
And it isn’t just the way she’s ignored. It’s the hollow look in her eyes that’s impossible to miss.
The sluggish movements, somehow slower and more pained than ever, are so unlike her.
Back then, when I was grieving my parents, watching her move with ease and grace, even after everything she’d been through, felt like staring at a rainbow. A burst of color against gray clouds.
Not anymore.
