"I didn't know who you were." The words come out desperate, ragged. "When we met, when I started watching you, I had no idea you were connected to Dwayne. I didn't find out until a few days ago, when I went to see Bryan Vanderwal—"
"And then what? You found out, and instead of telling me, you tied me to your bed and fucked me until I couldn't think straight?"
The accusation hits home. She's right. That's exactly what I did.
"I was trying to figure out how to tell you. I was trying to find the right words—"
"There are no right words!" Her voice breaks, tears streaming down her face. "There's no way to make this okay, Gabriel. You killed my father. You took him from me before I ever had a chance to know him."
"He was a monster." The words come out harder than I intended. "Dwayne Thomas was a monster who tormented children. He hurt me—for two years, he hurt me in ways I still can't talk about. He would have hurt your mother, would have hurt you, if she hadn't run."
"I know what he was." She swipes angrily at her tears. "Zach showed me his journal. I read the things he wrote about his students—about you. I know he was a monster."
"Then you understand why I did what I did."
"I understand why a sixteen-year-old boy who was being abused might kill his abuser. I can even understand why you never told anyone, why you let the Brotherhood cover it up." She shakes her head. "What I can't understand is why you didn't tellme. Why you found out the truth and chose to keep it secret. Why you've been lying to my face for days."
"Because I was afraid." The admission tears out of me, raw and unwilling. "I was afraid of exactly this—of losing you. Of watching you look at me the way you're looking at me right now."
"Like you're a stranger?"
"Like I'm a monster."
She laughs—a broken, bitter sound. "You are a monster, Gabriel. You've never pretended otherwise. But I thought—" Her voice catches. "I thought you were my monster. I thought whatever we had was real, even if it was dark and fucked up and wrong. I thought you trusted me enough to tell me the truth."
"I do trust you."
"No, you don't. You trust yourself to control situations. You trust your ability to manipulate and manage and keep secrets until they serve your purposes." She steps back, putting distance between us. "But that's not trust. That's just another form of possession."
I reach for her. She flinches away.
"Don't," she says. "Don't touch me right now. I can't—" She wraps her arms around herself, suddenly small and fragile. "I need time. I need to think. I need to be away from you."
"Poppy, please—"
"I'm not leaving. Not yet. But I need space." She looks at me, and the sorrow in her eyes is worse than the anger. "I need to figure out if there's anything left to save."
She walks past me, back toward the house. I don't try to stop her. I don't have the right.
I stand alone in the garden, surrounded by roses that smell like her, and watch her disappear through the door.
***
The study is dark when I finally retreat there.
I don't bother with lights. I pour whiskey by feel—three fingers, then four—and sink into the chair by the window, staring out at nothing.
She's upstairs, in the room she never uses, with the door locked against me. I heard the bolt slide home from the hallway. Such a small sound, but it might as well have been a gunshot.
I've lost her. I can feel it—the connection we built, however fucked up and twisted, slipping through my fingers like water. She's still in my house, still under my roof, but she's already gone.
And the worst part is, I did this to myself.
I could have told her days ago, when I first learned the truth. I could have sat her down and explained everything—about Dwayne, about what he did to me, about the kill that made me who I am. I could have given her the chance to process it, to ask questions, to decide for herself what it meant.
Instead, I took her to bed and fucked her senseless, trying to bind her to me through her body because I was too much of a coward to trust her with words.
Josiah would tell me I'm being irrational. That she's just one woman, that there are others, that the Brotherhood and the business should be my priorities. He's been warning me about this obsession for weeks—telling me it would compromise everything, that she would become a weapon to be used against me.
