Is that possible? Can someone like her choose someone like me?
I don't know. But lying here in the dark with her body warm against mine, I find myself hoping.
Hope is dangerous. Hope is for fools and children and people who haven't learned how the world really works.
But I'm hoping anyway.
Mine, I think, pulling her closer. The word feels different now. Less like a claim of ownership.
More like a vow.
Chapter 19 - Poppy
The pattern establishes itself without either of us acknowledging it.
He summons me, and I come. Sometimes there's a pretense—a consultation about flowers for an upcoming event, a question about arrangements for a dinner party that may or may not exist. Sometimes he doesn't bother with pretense at all. Just a time and a car, and the unspoken expectation that I'll be ready when it arrives.
I'm always ready.
I tell myself each time will be the last. That I'll reclaim my independence, my self-respect, my life. That I'll find the strength to say no, to break free of whatever hold he has on me.
I'm always lying.
A week passes. Then two. The outside world continues without me—Bea's texts grow increasingly worried, then increasingly annoyed, then trail off into silence. My mother calls and I let it go to voicemail, listening afterward to her anxious questions that I can't answer. The few clients I had left stop reaching out, my business quietly dying while I spend my nights in a murderer's bed.
I should care about all of this. Some distant part of me does care. But that part feels increasingly remote, like a voice calling from the far side of a canyon. The only thing that feels real anymore is him.
The sex is relentless. Every time I think I've reached the limit of what I can take, he pushes me further. He ties me up with silk scarves, with his belt, with rope he produces from somewhere I don't ask about. He bends me over furniture,presses me against walls, takes me on every surface of his vast bedroom until I've lost track of where one encounter ends and another begins.
And I let him. More than let him—I crave it. The surrender, the intensity, the obliteration of everything except sensation. When I'm with him, I don't have to think about what I've become or what I'm doing. I just have to feel.
It's the afterward that's dangerous.
"Tell me about your mother," he says one night, tracing lazy patterns on my bare shoulder. We're lying in the wreckage of his bed, my body still humming from what we've just done, the sweat cooling on my skin.
"What about her?"
"Anything. Everything." His fingers trail down my arm, raising goosebumps. "I want to know where you came from."
I should refuse. I should keep some part of myself separate, protected, beyond his reach. But my defenses are down, stripped away along with my clothes, and the words come out before I can stop them.
"She's afraid," I say. "She's always been afraid, as long as I can remember. Of strangers, of change, of anything she can't control. We moved a lot when I was young—four cities before I turned eight. She never explained why, just packed up our lives and started over somewhere new."
"Running from something."
"Or someone. I never knew. She wouldn't talk about it." I stare at the ceiling, remembering. "She still won't. I've asked about my father, about why we moved so much, about why she always seemed to be looking over her shoulder. She just... shuts down. Changes the subject. Pretends she didn't hear."
Gabriel is quiet for a moment. His hand has stilled on my arm.
"Do you know anything about your father?"
"Nothing. My birth certificate says 'unknown.' My mother told me he was nobody important, just a mistake she made when she was young. But the way she said it..." I shake my head. "I don't think she was telling the truth. Or not the whole truth, anyway."
"Have you tried to find out?"
"Once. When I was sixteen, I found some old papers in a box in her closet. Letters, I think, though I didn't get a good look. She caught me before I could read them, and she—" I pause, remembering the look on her face. Not just anger. Terror. "She burned them. Right in front of me. Told me some things were better left buried, and I should never go looking for them again."
"And you listened?"
