Her father, I cannot.
I want to be the person she’s describing. I want to be her, the one who can let it all go. I want to stand where she stands. To think of the attic and call it a dot. But I look at her, and I know I will never get there. Not on this. Not ever.
Because the man in that attic, I cannot make him irrelevant. I cannot forget him on her behalf, and I won’t.
I refuse.
She can call him a dot. She bled for that right, and it’s hers. But in my head, in every part of me that belongs to her, he is not a dot. He was a man who did the most horrific thing a person can do to another person. To a child. To the woman I love with everything I’ve got.
So he lives in my head. And he will live there for the rest of my life. The rage I carried my whole life, the rage I thought belonged to Jack Rutherford, it has finally found the right man.
12
Diana
THEY SAY LOVE conquers all, but I disagree. Money conquers everything. Money conquered my childhood. Money built the walls I live behind, and money pays the man in front of me to make sure those walls stay standing.
“Use me,” Kai says again, and I can see the next sentence already loaded behind his teeth.
“But just me.”
I don’t move. I don’t say anything.
“Don’t give yourself to other men.” His voice drops; the words are quiet but weighted with intent. “None of them deserves you. They look at you, and they see a beautiful woman with a beautiful body, and they don’t realize they’ve hit the goddamn lottery. They’re blind, every single one of them.”
I let a breath out through my nose. “You don’t know that.”
“I know it because I don’t see any of those men kneeling. Begging. Offering you their lives.”
I let another breath out, through my mouth this time.
“What is this, the dark ages?” I say, and I want it to land dismissive, mildly bored. But there’s a muscle in my chest contracting, a muscle that hasn’t been asked to do anything my whole life is now being told to do its job.
Here is what Kai Romero doesn’t understand about himself.
He is young and he is beautiful. He is the kind of man every woman in every room loses her composure over withoutmeaning to. No exception. No one is immune to him, I dare say. But underneath all the muscle and all the anger and the way he stands like he’s always bracing for impact, there is a man who is deeply devoted.
And if I am not careful, if I let this warmth spread even an inch further than it already has, I will fall for this man. Falling for me has never been a metaphor. Falling is the one thing I cannot afford because I have already spent every spare life I have getting here.
“I know what I am,” Kai says, and his voice has gone quieter. “I’m not deluding myself. I’m not saying I deserve you either. I can’t offer you anything you don’t already have. There’s nothing in my hands that matches what’s in yours.”
A man telling me he has nothing to offer me is a man I have heard before. But none of them ever meant it the way Kai means it.
“Let’s say I agree,” I say.
He stops breathing. I see it.
“Hypothetically.” I smooth the fabric over my knee and take my time with the word. “Let’s say I agree to this exclusive arrangement you’re proposing. What if I’m tempted?”
His eyes have gone wide, and there is a light in them that I do not want to be responsible for.
“Kai.”
“You said you agree,” he whispers.
“I said,let’s say. That’s conditional.” I snap my fingers once in front of his face.
“Whatever the condition, I’ll do it.” He doesn’t even blink at the snap.
