By the end, she barely breathed at all.
I close my eyes. Force the memory down.
I'mnothim. I'mnothinglike him.
What I feel for Liberty isn't control. It's devotion.
It’s different. It has to be.
I flip to the back of the file, to the section I've read so many times the pages are soft at the edges.
The night before she left.
I found her in the garden behind the main house, sitting on the stone bench where my mother used to read.
The moon was full, silver light catching in her hair, and she looked so beautiful it hurt to breathe.
She startled when she saw me. Shot to her feet, tried to move past me toward the house.
I caught her wrist.
God, I can still feel it.
The delicate bones beneath my fingers.
The frantic flutter of her pulse against my thumb.
The way she went perfectly, absolutely still—not like prey freezing, but like prey deciding whether to fight.
I stepped closer. Close enough to feel the heat pouring off her skin, to smell the vanilla lotion she always wore, to see the way her pupils blew wide in the darkness.
"You're leaving." I kept my voice soft. Soft and calm and nothing like the chaos raging inside me.
"I have to." Her voice was steady, but I felt the tremor in her wrist. "I can't stay here."
"Because of me."
She didn't answer. But her pulse jumped beneath my thumb, and that was answer enough.
I leaned down. Let my lips brush the shell of her ear. Felt the shiver run through her body, felt her lean into me for one fraction of a second before she caught herself.
"You'll come back," I whispered. "They always come back."
She wrenched free and ran.
I let her go.
I could be patient.
I close the file.
My hands are shaking. I flatten them against the desk and wait for the tremor to pass.
Eight years.
Eight years of waiting, planning, building the cage so slowly she'd never see the bars.
I bought her apartment building.
