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You were the one thing I wanted to be clean, to be safe. To be free from this city. Which is exactly why he targeted you. Don’t you get that? I’m the reason he hurt you.”
“Everything you’ve suffered is because of me.”
“My life would be so much simpler if I could just fuck one of those women down there. If I could just stop thinking about you for a single goddamn breath. Instead I’ve spent years taking over the fucking city so that I could give it you.”
You were never fooled by a suit and a smile, were you? You knew that only covered up a wild animal.”
It’s a lie, that boredom. The casual look of him, loose pants and no shirt—that’s a lie, too. Everything about this man is deliberate and honed. He’s a blade, and the man on the floor in front of him is sliced into pieces.
I know that I have no power here, not really. Only what he gives me. I still dare him to tell me no. That Daddy can’t sit down, that this broken man can’t rest here.
Because it was the only way I could help you. And you don’t just mean something to me. You mean everything. Understand? Every goddamn thing.”
“You aren’t happy in this city. And you aren’t safe. Leave and don’t come back.”
If Gabriel leaves my friend for having been violated, for being a victim, I’m going to personally shoot him. Or at least tell him he’s the worst kind of bastard.
“Jonathan Scott did more than escape the asylum.
It’s so like Avery—to lead a revolution and give credit to those she led.
I don’t trust the FBI any more than I trust the people who ran that asylum.
“I need to see this through. We all have our strengths, Avery. Yours got you out of that place. And mine… well, mine sent me there. That’s the difference between us.”
Everything about Damon Scott is undefinable. He’s a mystery that can’t be solved. A puzzle with limitless layers. A living, breathing Escher painting with stairs folding into stairs for eternity.
I love him. I turn the words over in my head, wondering how it’s possible. Wondering how I didn’t see it for so long. It’s like saying I love breathing. Damon is part of the air itself.
No one ever told me how much power’s inherent to sex, how causing desire is addictive. Grasping his wrist, I tug him close.
“Because as long as you’re with me, I’m safe. And as long as I’m with you, you are safe. It’s only when we split up that he’s been able to hurt us. Don’t you see? He wants to divide us. This is how we stop him. This is how we survive. Together.”
It’s one thing to decide that one man is beyond redemption, entirely another to condemn a whole asylum full of people to death.
I thought I was the one who misunderstood, but it’s Damon who thinks people are the sum of their past.
“Because we’re selfish. We’ll use you and hurt you and get so deep inside you just so we can feel good.”
He’s pushed me away so hard and so often that maybe I should have gone. Except for the way his hips push out, reaching for my mouth even as his back presses against the door.
The taste of him so deep inside me I’ll never forget it.
“The Quakers designed the prison to punish its inmates, basically creating solitary confinement for each of them. Unfortunately their idea of religious penance literally made men crazy.”
“Aren’t all permanent residents of a mental hospital there against their will?”
Damon is almost ten years older than me.
He flashes me that signature smile, and I realize how much pain it hides.
It comes to me as I watch him in the overbright sun, standing in front of a modern asylum, that all he knows is sacrifice. All he knows is running through the halls of a dangerous mental hospital or leaving people behind so they don’t get hurt.
Like the Titanic that couldn’t sink, they were brought down by their own hubris.
I have cold calculation instead of mercy.
Damon Scott protects me with more than just his money or his weapons—he guards me with his body.
The men are different from us, less emotional—on the outside. Less affectionate. But they still greet each other with what feels like both gratitude and apology, the source of their divide gone.
That he loves me in that abstract, unobtainable way that says we’ll never be together. That he can love me only from afar.
There’s only this, mocking me in public, saving me in private, the hero who won’t let himself be happy.
My love for this man ran so deep I almost didn’t recognize it myself. It’s like breathing or thinking. Like being. That won’t stop if he makes fun of me, if he sends me away, but I don’t want him to.
Money. Sex. He left out the things I want most.
The satin heels I’m wearing also came from Avery. They don’t belong to me anymore than this dress. Anymore than this man. I don’t feel victory as his lips touch my shoes. I’m too hollow for that, made of air and wanting. And a permanent desolation that this is all I’ll ever be.
If this is all he can give me, why not take it? Because now I know the sweetness I’ll never have, the love he can’t give. Except it’s more than ability. It’s his choice. Even while he nuzzles against my mound, inhaling deeply, raising goosebumps on my skin, he’s turning me away. By demanding that we do this here, now, instead of in private. There’s nothing here for me. Not safety. Love. Damon.
Mathematics is a poor substitute for human touch, I’ve learned. It’s no longer the pinnacle for me. No longer the dream. Instead it’s a consolation prize. The solace I’ll find after the quiet sorrow of Damon’s refusal.
Even as I turn and walk out the door, I know that I won’t ever stop hoping for him. Won’t ever stop longing for the peace I found in his embrace. I used to think I understood numbers but not people, logic but not emotions. I know better now. We’re really just equations longing for that other half of us. I can walk away from Damon Scott because he wants me to, but I can’t stop loving him. It’s part of who I am, the logic as simple and undeniably sad as that.
“Because I’m the same person I was back then too—hungry and scared and so fucking lonely I would have done anything to be close to you.”
“When you were small, I loved you as a child—smart and generous. When you were a teenager, I loved you as a young woman, strong enough to face anything.” I watch him, unable to look away, almost unable to breathe. “When I saw you walk into the Den, I knew you were more than I could survive. You were the death of me. Every fake smile and stupid fucking laugh. Every time someone thought they were seeing the real Damon Scott. You broke everything.”
He kisses me as if we’ve been apart for twenty years, like we might not see each other for another twenty. He kisses me as if we have every day for eternity, slow and deep and thorough.
“Nothing to make up,” I repeat. “This isn’t an apology. I don’t want that. This is every day. This is you and me. This is the way you love me and the way I love you back.”
I didn’t save my virginity for him. I saved it for myself. To experience this with a man who loved me, who had the courage to prove it. The way he thrusts inside me is both worship and possession. A private altar at which he can pray.
The Den is still a private club in the city, but less about sex or gambling. Now it’s a place where the citizens of Tanglewood can gather to discuss sex and mathematics, to eye fuck and play chess.
