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“So how do I do it?” I steer away from the conversation we’re falling into. “How do I break him?”
Casper pauses, that smirk slowly tipping up one side of his face. “Take away his control.”
Consternation flits through his eyes. He goes back to the photo in his hand and peels off the back. It’s as though he’s torn about his actions. Taking out the tiniest bulb-looking thing from the corner of the glass, he holds it out to me. It looks like an infrared from a television remote. As I hold it up to the light, the small wire attached unwinds from behind the picture, along with a twopenny-sized disk.
“What is that?”
“Freddie likes to have eyes on everything.”
Surprise shouldn’t be what hits me. Except it’s probably the only emotion or feeling that wasn’t registering yet. As I flit between the minuscule camera and my brother’s stare, Christopher’s words come back to me.
He watches you, and you watch him.
“You’re not mad?” Casper asks, sounding astonished at my reaction. Really, it shows how little he knows me. I’ve never been about the shouting and screaming or putting all my inner turmoil out in the open. It’s mine. It’s mine, and it’s for me to deal with. No one else needs to witness it.
Keep smiling, otherwise you’ll cry.
Faking a smile, I push everything else down as I tell him, “No. I’m not mad…disappointed. Frustrated and saddened by the fact that you knew that he was watching me all this time and you…”
“I had to be sure that you were safe, and Freddie is the only one I know would go beyond every limit to ensure that. You might think you’re not one of us. Maybe the way we chose to protect you made you feel that way, but your blood runs through my veins, and I was never going to sit back and wait for you to be struck. I’m always going to carry what happened to Bella on me, so I had to make sure you were all right.”
“By using his weakness! You didn’t only use him. You used me too.”
Hurt. Remorse. Regret. They all glint in his dark eyes as he watches me wrap the camera in my fist.
“You were never meant to fall in love with him. At Arabella’s wedding, you seemed to hate him…”
“Hate to be a cliché…maybe the line between love and hate really is that thin.”
“George,” he calls as I turn to head downstairs.
“What, Casper? Huh?” Spinning, I watch him hang the photo back on the wall. Much like Christopher with the photo on his stairs, Casper tugs the rolled-up sleeve of his Henley over his palm and cleans the glass. I never meant to hurt him by telling him the obvious truth he refuses to see. “I tried. Honestly, I wanted him gone at one point. Freddie was everything I loathe, but then…”
Then he watched me, and when I watched him in return, it was like looking in the mirror for the first time in my life and finally seeing myself. The darkness inside him is the black sky I have waited for my entire life, so dark and so vicious that when it’s focused on me, I shine brighter than I have ever done. As though my only purpose is to be the star that lights up his existence.
Fisting my hand tighter around the device in it, I take the steps down one at a time, looking around the walls that I’ve called home since I left the academy three years ago. It was my grandparents’ graduation present, just like they bought Casper his loft and Arabella’s apartment. After my grandmother died, I wanted to keep it forever. Louise Gladstone wasn’t an easy person. She wasn’t easy on anything or anyone, but she always showed up to my performances with Arabella. These walls were her gift of independence to me that I didn’t know I needed. They were freedom. Now…it’s like being trapped in Pandora’s box with all the memories and good times being torn apart by my pain.
I’m lingering on the bottom step when the front door swings open. The bag in my hand drops to the ground as Freddie stands in my open doorway with a couple of Cooper’s men flanking him.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, looking towards the kitchen where Cooper pauses in the doorway before shuffling back out of sight.
I can’t bring myself to look at Freddie when his mere shadow is enough to set my heart off on a race with no end in sight.
“I—” The abrupt stop makes me peer behind me to find Casper standing a few steps higher, face pinched into a glower.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” The venom in my brother’s voice is sharp enough to tell me they’re at odds.
There’s no way I can handle some macho face-off right now, so instead of staying put, I march myself past Freddie, still avoiding his stare so that I can steel myself for what I need to do.
Walk away. Keep walking. It’s all I’m able to tell myself as every fibre of my being tugs me back. It’s meant to be that the first time of doing something is the hardest, but not this. Not leaving him. If anything, it’s harder. Even more so because he came here. He came to me.
The moment I step foot outside my door, Freddie rounds me, coming to a standstill ahead of me so that I have no choice but to pause for him…because of him.
“I—” He sighs before taking a deep breath as though this is the hardest conversation we’ve had.
Perhaps he’s right, because there isn’t a single particle of his presence that I can’t feel or that I can ignore. His shadow is a dormant black hole come to life to swallow the star in its passing. I’m always the star when it comes to him. I’m always the star burning brighter and hotter to its demise. I’m the one that’s always completely and utterly suckered in. I have no defences where Freddie is concerned. All those times I called him my lord…I’m beginning to understand why it came so easy.
“I brought you something,” he states coolly, the natural gravel in his voice raking through me until I’m so incensed that I look up at him.
