She's attacking my argument from every angle, using the logic I have discovered her propensity for through months of correspondence. Because I have learned her—through letters and philosophical discussions and careful analysis of why violence sometimes becomes necessary.
Now she's using those tools against me.
And she's winning.
But winning an argument doesn't change the fundamental mathematics of our situation. She's seventeen. I'm twenty-four. She's building a life. I'm on a fuckingclock.
I get up from the bed, needing distance to think clearly.
The hotel room feels smaller in daylight, shabby in ways the darkness disguised. Worn carpet, faded wallpaper, the kind of place where people make decisions they'll spend years regretting.
Perfect setting for what I'm about to do.
"Where are you going?" Delilah asks, pulling the sheet tighter around herself.
"Getting dressed. We both need to get dressed. You need to go home." I retrieve my clothes from where they were scattered across the floor last night, evidence of how completely I lost control. My hands shake slightly as I pull on my pants, muscle memory from years of careful discipline warring with the emotional chaos she's created in my chest.
She watches me dress with growing alarm, green eyes tracking every movement like she's trying to decode what mybody language means for her future. She is brilliant. That’s why she can do better. More. She deserves distance from the worst thing that happened to her, not for it to become the essence of who she is. Not the way I have.
"Kent, talk to me. What's going on in your head?"
Everything. Too much. The weight of what I've done, what continuing this would mean, what walking away will cost both of us. But mostly, I'm thinking about the mathematical precision of destruction—how one wrong choice can cascade into irreversible damage.
I've spent two years learning to compartmentalize violence, to separate necessary killing from personal emotion. The same skills that keep me functional when I'm carving confessions from monsters can be applied here. Clinical assessment. Objective analysis. Emotional distance.
She deserves a normal life. College roommates who worry about midterms instead of body counts. Boyfriends who've never killed anyone, who can take her to dinner without scanning every exit. A future built on something other than shared darkness and the philosophy of necessary violence.
I'm too old for her. Not just chronologically, but experientially. She's lived through one kind of trauma and thinks it's prepared her for everything else. I've chosen trauma repeatedly, refined it into methodology, turned it into something approaching art. The distance between those experiences isn't measured in years—it's measured in bodies.
I'm too damaged. Two years of systematic killing has changed something fundamental about how I process human connection. I see everyone as either predator or prey, threat or asset. Even Delilah, especially Delilah, gets filtered through that framework. The fact that I can categorize someone I care aboutas useful to my emotional stability proves how fucked up my thinking has become.
Most importantly, I'm too dangerous. Not because I'd ever hurt her directly, but because being connected to me makes her a target. Law enforcement, rival predators, anyone who might want leverage against the Carver—they'd use her to get to me. And I can't protect her while maintaining the anonymity that keeps me operational.
The math is simple: staying together destroys both our futures. Walking away destroys only mine.
Easy choice.
"I'm thinking about what comes next," I say, buttoning my shirt with mechanical precision. "For both of us."
"And you've decided that without talking to me."
The accusation stings because it's accurate. I am making this decision unilaterally, based on calculations she's not privy to. But some decisions are too important to be made democratically, especially when one person lacks the experience to understand all the variables.
"I'm thinking about your college applications," I continue, ignoring her objection. "Your plans to study psychology, maybe criminal justice. The life you're building with your aunt, the relationships you'll form with people who don't carry the weight we carry."
"I don't want those relationships. I want this one."
"You think you do. Right now, in this moment, you think this is what you want. But you're seventeen years old and you've never experienced normal. How can you choose abnormal when you don't know what you're rejecting?"
She's quiet for a long moment, and I can see her processing my argument, looking for flaws in the logic. When she speaks, her voice is steadier than I expected.
"You're right. I haven't experienced normal. But I have experienced violence, manipulation, and systematic abuse. I know what it feels like to be seen as a victim, to be treated like something broken that needs fixing. And I know what it feels like to be seen clearly by someone who isn't afraid of what they see."
She pauses, pulling the sheet higher, and for a moment, she looks like a fledgling.
"Normal people will always see me as damaged goods. The girl whose father was murdered, whose mother died in a mysterious car accident, who's been through too much trauma to be a safe emotional investment. They'll be kind, but they'll keep their distance. They'll offer sympathy, but they'll never offer understanding."
The observation is probably accurate, which makes this harder. Because she's right that normal relationships will be complicated by her history. But complicated doesn't mean impossible, and it definitely doesn't mean she should settle for this.
