He doesn’t flinch. “Yeah.”
That catches me off guard. “Just… yeah?”
“I’m not gonna lie to you.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
He meets my eyes again. “Not anymore.”
It’s honest. That’s what shakes me. He’s not trying to scare me. Not trying to seduce me, or manipulate me. He’s just saying it plain. And that somehow makes it worse. Makes it real.
“I should be terrified of you,” I mutter.
“You are.”
He says it with no malice, no arrogance. Just fact.
“And yet here we are,” I say.
“Yet here we are,” he echoes, nodding.
I pull my knees up and rest my chin on them, the cold damp of the log seeping through my pants. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why help me?”
He exhales through his nose, looking older for a moment. Sadder. “Because you were drowning. Because you looked at me like I was a monster, but you didn’t scream. Because you’re still here, and that means something.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I got.”
I shake my head and mutter, “You’re gonna break me.”
“No,” he says, voice rough. “I’m gonna hold the pieces.”
I hate the way my throat tightens. The way my eyes burn. I don’t cry. Not anymore. Not since the auction. Not since the chains.
“Don’t say things like that,” I whisper.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll believe you.”
I stare at him, and he stares right back.
There’s something happening here. Something I don’t have a name for. His eyes—those molten, impossibly bright eyes—burn into me, not with hunger, but with something quieter. Deeper. It’s not lust, exactly. Or maybe it is, but not the gross, leering kind I know too well. This is... different.
He leans in slightly, and I swear my breath stops in my chest.
Is he going to kiss me?
Why the hell would I even wonder that?
My lips part without permission, some reckless part of me whispering maybe, just maybe—but then?—
CRUNCH.
