I’d do anything for her to have that feeling.
I curl my fingers into the hair at the back of her head like maybe I’ll be able to hold her together, even a little bit.
“I should call Colette.”
“Ophelia, you—”
She pulls away, eyes on the small cut I can feel just below my bottom lip. Gently, she runs her finger just beneath it. Her eyes are a boiling, swirling sea of emotion. “They threatenedyou, Alex, they almost … you almost … If something happened to you because of me, I wouldn’t survive it.”
“It didn’t. It won’t.”
She flips my palms, grazed from the broken glass and the brick wall. “I waswarnedto stay away from you, but everyone told me to ignore it.”
“As you should. Don’t let whoever this is strip your life of all the good.”
“You are the good in my life, Alex. I could’ve lost you. Your sisters could have lost you.”
I pull the glove from my pocket, draping it over my palm. “They dropped this.”
She frowns, seeing what I see. I don’t think my hand would fit in that glove even if we had half an hour to try. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
She hovers her hand over the black fabric. It looks like a perfect fit.
“It’s not my father, Ophelia,” I say, telling her what she’s been told a hundred times before. “I know you think it could be him, but it isn’t. This stalking is sloppy, disorganized. Weak threats, as though they want to hurt you but can’t pull it off. That isn’t Cain at all.”
Her shoulders sink, like she’s been knocked back to Go on this fucked-up board game we’re playing. I know it’s not that she’s desperate for her stalker to be my father; it’s that she’s desperate for something,anything, to suggest we’re making progress.
“Don’t do whatever they ask you to do, Ophelia. Rocco’s men will catch them in Sorrowsong.”
“They won’t, clearly,” she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “It’s like this person is invisible, forgotten and left off all records.”
“Tread water a little longer. And come to a hotel with me.”
“Go back to New York.”
“No.”
“Please. Until we’ve caught this person, until I know they can’t hurt you.”
Her lips are pillow soft, her face warm between my palms. I drag an inhale through my nose, trying to drag enough ofherinto my lungs that the next however long without her feels more manageable.
I love you, her gaze says.
You’re the reason I’m grateful to be alive, I hope mine says back.
I brush a lock of hair from her forehead, holding her gaze so intensely in the quiet, dark house that it feels more intimate thananything else we could do. “Don’t go allno strings attachedon me again.”
“Our strings are stitched through my heart, Alex. I can’t get rid of them even when I try.”
Chapter 15
OPHELIA
Sorrowsong has this way of convincing you that you’re losing your mind, like the fog that constantly hugs the turrets has infiltrated your brain and clouded your judgement.
Did someone really try my door handle last night, or was that part of my dream?
