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She shakes her head. “What about Thom?”
“Being inside prison, you meet a lot of unsavory types. A lot of whom were your patients. Thom was a very disturbed individual. The things he said…” I tsk. “If you hadn’t already destroyed him, he may’ve ended up as one of mine.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Thom Mercer was committed to Cotsworth’s psychiatric ward as a functionally medicated schizophrenic. He was one of my most acclaimed case studies.”
“Who hung himself with his bed sheet.”
Her face pales in shock. “Why are you doing this. Why are you lying?”
“Come on. Is lying a part of my disorder?”
She looks away, paces the cell. “No, but creating an elaborate disaster is. I won’t fall victim to this. I won’t become your next disaster.”
“Oh, London.” I love the way her name tastes; like fresh lilacs. “Why do you think I was so tempted from the start? You came to me as a beautiful disaster already.”
She rushes the cage. Like a wild animal, she grips the bars and throws her body into a violent fit to rattle her prison. I stand unmoved on the other side. The bars don’t give. “Fuck you. Fuck you—” She says it over and over, a breathy chant falling from her lips.
Breathing heavy, she sags against the iron, her grasp on the bars barely keeping her upright. I rest my hands over hers. “There’s only one way out,” I say. “You’re smart enough to figure out how.”
Her gaze latches on to me. “Did before—between us—mean anything to you?”
I press my mouth to her fingers, inhale her scent. “It meant everything.”
“Then you can’t do this, Grayson. You’re confused…you think this is love? Disempathetic types don’t torture their loved ones. You should be protecting me from your illness, not inflicting it on me.”
A laugh bursts free. “But that’s a myth, right?”
Her brows crease together. “And I’m a liar, right?”
I reach through the bars and grasp the back of her head, dragging her to me so I can taste her. I linger there, just feeling her breaths pulse against me, before I release her. “Because I do love you, I’ll give you what I’ve never given anyone before.” Her eyes widen as I back away from the cage. She clings to her hope, waiting to hear the word freedom. But I can’t grant her that. It’s solely within her power to be set free.
“Here’s your one hint, London,” I say, and pick up the candle. “Think of this as your confessional. What Dr. Mary Jenkins was too proud, too vain to admit, you can divulge in secret. Only the cage to hear your whispers.”
A hysterical laugh springs from her mouth. “And a camcorder, right?” Through with pacing, she settles next to her dish and stares at the food. “I’m not like Dr. Jenkins. I didn’t lobotomize my patients.”
“No, you didn’t. That would’ve been too obvious. You’re smarter than that. Better at impulse control. But yet, here you are, just like the others, caught in a web of your own design.” I move toward the door. “Time to admit to your sins, London. You tortured your patients. You shredded their minds. You played God, trying to find a cure for yourself. Once you can admit that, then the cell door will open.”
She looks up from the plate. “This is what you want me to confess?”
“Yes.”
She lifts her hands in surrender. “Fine. I confess it. Now open the fucking door.”
I pause in the doorway. “You know it’s not that simple, love.?
??
It’s fleeting, but for a second, panic slips across her face. She’s about to be abandoned. In a cage like her father kept his girls. She claws at her clothes, searching for a loose thread, her hair in tumbled disarray. Wild and frantic. “I want to see Thom Mercer’s file,” she says.
I rub the back of my neck. “That’s a hard demand to meet out here—”
“I want to see it,” she snaps.
I exhale heavily. “I’ll make it happen.” Then I turn to leave.
“No,” she says, halting me just outside the door. “My father didn’t allow light in his basement. He held them in the dark.”
I keep her gaze. I promised to set her free, and I will. Set her free of the pain, and her crippling humanity. But first she has to face the dark. Even she knows this.
