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EMERSON
I regret all of it. Instantly.
The tenderness. The sharing. The honesty. I regret letting her in. Allowing that conversation in the first place. I hate it so much it forms a pit at the bottom of my heart and festers.
Because of course it didn’t lead her to any real peace. Daphne’s face dropped the moment she heard her brother’s voice. She went pale and sad, her hand hooking into her collar and holding on tight. She wasn’t aware of it at all. I know, because she didn’t let go until I took her in my arms.
She has no idea how right she was. How all this difficulty compounds over the years. It does not get easier. It doesn’t get easier to leave home. It doesn’t get easier to recover after an attack. Her plaintive sobs are the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
I’ve become too soft, too fucking vulnerable, and my mind hisses at the prospect.
It’s easier to be an evil bastard, like my father. It’s always been safer, and it will be safer now.
When the sun comes up again, we’re done with all this. She can’t be so close. So alive. I need her where she belongs. Framed in my collection. Not reaching for the outside world, which only hurts her. I couldn’t hear a damn thing her brother said, but I don’t need to. I saw it all in her face. I have not taken Daphne from a careless family, the brother least of all.
I feel a twinge of guilt.
I nail it to the wall of my mind. Nail it down until none if it is visible.
Daphne cries for so long that she exhausts herself. She finally falls into an uneasy sleep on my shoulder, and I do the only possible thing, which is to tuck her into bed.
My bed, not hers. I tell myself it’s so she won’t be alone if she wakes in the night. It would be better for her if she was. I’m nothing but a regretful asshole with an art collection.
She doesn’t wake up all night. Not even when I get out of bed before dawn to surf, my phone in a waterproof case in my wetsuit pocket so I know if she tries to escape again.
Part of me thinks she might.
That part is wrong. She’s still dreaming, curled under the blankets, when I get back.
It’s time to resume my usual routine. I leave her there while I shower and dress. Then I go down to my office and scroll through the messages in my inbox. Most of them are bullshit. A couple of them are not. I close another deal for purchase with Michael and arrange for the piece to be delivered next week. I have a small team of trusted people come in to clean the windows of her studio. They do quick, quiet work. She sleeps through that, too. It’s another two hours before I feel the small shifts in the house that say she’s awake. Light footsteps on the floor. Water through the pipes.
Daphne appears at my doorway a little while later. Her eyes are red, but she’s stopped crying. The color makes her eyes look even larger than they normally do. Even brighter.
“Hello, little painter.”
“Hi.” She lets out a breath. “I’m sorry I slept so late. Did you clean the windows in the studio?”
“You can sleep as long as you want. And yes, I had them cleaned.”
“Good,” she breathes. “I hated that painting.”
I don’t mention that the entire thing has also been photographed for posterity.
“Are you hungry?” I close all the tabs on my browser. One was open to the news. Daphne’s brother put out a press release reiterating his position on paying for her safety. He’ll have to spend most of his time sorting through false leads.
“Yes,” Daphne admits. “But you don’t have to—”
I’m already out of my chair. “What do you like? Aside from scrambled eggs.”
She hesitates. “Shouldn’t you know already? You were following me for a long time.”
“You lived on the second floor. Made it difficult to see in when you were eating.”
Also, she lived on a well-traveled street. As much as I wanted to look into the windows, I couldn’t do it without attracting attention. It was enough of a risk to break in. It’s kind of her, however. To pretend that I could have been away from home for that amount of time.
Although, for her…
No. Not possible.
