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"I don't know if I can stop," I tell him, and he stops pacing but still doesn't look at me. I start to open my mouth again but leave it at that.
"Will you try?" he finally asks, his voice quiet and calm. I swallow deeply but don't answer. He steps up, his hand hovering in the air a moment before he lightly turns my chin up to look at him once more. Unlike the other times he's held me like this, this is tender and infinitely more terrifying.
"I don't know if I can," I repeat, my voice hoarse. Just the thought of not being able to find my release in the thrill of a kill scares me to my core.
"Will you try?" he asks again before dropping his hand with a sigh. "Mia… You know where I stand. You know what I've been through, what we've both been through. Will you let this dark place follow you your whole life, or can you put it aside to be with me?"
My entire body is trembling, and I don't know if the thought of not being able to kill or of losing Branson scares me more. It's strange to think that only months ago, hell, days ago, my response to such a question would have been to simply lock him up for a few days without food until he agreed with me. The thought is sobering.
"I don't know if I can," I say for the third time. I shake my head, dispelling the thought of my confusing younger years. I remember once, when I was no more than eight or so, my mom found me playing with a bird with a broken wing in an alley and beat me for it. I later heard her telling another hooker that she had found me torturing a bird, and I never thought anything of it until now. "Even before Jane, I always had these… urges. Thoughts."
He nods as though this makes perfect sense. Then again, he knows me better than anyone. He may not accept or like my urges, my darkness, but he certainly seems to understand it well enough.
"I know you're scared, but if we are going to get out of this place, be together... Please, Mia. For me. For us." His thumb comes up, trailing over my bottom lip and a shiver runs up my spine.
My voice comes out in a shaky whisper, "I'll try."
The corner of his lip turns up, and he leans down to kiss me lightly.
“You know how much I fucking love you?” he rasps. “You realize we can be free now?”
Despite the fear and trepidation still coursing through me, a small smile graces my lips.
“Free,” I whisper. “Where should we go? What should we do?”
He tenses up.
“Mia, I don’t know what’s out there. I don’t know what to do about the cops that are almost for sure coming here. You know the world, so you tell me. Where are we going? What should we do?”
I consider this for a moment. I forget so often how little Branson has been in the world. Although much of my last decade has been spent in this house, I still had years in the city and I haven’t been forced to stay in the house in years. He hasn’t left this property since he was a kid. For the first time, I feel a pang of regret about my recent kill. If I hadn’t killed that cop, maybe we could have stayed here for longer, made a plan.
Then again, I could go back further and say what if I hadn’t taken that stripper, Lola?
What if we had killed Jane years ago?
Too many what ifs.
I need to focus. Think about what our problems are, how we can solve them.
If the cops come here and we’re gone, they’ll eventually search the property even if they don’t find that cop. If they find the basement, Jane’s gallery, and associate it with my picture, that station wagon, with Lola…
They can’t find any of it.
“I have an idea,” I say slowly, turning over the idea in my mind. “I don’t know where we’ll go next, but the city is a big enough place for us to hide for now, especially if I dye my hair. That picture wasn’t great, so it’ll be a blonde in a station wagon they are looking for. Easy enough. The real problem is this place.” I gesture to the house.
“Why?”
“If they find it, they’ll never stop looking for me,” I tell him simply. “You know, most people don’t keep galleries of human body parts in their basement.”
The corner of his lip turns up a fraction.
“Yes, I was aware,” he replies wryly. “So, what do you propose we do?”
My grin grows.
“We burn this place to the fucking ground.”
