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“Am I?” She levels me with unguarded eyes, her stare unflinching. “You said you were willing to risk my hating you in the end…but what about indifference?”
My hands curl into fists beneath the water. I glance over at the fall, to the cliff where we just made love, where I felt her shatter beneath me.
I seal my eyes closed as her admission ricochets around my skull. Truth is a blister scraped raw. I was so eager to believe I had cured her—that I had achieved the impossible—I allowed her to manipulate me.
And I relished every indulgent moment.
“Tell me you didn’t feel anything,” I say, my voice raw. “Tell me that what happened back there…between us…that it was all just deception. That you didn’t feel one ounce of empathy—”
“I felt nothing,” she says. Her eyes are bottomless, dead pools that chill me. “I feel absolutely nothing for you.”
“You deceived me.”
“You deceived yourself.” Blakely looks around the river. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to go for either of us.
She’s right, of course. I knew who—whatshe was, what she’s capable of, and I allowed her betrayal to become my truth. I wanted it to be, so desperately, I was willing to sacrifice years of research and work…everything…for just the chance to have her.
Lust. Greed. Covet—I’ve committed every deadly sin in the pursuit to own her, and I deserve my damnation.
Blakely has given up on her search. She wades to the shallow riverbank in only her shirt. As she reaches the rocky beach, she says over her shoulder, “You don’t love me, Alex.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I can, because I saw it in your eyes. When you strapped me to the gurney. When you tortured me. You’re this vile thing that can only feel when you inflict pain.” She faces me. “You once told me you took no joy in the suffering of others. You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re designed like me. And all this—” she opens her arms wide “—everything you’ve done. It’s not to rid the world of psychopaths. It’s not to avenge your sister’s ruined reputation. You did it to convince yourself that you’re not the monster.”
Chaos increases, driving up uncertainty. Loss of control over the system escalates fear. And fear triggers anger.
I can feel her figuratively slipping through my fingers. The hope for a cure. The need for her to belong with me. All destroyed.
I can’t do this again.I cannot start over. Not with another subject. Not to reach another disappointing failure.
I stalk toward her, sloshing water as my feet find determined purchase on the riverbed. “The only monster here is you,” I say, taking hold of her arms. “You’re a flawed design, wrong from birth. You corrupt everything and everyone around you. There’s only one solution.”
I swoop down and throw her over my shoulder.
Blakely’s nails scratch at my back as she fights to be set free. I wrap my arm around her thighs, preventing her kicks. She beats her fists against me, and I feel no physical pain. Once we’re in the basement, I climb the staircase and unlock the cabin door, then toss her down in the corner of the black room.
“Alex…please.” She pleads my name, but the anguish I detect in her tone is false. I can turn off my receptors now. I can do what needs to be done.
“Fuck you—”
“There’s the real Blakely.” I chuckle darkly.
She wipes her damp hair from her face, staring up at me with a fierceness I wish she felt. “You will suffer. If not by me, your punishment will come one day, Alex Chambers.”
“Oh, Blakely. To love such an unfeeling thing, I assure you, that is my punishment.”
I close the door and turn the lock.
21
METAMORPHOSIS
ALEX
As Blakely observed, the waterfall is beautiful. Though not without its flaws, it’s the faults, the original features, that are unlike any other fall in the world which makes it the breathtaking structure that it is.
A monument carved from the elements and time.
