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“He—” The truth, Daphne, even if it hurts. “I didn’t have my phone.”
“Because he took it from you.”
“I—”
“Don’t bother lying about it. I know it wasn’t at your apartment.”
“I wanted to go with him,” I burst out, a tear rolling down my cheek. “And he wanted me to stay. He didn’t want me to go back to you. You’d never let me out again.”
“No. Because this is the asshole who bought your paintings. I saw three of them in his house. Emerson Leblanc is your fucking stalker.”
“He wasn’t—”
“Daphne.”
I feel trapped in this standoff. More trapped than I was in the frame. The only way out is honesty.
“Fine. He was.”
Leo curses under his breath, his hands coming up to cover his face. “He got to you, then. He tricked you. He made you think you had to protect him.”
“No one tricked me. No one’s making me say this. I’m choosing this. I promise.”
“Daphne…” Leo’s tone softens, and he is my brother, the one who carried me up the stairs to hide me from our father’s violence, the one who came to all my art shows in college, the one who would do anything for me. He’s my favorite. It kills me to fight with him. “Do I have to explain to you how Stockholm syndrome works?”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Seriously, Leo? Have you met your own wife? You told the cops she was your prisoner. I didn’t believe you, but now I think you were telling the truth.”
He’s silent, and I know it’s because he was honest. I thought he was self-destructing from grief, but it is what happened between them, even if he exaggerated some of the details. I also know that Haley loves him to the ends of the earth. I heard the head-over-heels, til-death-and-past-it tremble in her voice when she made her wedding vows.
Leo looks away, his teeth gritted. When he returns, his eyes are dark with skepticism. “So you’re saying this is about love.”
“I…” He said he loved me. He also said I shouldn’t be with him. But that doesn’t cancel out love. It just doesn’t. My mouth is dry with the stress of the hospital and the argument and the guilt. “Yes. It is.”
My brother makes a sound that’s somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “If this is about love, Daphne, then where the fuck is he?” He shakes his head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m never letting him get to you again. If he comes for you, he’s a dead man.”
* * *
