When he took the knife out of the drawer, I froze.
Would he give me what I had asked for? I had told him to kill me, but as I spoke, watching him, I realized that I didn’t want to die. He had made me feel alive, more alive than I had felt since I was young. And I wanted to live.
I almost smiled, weird as it was. Only after being threatened with murder, only after everything he had done to me… only now did I want to live.
But he didn’t kill me. He didn’t threaten me with the knife. Instead, he tucked it into his belt and left. I scrambled for the door as soon as I realized what he was doing.
“No! Gav!”
He was going to kill someone, I was sure of it.
I pounded on the doorframe, screaming at the top of my lungs.
“No! Don’t do it!”
He heard me, I was sure of it. His footsteps walked away from the door, down the hallway. I pressed my ear to the door and heard him start to go down the stairs.
“GAV!”
If he killed someone because of me…
“No,” I whispered. It was stupid of me to taunt him. Stupid of me to tempt him to kill. And if he wouldn’t kill me, he would kill someone.
“Gav—”
His name caught in my throat.
He was my entire world right now. And I was just a toy for him to play with. He never loved me. I didn’t even know if he was capable of love. But the emotion inside of me swelled and swelled, and I couldn’t get rid of it.
How could I love someone like that? What kind of horrible person would I have to be, to love a serial killer?
He was the angel of death, but he had brought me life again. He had shone a light onto the things that mattered. It was only after losing everything that I realized what was really important in life. And what was important to me?
Him, a small voice whispered. Only him.
He had played the game well. Trade by trade, I had given him the shattered pieces of me. And he had taken those pieces, put them back together. He had shown me a side of life that I had never seen.
Was it a game? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Forget everything the rest of the world cared about. I didn’t need to be beautiful, or wear pretty clothes. I didn’t need to lose weight or go to parties. I didn’t need to tally up friends one by one until I was popular. Here I was, naked and alone, and my mind was clearer than it had ever been before.
All I needed was myself.
“Good,” I mumbled. “Because all you have right now is yourself, you idiot.”
I left the door and curled up in the bed, hugging my knees to my chest. I couldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t think about him, how he might be out there right now, bringing someone back to carve them up…
No. Stop.
I lay there for hours, willing myself to shut off that part of my brain. I didn’t have a panic attack, though. Whenever my anxiety threatened to bubble up, I tamped it back down, thinking about the way the tree branches had waved above our heads. Thinking about the newts I had seen, trying so desperately to get away.
My thoughts drifted back to him, over and over again. To the bruises I’d seen in the photographs. To the way he looked when he plunged inside of me, and then afterward. His eyes had sparked bright, and I thought that I might have saved him from that awful blankness that he called the shadow.
I blinked at the realization. It wasn’t just myself that I cared about. I cared about him. I wanted to be his, to be the one to drive away the darkness inside of him.
I didn’t realize that I had drifted off into sleep until the bolt outside the door snapped open and I raised my head. My cheeks were wet with tears. I was terrified to see what was on the other side of the door, but worse than that was not knowing.
The door swung open and he walked in, still holding the knife. His hair was mussed and there was a streak of dirt on the side of his face. His pants were dusty, cobwebs lacing his ankles.
But the knife—
The knife was clean. There was no blood on the blade.
He sat down silently next to me on the bed, staring down at the knife in his lap.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“The basement.”
The basement? He had locked me up and terrified me, all for nothing?
“Why?” I asked, my heart beating fast.
“To see what it was like. I was curious.”
“And?”
“It was dark.”
He turned, raised his eyes to me. I saw emotion in there, a stark sadness that scared me.
“Gav?”
“Dress. Come with me.”
He watched me quietly as I pulled on my clothes. Every glance of his felt like it bruised my skin. I wanted him to tie me up again. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted his touch. But he didn’t touch me, not at all.
When I was dressed, he stood up and walked out of the room, the knife hanging loosely at his side. I followed him nervously. He had always had a hand on me before, and I wondered what he had decided to do with me.