Page 138 of Captive Souls

I could see that.

And I was too. Struggling, that was.

I’d slotted back into the life I’d made to fit me so precisely. The apartment, the job that somehow welcomed me back with few questions, and the friends who had a bit more questions about how I’d taken off for a walk across Spain with no warningand came home with a menacing, deadly-attractive, menacing boyfriend who barely said boo to anyone and scowled his way through dinner, twirling my hair between his fingers instead of answering questions.

I found that I was a convincing liar.

I discovered that I had become a new shape that didn’t fit into the life I’d so valued.

The city was too loud. Too crowded. Yet I still loved it. The chaos. The vibrancy. The shine had come off, though. After relishing the freshness of the mountains, the pristine nature of the woods. The quiet.

I felt caught, stretched between two worlds. Though I loved my job, going back to a place where I cared for toddlers was … uncomfortable, given the fact that I was a killer. I’d seen people die. I’d killed someone.

It didn’t quite haunt me the way I thought it would. I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat, shaking off nightmares. No panic attacks, flashbacks. I just felt … colder. Like I’d opened up a gaping canyon in me I was afraid of. Sometimes, in the middle of finger painting, my hands covered in paint, I remembered when it had been blood. Yes, that was difficult but not impossible to handle.

“It is my birthday,” I answered Knox, trying to remind myself to live in the present, not to live in an existential crisis. At the time, I was holding a hot mug of coffee, and the man I loved was standing in my kitchen shirtless, his scars illuminated by the morning light, looking at me with a warmth that the sun could never produce.

“You weren’t going to tell me.” His eyes narrowed.

I smiled at him, unafraid of his ire. I knew that it unsettled him, that his menace bounced right off me. “I didn’t think I’d need to, considering you likely rectified any lack of research you’d done.” I was teasing, but also, I had assumed that he’ddelved into every corner of my life, intent on finding out every benign detail about me.

“I don’t need to delve into anything to learn things about you, Petal.” He stepped forward. “Except here.” His hand ghosted over my breasts, feathering over my peaked nipples to settle above my pounding heart. “And here.” The other skimmed my stomach to cup me possessively between my legs.

Even though he had just fucked me extraordinarily well, I still hungered for more of his possessive touch.

I wondered if I’d ever satisfy my appetite for him. Ever stop needing him in a way that felt hard to weather.

I doubted it.

“I don’t like making a fuss about my birthday,” I told him in a gasping breath. “It falls at a rather … odd time.”

Knox loosened his grip between my legs, but he didn’t let me go.

He let me bathe in the silence, sipping my coffee as he held me close. He still did that, held me whenever I was within arm’s length, with a desperation that he thought I might just dissipate. Dissolve into nothing.

He wasn’t trusting of our new state.

Happiness, I tried to explain it to him as if the concept were as foreign as pigs flying.

“My birthday happens in the summer,” I stated the obvious. “Which meant it was celebrated with my grandmother.”

I smiled as I remembered homemade cakes, decorated with berries we picked ourselves. Presents wrapped in old scarves. Music blasting into the night as we stayed up past our bedtime, the summer air still balmy.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “And then we stopped going. I only had one more birthday here in New York. My mother attempted to make it special, but she wasn’t practiced in that.”

She’d tried to make a cake but burned it. The money for presents was spent on booze. My father had smashed the stereo the night before, and he was sleeping off a hangover, so we all had to tiptoe around.

“The next year, my father killed her then himself a month before my birthday.” I squeezed my mug tighter than I needed to. “And that was when we were still in foster care while social workers tried to track down family.” Eventually, they’d tracked down my aunt, the one who owned this very apartment, and we got lucky with a kind, quirky guardian willing to take us in. “The day got lost, and I never really found it again,” I whispered, catching Knox’s gaze. “It kind of has a gloomy shadow over it.”

I didn’t tell him that in my drinking days, I’d spend the day with the curtains drawn and in the bathtub with a bottle of vodka. Daisy had long given up on trying to make it special as I’d done a good job of convincing her that I didn’t want the attention.

A foreign concept to her, but she’d accepted it.

Once I got sober, I drowned my sorrows in a cake I’d make every year, my grandmother’s recipe. I did that alone, usually while rewatching some ’90s TV shows, maybe shopping online for a pair of shoes I didn’t need.

It was all the celebration I gave myself.

Knox stared at me after my admission, his hand tucking a stray hair behind my ears, nostrils flaring. “I doubt I’ll do a satisfactory job of lifting the shadow from the day, since I’m not practiced, but…”

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