Page 79 of Locke 2

But I didn’t have to.

He said, “I found you a year ago. You were in another town, but you were passing through.”

I didn’t even know what town I was in a year ago. I moved so frequently; it was all a blur.

“Why didn’t you come for me?” I asked, and I hated that it sounded like an accusation. I felt hurt.

“Because Charlotte found me before I came for you, and she said you didn’t want me yet. She told me you were very…specific about not wanting me, in fact…” His words trailed off, and I saw that same rejection flash in his eyes.

I couldn’t look him in the eye. I looked away, admitting, “I said that at the start. When they found me and took me away. They gave me a new identity, but I was told only to use it if I was certain I didn’t want to be found.”

Locke simply nodded. He didn’t look angry though. He was just hurt. “She said you were going to hide, and then she warned me that if I found you before you were ready, you’d leave and she’d help you hide from me again.” His voice was thick. He cleared it. “I didn’t think I was ruining your life. I thought I was saving you, and I guess my desire to take you for myself outweighed everything else. I wasn’t rational. I held back because…I hoped you might reach out to me. That you might want me. Charlotte made me promise to wait for a sign. She gets through to me, and Conor…he said he’d stop me from ruining us. Because if I stole you again, I might drive you away for good, and I didn’t want that possibility. I would rather suffer and wait than to do something that could make you hate me forever.”

I let out a shaky breath, but as he began to pull away, I gripped him and kept him close. “I was scared, Locke. I’m still scared. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to trust and then…find out that you don’t want me later—”

“Do you believe me now that I do?” he cut in, and it wasn’t like him to interrupt. “If I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t have dropped everything to be here.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m not like other men,” he said, stiffly, his face twisting to embarrassment. “If I’m going to be honest, Kali, you’re the only woman I’ve ever fucked like this…I’ve never…wanted the things most want in a relationship…until you came into my world, with your angry eyes, damning me in that bathroom.”

My lips flinched. “You weren’t very likeable.”

“People are scared when they see me,” he explained. “And you were scared, but you were brave. I wasn’t used to that. You breathed fire, and I thought I wanted to extinguish it, but when you kept breathing fire, Kali, you started to breathe life into me, too. I wanted you the second you were tied to my bed, and I’ve never stopped wanting you since.”

His words sat heavy in the air.

He opened himself up to me.

This serial killer, crazy man.

But he didn’t seem those things to me in that moment.

He didn’t wait for me to talk. He let those words hang in the air. He bent down and kissed me again.

“Get some sleep, Kali.”

Dazed, I nodded, and he tucked me in.

The day felt endless, and I should have been fretting about Lenny’s room and the drawing of the man and the heavyadmission this beautiful man made, but I thought of another little boy. One that sat in a hole and waited for help that didn’t come.

My heart clenched painfully.

“If monsters are made in the darkness, do you think they can be unmade in the light?” Aurora’s whispered question raised the hairs on my skin.

I closed my eyes and fell into sweet nothingness.

The House

The door to her bedroom creaked open.

His footsteps were slow.

He stumbled.

He muttered.

He cursed us all to hell.

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