Page 20 of Savage Knight
“I managed to attend college.Had a couple of girlfriends.Tried to live a normal life.”
She leaned her elbow on the back of the couch.“But?”
“But it’s impossible to be normal in this dynamic.”He took a drink.“So.What happens after death?”
She raised an eyebrow.“You believe me?”
“I’m open to believe.I’m pretty good at detecting liars, and you’re not one.”
His words took some of the weight off her shoulders.“I stood over my broken body, and I was given a choice.I knew who I was and what happened, so my spirit had consciousness.”
“That bastard.Scias should’ve been put down like a rabid animal instead of you marrying him.”
“I didn’t exactly have a choice.In families like mine, daughters are only good for political gain.Scias was a tactile move for my father.I remember, after the wedding, the other wives looking at me with pity because they all knew my father banged the coat-check girl in the closet.”
“Parents are shitty.”
“I think you already said that.”
“Hm, so I did.Bears repeating.”He stared at her.“What do you want to do, as a single lady, that is?”
“I ...I want to do everything.Dance.Laugh.Have fun.Explore.Date.A job.I’m going to find a great life, and there’s not one thing I won’t try.”
“Skydiving?”
“Bring it on.”
He chuckled.“Good for you.”
Then the reason she was with Evren dimmed her mood.“What would you do if you were me?”
“Everything you mentioned sounds good.”
“No, I meant about Scias?Would you disappear to a different country?”
“I’d kill him.”
The idea jolted her, and she blinked.“There is that.”
He finished his drink and filled it up again.“Topper?”
She finished her glass and held it up.He poured a generous amount.
“In any case,” he continued as he sat back down beside her, “my childhood is the reason I don’t want kids.Got a vasectomy years ago, just in case a condom broke.”
That didn’t surprise her.She was of the same mind.
“I don’t either,” she admitted.“Want kids, that is.I was terrified each month, before I got my period, that I’d be pregnant.Very relieved when I wasn’t.No way did I want to subject a child to that horrible, violent life.”
“We’re all violent.”He cocked his head.“Well, maybe not you.”
“I could be,” she admitted somberly.“I think I could kill my father.I coulddefinitelykill Scias.”
He lifted some of her hair to play with.“My bloodthirsty time traveler.”
“Not time travel,” she said.“A do-over.”
“Right.”
