Page 54 of A Touch of Dark
Helpless.
Hopeless.
Lost.
“It was storming when you went missing,” he deduces.
“Yes.” Lightning flashes again and my apartment fades.
Gnarled trees loomed overhead, obscuring an indigo sky. Simon was watching. Hunting. Prowling.
Come out, come out, Juliana.
Cologne. My nostrils flare, chasing that scent, even as terror knots in my stomach. The more I breathe him in, the faster the forest recedes. Thunder bellows, rattling the walls, but I’m still here.
“When we went missing—whenIwent missing…my parents were too high and too drunk to notice for two damn days. I was hiding in a ditch in a hillside and I didn’t move for so long my legs had grown numb. I couldn’t even walk. A jogger found me, but they thought I was—” I break off, frowning, before I realize why.
Three-and-a-half whole sentences without interruption or a kind voice urging me to state how I “feel.” A world record. He doesn’t even press for the juicy details. What did he do to you? What did you see? Was he even real?
I almost wish he would. Or that I was brave enough to seek out a bottle of wine instead of him. Even alcohol can’t loosen my tongue this much.
“Do you know what that’s like? Hearing the world rage around you, bellowing and howling and knowing you’re all alone. Your name isn’t the one being shouted. No one can hear you screaming…”
I’ve said too much. My face feels strange. I reach up and find that my cheeks are wet.
“Is that when you received the scars on your hip?”
I glance at him sharply. He must have read my file. I can imagine how the crisp report described it:Juliana, age eight, found with a seven-inch laceration on left thigh.Has he known the answer all along and merely feigned his confusion before? Looking at him, I can’t tell. He’s fully focused on me, his head inclined, listening. Just listening.
“Y-yes.” My fingers drift to my hip, tracing the old scar over the fabric of my pajama pants.
“And, afterward, you were adopted by Heyworth Thorne.”
It’s like he’s feeding me lines from a fairytale I know by heart, skeptical but patient.
“Yes.” I return to my view of the city and flatten my palms against the glass, framing the world outstretched below me. “You may think he’s a racist, or incompetent, or whatever, but he saved my life. He saved me. I used to dream of what it would be like to live outside of the trailer park, you know? Never in a million years could I envision a place like this. A life like this.”
“Did you know what he did before becoming a judge?”
“A defense attorney,” I say. “It’s why he accepted the appointment to the bench in the first place. He was tired of defending criminals. He wanted to put them away.”
“And he told you this?” Damien wonders. I don’t like his tone; it’s too damn soft. “Interesting.”
I sigh in lieu of dissecting his motives and watch my breath fog the glass. The silvery cloud obscures a nearby building, transforming it into a mass of yellow dots and inky darkness.
“Even now, I hate the rain,” I murmur, the icing on my sordid little tale. “I really do.”
“I’ve always enjoyed it,” the man behind me confesses. He sounds too casual. As if sitting on my couch, discussing the weather is the most natural act in the world. As if this—us—is natural. “I used to enjoy watching the sky light up and feeling the moisture on my skin.”
His use of past tense sticks out. I glance at him again, focusing on the blindfold. “And now?”
“I enjoy listening to it.” His lips twitch into something not quite a smile, but not a frown, either. Wistful. “Someone told me once that every lash of thunder and drop of rain plays like music. A unique song only heard in that exact moment. Fleeting and never to be experienced by anyone again.”
“That’s quite a deep musing coming from a psychopath,” I blurt. Surprisingly, he doesn’t bite back. “Are you a musician as well?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Without my sight, I will never see a finished piece of my artwork. But, as you are aware, my hearing is quite intact. Not a second would go by without my hearing the flaws in any piece I created. Therefore, I’d create nothing.”
So, he’s a perfectionistandan accomplished stalker.
