Page 79 of Watch Me Burn
Why else would I come to you night after night, reveal the darkest parts of myself, and trust you with the beast that lives inside me?
“You think that’s all this is?” My voice drops, turning dangerous. “After everything I’ve said to you? Everything I’ve shown you?”
She doesn’t flinch from my anger, doesn’t back down. “You’ve shown me your cock. You hide your face behind that mask and your body beneath those clothes. You won’t show me anything real. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? You strip me bare, body and soul. You tell me I’m yours, that you’ll never let me go. But the second something real happens, you just stand there with your pants undone, pissed off because you can’t get what you came for.”
Her words penetrate the red haze of my anger, leaving clarity in their wake. She’s right. Whatever twisted path I’ve been walking with her—this moment demands more. Something I’m not sure I’m capable of giving her. But I take her hand, driven by the sudden need to undo the damage. “Come.” I guide her toward the bed. “Lie down.”
She hesitates, suspicion clear in her eyes.
“No sex. I won’t touch you that way. Just lie down. Please.”
The “please” feels foreign on my tongue. When have I ever asked instead of commanded? When have I ever given her a choice?
Her face registers her surprise, but she lets me lead her to the bed. I arrange the pillows behind her, my hands fumbling with the task. I pull the covers up to her waist, then adjust the curtains to keep the moonlight only on her before I sit beside her, placing one hand flat against her stomach. I’ve touched her everywhere, claimed every part of her with greedy hands, but never like this. Never with a touch this careful, this tentative.
She stares at me like I’m someone she doesn’t recognize, and it cuts deeper than any blade.
“Does it hurt now?”
“A little. It comes and goes, like bad cramps.”
I move my hand in slow circles over her abdomen, applying the lightest pressure. I know how to make her come undone, how to break her down until she’s pleading with me, but this—this simple act of comfort—feels like speaking a language I never learned.
“I don’t know what to say, Luna. I never considered pregnancy a viable possibility.”
“Neither did I. I’m on birth control.”
“Which obviously failed.”
“Obviously.” She echoes my sarcasm. “It was probably the antibiotics I took for my UTI or after my bear attack. I didn’t even think about it, but it can interfere with birth control. Not that it would’ve mattered. You’ll never wear a condom.”
“No, I won’t. But if I’d known there was a chance, I would’ve brought you a dozen cases of the morning-after pill.”
She sighs. “It’s my fault. I’m a doctor, and I know better. I should have thought about it and insisted you wear a condom while I was on the antibiotics.”
“I wouldn’t have worn one, Luna.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore now, does it? There’s no more baby.”
Silence settles between us, and inside me a war rages. Anger at her for getting pregnant. Anger at myself for being careless. Fear that this ruptures what we have, that the raw connection we’ve built will twist into something unrecognizable. And underneath all of it, grief I have no business feeling.
“Are you sad?”
I have to ask because the need to understand what’s happening inside her overrides everything else.
“I think so.” She exhales. “Not in the way I would be if I’d known about it, if I’d had time to imagine a future with it. But there’s this emptiness that wasn’t there before. Like a door closed on something that could have been.”
I nod. A door closed. A future that never had a chance to exist. A version of me that might have been a father, a notion so absurd it would be laughable if it didn’t ache so badly.
What kind of father would I have been? Would I have removed the mask? Stopped killing? Would I have buried that part of myself, become someone new for the sake of an innocent life?
“Will you be alright? Physically, I mean.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s very early, so my body’s handling it like a heavy period.” She pauses. “But no sex for at least two weeks. Maybe longer.”
The reminder sends a fresh surge of frustration through me. Two weeks without the only form of connection I truly understand. Two weeks of this awkward tenderness I’m not equipped for.
Yet, the thought of hurting her is unbearable.
