After a few moments, I step aside, “Come on.”
Brett slips past me and I shut the door behind her. She steps across the plush carpet gingerly, like she’s trying not to make any noise, but only makes it a few feet before coming to a halt.
She hesitates for a few moments, her hands twitching, “I should be sorry…” she finally says, “for shooting you.”
“That’s why I gave you an empty gun,” I say at her back, “because I knew you would.”
She looks over her shoulder with skepticism, “But what if I’d pistol whipped you instead?”
“That probably wouldn’t have killed me, either,” I reply with a shake of my head, “but I’m sure you’ll have plenty more chances.”
Her head moves gently from side to side as she scans the antique bed frame, with more dings and nicks since the last time she saw it. It’s been in a basement for three years, coveted by Dallas, full of regret that she wasn’t the firstborn to call dibs on one of the last heirlooms from our very German great-grandmother.
“You still have the same bed,” Brett remarks, her gaze climbing the twisted black posts.
She scours every inch, and eventually, her eyes settle on the intricate carvings across the headboard where a frayed, black strap of nylon remains knotted around the center. She stares, motionless, at it, the only sound the hum of the ceiling fan.
“I did love Bowen,” Brett finally says, her voice louder and more resolute, “because somewhere, deep down, I wanted to find you. And I found some parts of you in him.”
I take a step back and settle onto the edge of the dresser.
She doesn’t take her eyes off the knot, left intact for four years now, “I don’t know if I ever knew who he was or if it was all a façade, but even when I felt your gun in my mouth, it didn’t feel like it did with him two nights ago.” She turns over her shoulder with a profound sense of clarity, “Bowen meant to do what he did, from the start.”
“Well,” I shift my weight, crossing my arms, “he was also searching for a ghost, and found you. You just had the misfortune of searching for me and finding a demon.”
“I’ll never escape you, will I?” Brett asks with a faint smile.
My mouth twitches with amusement, “No.”
“I should still want to,” she muses, “you could also just be a really good liar who takes advantage of people’s weaknesses like Bowen does.”
I tip my chin up, “I am your only weakness, Brett, and you’re mine.” I push away from the dresser and close the space between us, my chest nearly touching hers, “We are symbiotic. I don’t just love you. I don’t like watching you just because you’re pretty, I like feeding you everything I have and watching you take it and make yourself stronger and more powerful every day. You bending to my will is only a show of weakness in the same way that a drowning man reaches for a life vest.” I lean down, lowering my voice, “I do what I do because you are, in the truest sense, my Honeybee. You give me life and I give you the same in return. That’s why it doesn’t matter how far you run, I’d rather live half a life only being able to catch you for a few moments before you escape again than a whole life without you.”
She stares up at me, her chest rising and falling with exhausted breaths, “But now I’m hollow, too,” her voice cracks in frustration, “and I didn’t used to be. Now, after all this, I’m half empty and half alive.”
I shake my head with a half-smile, “You’re not,” I step around her to the edge of the bed and nod to the white sheets, “come here.”
Brett looks at me suspiciously, “Why?”
I sweep my hand over the side table as I crawl to the middle of the bed, then I sit back on my heels and beckon to her again, “Come here,” I nod to the space between my knees, “and I’ll tell you.”
Brett slowly moves toward the bed, crawling over the white sheets until she’s kneeling next to me. I motion for her to come closer, my eyes darting again to my knees. Keeping her eyes trained on me, she shuffles over and settles onto her knees facing away from me, her palms flat on her thighs.
I lean over her shoulder, “Can I touch you?”
At first, she doesn’t answer, seemingly caught off-guard by my question. Probably because I never ask her permission for anything.
My voice hardens, “You have to tell me, Brett—yes or no?” Because this time is different.
She lets out a slow breath, relaxing her muscles, “Yes.”
I gently wrap my arm around her waist and lean into her ear, “Do you want to know what it feels like to be the predator?”
She hesitates, but then I feel her head move slightly, “How?” she whispers.
I drop my other hand and slowly reach for the remote next to my knee. As soon as I press the Power button, the 65” TV affixed to the wall in front of us lights up and fills the bedroom with a cool glow. Brett’s eyes go wide and her mouth falls open the moment she sees Bowen’s face again for the first time in two days.
The blue light reflects in her eyes like mirrors as she takes in the feed of her old living room and kitchen while his familiar figure wanders around the frame. The mess near the closet is gone, any indication of a struggle yesterday long since cleaned up and secreted away again.
I drop the remote and wrap my other arm across her chest, pulling her close as I speak in her ear, “By watching your prey eat away at themselves from the inside out, becoming weaker and weaker, and you feed on their torment.”
She finally finds her words, “What is this?”
“I promised you a movie, didn’t I?” I murmur against her cheek, “He can feel your eyes on him, but he doesn’t know why.”
Her breaths getting deeper the longer she stares at the image, but she doesn’t look away. “Because it was your eyes,” she says with a mixture of relief and horror. “I felt them. All the time. Just like last time, when I knew I’d seen them before.” She lets out a shaky breath, “Did you see—” she trails off, but I know what she’s asking.
My jaw tightens with regret, “No,” I should’ve put a feed in her room, even though watching it would’ve been like dying every day. “But,” I smile, “I did see you give Hannah a couple of haymakers.”
I catch Brett’s cheek tense and she actually grins. I tighten my grip around her waist and run my other hand up her neck, slowly wrapping my fingers around her throat. She sinks further into my arms as I tilt her head back onto my shoulder.
“It was so fucking hot,” I breathe into her ear, clenching my teeth to keep it together because all I want to do is slam her into the mattress and bury my dick inside her where it belongs. “It’s more than I’ve ever done to her.”
Brett eyes me with a smirk, “So, you’re saying I did something better than you?”
I press my hips against her ass, getting harder the longer I hold her. I know she can feel it; her breathing says as much. “Baby, you do a lot of things better than me.” I brush my thumb back and forth under her chin, “you’ve always been good at saving yourself—even from me. Why do you think I passed you on the road yesterday? Because I was coming for you,” I turn her head to look at me, “I will always come back for you.”
I watch her eyes shift back to the screen and a shadow fall across her face. The longer she gazes at the image of the living room and Bowen meandering around the house, the darker her eyes get. “I hate him,” she whispers, “I fucking hate him. I want to watch him die 10 times over, and I want him to feel every second of it!” she vows, her chest heaving against my arm.
