Hundreds (Dollar 3)

His forehead furrowed as denial wedged into his muscles only to drip away with the truth. “I did.”

“So why the need to learn me? Why say you need to ‘master’ me to be free of me when you already know more about me than anyone?”

He rubbed his jaw. “I might’ve read your notes, Pim, but didn’t you ever stop to think who you were writing to?”

“I was writing to No One.”

“Exactly.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Why title them to No One? Why that particular address?”

I shrugged. “It was the least pretentious one. Dear Diary was too young. To The Person I Wish Would Rescue Me was an invitation to being beaten. It just…felt right.”

Elder chuckled under his breath, shaking his head a little. “It just felt right.”

I didn’t understand his melancholy or the direction of our unusual conversation.

I wanted to ask him to elaborate, but he looked up, pinning me with black irises. “Do you know in my culture if a family member is renounced, they’re called no one? They have no home, no people, nowhere to go. Until I saved you, I was no one. Do you understand how crazy that coincidence is? To steal your notes and feel as if you’ve been writing to me this entire time? To believe that you were begging me to find you, yet it took me two fucking years to free you?”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t believe in coincidences, Pim. I won’t let what I read on paper twist my need to hear the truth. I want to know everything. I need to know everything. Do you understand now? I already feel as if I know you, yet I don’t know you. What I’ve read doesn’t satisfy me in the slightest. I need to hear it from you.” His eyes burned, flipping to a new topic just as fast as he’d flipped to this one. “We’ve finished dinner. We have nothing else to distract us from what we both know will happen the very fucking second we step into that hotel suite.”

I breathed harder, faster. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know if I’m saying anything.” He schooled his features into a tortured mask. “I thought I knew how tonight would go, but I don’t have a clue. If you return with me to the room, I won’t be responsible. I won’t apologise. I won’t be in control.”

I stopped breathing altogether. How was I supposed to react to that? Run down the street screaming? Pad after him trusting? What?

“You need to say it,” he urged. “Say you meant what you said before.”

“What did I say?”

“That you feel something for me. That you know tonight isn’t just about you anymore. It’s about me. About both of us.”

He stood, holding his hand out like a dark prince ready to cart me to the underworld rather than the promised kingdom. I’d invited this. We’d been inching closer to this precipice for weeks.

He had no idea how he’d react.

I had no idea how I’d react.

We could find equal ground and ultimate pleasure. Or we could ruin one another in a rain of incompatible pain.

Is it worth it?

Was I strong enough to take that gamble? To trade our awkward friendship for terrifying romance?

I didn’t have an answer. I doubted I would find it until I placed my hand in his and followed him back to the room. Until I gave in and let whatever was about to happen…happen.

So that was exactly what I did.

Chapter Twenty-Three

______________________________

Elder

HÔTEL DE PARIS seemed voyeuristic as we silently made our way from dining room, to elevator, to suite.

While eating the dinner I hadn’t tasted, surrounded by people I didn’t want, the walls had been lifeless, the furniture blind and deaf and dumb.

Now, walking down corridors and into our opulent suite with its heavy drapery, welcoming pillows, and turn of the century décor, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as if the walls had sprouted eyes and the furniture ears.

I felt guilty for doing nothing.

I felt ashamed for expecting everything.

I was twisted up and tangled and jumping out of my goddamn skin.

Pim swayed ahead, entering the room as if she wasn’t under a spotlight or answerable to the chandeliers or couches for every misdeed in her past.

I paused on the threshold, asking myself one last time if this was what I wanted.

My one-time rule had been broken in favour of two.

If I did this, who the hell knew if I’d wake up myself, or if I’d return to the kid who didn’t care about anything but his own obsessions. Who played until cello strings chewed his fingers to the bone. Who beat up people all because he craved the pain and victory of being a weapon.

If I was this close to falling into the rhythm of addiction, how much longer before I just gave up entirely?