I swallow, water in my throat, in my lungs. “You don’t know me,” I cough, a small muffled noise, like my voice doesn’t belong to me anymore.
“I do,” he says gently. “I know the sound you make when you’re about to cry but don’t. I know the way your breath catches when you lie. And I know what they did to you.”
“Don’t.”
“No matter how hard you try not to remember it, it still lives in you. It will always live in you.”
“I said don’t.”
“You think I’m the monster? I’m not the one who locked you in closets and basements or slammed your head against the edge of a porcelain sink. I didn’t punish you for crying. I didn’t strip you of your own voice. I didn’t rip—”
“You’re punishing me now,” I snap, though it comes out too soft, a breath laced with ache. “Stalking me. Playing your little game. Controlling me, just like…”
“Like who? Your mother? Your husbands? Your bodyguards?” He leans in. “It’s time you woke up, Reagan.”
“I don’t want to be awake.” The confession comes out raw. Ugly. Too honest.
He smiles under the mask. I know it, even if I can’t see it.
“I know,” he says. “That’s why you married him.”
“Blake?”
“He’s the reason you’re in this hotel. Blake and Tristan, they’re playing each other to own you. You’re the prize, little bird. Not the player.”
There are noises disrupting the water. A knock on the door? A door breaking?
It’s finally catching up to me. The water I’m under, filling my lungs. I can’t breathe.
No. Mom. Please!Another voice joins.
Is it a memory or the here and now? The voice is so distant underwater. Is it mine? Have I made that plea before?
“But I’m different,” Butterfly Man says, as if we’re alone, as if I’m the only one hearing that, now screaming, voice, and his gloved hand brushes my neck. Just once. Just enough to make every nerve in my body seize. “I’m not playing,” he whispers. “I’m saving you.”
You think you’re saving me. That dragging me into the dark is some kind of mercy. And maybe the worst part is…sometimes, I almost believe you. Because you don’t just haunt me—you know me. The parts of me I bury in fiction and pretend aren’t mine. You see them. And instead of running, you…stay.
That’s what makes you dangerous. Not the way you stalk me. But the way you make me wonder if I want to be found.
“You’re not my savior,” I slur.
“And yet here I am, dragging you out of the water when the people guarding you didn’t even notice you went under.”
My heart slams so hard against my ribs, and yet the beat is so faint. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m just the part of your mind that doesn’t want to die. The part that refuses to be caged.”
“Or maybe you’re just what I deserve.”
He leans in until his masked lips are inches from my ear. “No, little bird. I’m what you created.”
CHAPTER 26
Tristan
Brandon’s panicked voice crackles in my earpiece. “Something’s wrong—she’s in the water, sir, she’s not—she’s not moving—”
I don’t remember crossing the hallway. I don’t remember shoving guests aside. I only remember the bathroom door, splintering off its hinges. And the tub. The water is high, Birdie’s head tipped back like a fallen doll, hair floating around her face, eyes half open, glazed and vacant.