And the message is clear: If I want to see him and talk to him, I’ll have to go to him.
I run my hands down my hips, still nervous. Why am I nervous? This is Adrian. I’m more comfortable with this man than I have ever been with another human being. The problem is he’s not comfortable with himself. He hates himself. And he sees a future through that scope and no other. That thought, that certainty, inspires me to start moving toward him. He needs to see himself through my eyes. He needs it. Really needs it. And yet on some level, I am certain he brought me here, to this room, to finally, in his mind, show me the monster he sees in the mirror.
A dark energy radiates off of him, an unfamiliar energy that only seems to validate my assumption for why he’s led me here to his room, to be that man he claims to be: dirty, bad, wild. In my world, knowledge is power, but that doesn’t keep my heart from racing as I step toward him. And I swear there is a spike in his energy, as if, even without turning around, he knows I’m closing in on him. A short step leads me to the sitting area, where the couch is, to stand with my back to the window and facing him. But I don’t touch him. And he doesn’t touch me. “I’m here,” I say. “With you. And I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
“Until you do.”
It’s such an Adrian response, I think. “Until I do?” I ask. “Is that what you assume every moment you’re with me? And if I don’t get there myself, as you expect, you’ll get there for me? Is that what you did on the plane? Get there for me? Push me? Drive me away? Tell me I don’t even know what love is or is not?” My anger is real, ripped from my heart, but unexpected and free in this moment. I don’t hold back. I step even closer to him, so close we’re almost touching. “I love you. I know I love you. You know I love you.” I’m still not done, as I add, “But it would be oh so easy to walk away if I’d just hate you the way you hate yourself, now wouldn’t it?”
“If I wanted to walk away, Pri, I’d walk away.”
“Walking away is your entire plan. It was always your plan.”
His hands come down on my waist, the heat of the touch scorching, spiking a charge between us. He backs me up, presses me to the steel bar dividing the window panes. “If I wanted to walk away, I’d walk away now and save myself. Everything I’m doing right now, from this point forward, is about saving you. Do what I’m telling you to do, Pri. Drop the case.”
“No. You’re not going to kill him. You didn’t go there before. You’re not going to start now.”
A muscle in his jaw ticks. His hands fall from my sides, and press to the glass on either side of my head. “You don’t know me.”
He’s said that too many times—so many times—but there’s a difference to his tone this time, a finality, an acceptance of what comes next. He doesn’t want to say more, he feels this time that he has no option. So I say just that. “Tell me,” I urge softly. “And trust me to know the difference between the real you and the man who was undercover with Waters.”
“And yet, you know nothing at all. That’s why you need me.”
My hand goes to his face and he catches my wrist, his dark eyes meeting mine, his words charging in ahead of mine. “I watched women get raped, let women suffer as sex slaves, stood by as men were murdered, beaten, and tortured. That’s what you will hear in your depositions, in my testimony, Pri.”
He releases me and then just stands there, staring at me, waiting for my judgment. Waiting for my shock and disgust that doesn’t come. But these were no real confessions. The real confession is somewhere buried inside him, eating him alive, and it’s about his brother, but my gut tells me not to push him in that direction. Not now, at least. “You think I don’t know all of those things?”
“You know of them, yes. But it’s the details, Pri. The devil is in the details.”
“The devil is in your self-hate.”
“The devil is in me.” His voice is low but almost guttural with that insistence. And then he grabs my hands and presses them over my head, shackling them against the steel pillar, but the rest of his body doesn’t touch me. “I’ve been gentle with you. I’ve protected you.” He leans in, his cheek pressed to mine, lips at my ear. “Maybe that’s the problem. You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know who you’re running from.”