I watch him disappear into the bedroom, and heaviness settles in my belly. He wouldn’t even fight the Dolces after what they did to him and his family, even when I gave him all the ammunition he needed to take them down. There’s no chance he’s going to fight for me.
I’m going to have to remember how to fight for myself.
So, I take the keys, ready to face the admin at Willow Heights on my own. Taking a deep breath, I pull open the door.
Colt Darling is standing on the other side.
seventeen
Harper Apple
“Colt?” I say, as if making sure this is real, that he’s the same person he was before.
“Harper?” He looks me up and down the same way. I guess I’m not the same girl he knew, either. My body has changed in ways he can see, but he doesn’t know the rest of me has changed, too. At least, I don’t think he does.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, glancing back over my shoulder.
“What areyoudoing here?” Colt asks, his voice sharp. “Why are you dressed like that?”
I recover from my surprise quickly. Mr. D is a Darling, and Colt is a Darling, so it’s hardly a shock. Colt, however, seems a bit more shaken. His eyes narrow, and I take in his face. I haven’t seen him since last year, when the Dolces beat him almost to death. He looks nearly the same, but everything is just a bit off, which is all the more disconcerting. It’s like looking at a life-sized doll version of Colt. His nose is just a little straighter, his jaw a little squarer, his teeth a little whiter.
I’m not sure how to answer him, and before I can even try, he grabs me and drags me back into the apartment.
“Preston!” he bellows, his voice booming through the sleek loft.
Preston Darling.
“Preston,” I whisper to myself, saying his name for the first time, trying it on. It fits. I’m less surprised than I was to find Colt here. I’ve had no indication that they’re still close, the way they were when they ran this town. For all I know, Colt’s the one on the receiving end of the videos, though. In truth, I don’t know much about Mr. D beyond what I can see.
I’ve never really tried to figure out who my rescuer is. It didn’t matter. Maybe I always knew, I just didn’t think about it. Or maybe I only knew this morning, when he told me he was nineteen, but I hadn’t had a chance to think about it.
I try to fit the name and what I know about it into my conception of Mr. D. I guess I don’t have to call him that anymore, just as he stopped being the Phantom when he became Mr. D. He was who I needed him to be each step of the way, until I needed something else. He’s no longer a man behind a mask or a shadow behind a keyboard. Now he’s more real than ever, a man with a scarred face and a name and wounds that aren’t for me to know.
The Phantom—Mr. D—Preston—steps out of the bedroom.
“Thisis your girlfriend?” Colt demands, fury snapping his words through the space between them. “Thisis who you’re moving on with? Are you fucking suicidal?”
Preston shrugs and strolls over to lean on the island, seemingly unaffected by Colt’s fury. “Could you really blame me,cuz?”
I glance from one of them to the other, sensing the rage shimmering in the air between them like a mirage. For the first time in months, my curiosity is piqued. I stopped trying to figure people out, stopped even caring. Nothing mattered.
I don’t know if this matters. But I’m interested, if only in a detached way, in where it leads.
Colt stands there breathing hard, glaring at his cousin. “I don’t blame you, I blamethem,” he says. “I blame them for everything, and you should, too. When are you going to stop—this?Whatever this is. Self-destruction, suicidal tendencies, punishing yourself?”
When I said he saved me, he saidditto.But I didn’t save him. I endangered him.
Preston smirks, stretching out his arm and beginning to slowly roll up one sleeve. I’m captivated by his every movement, his every word. This man came inside me every Tuesday and Thursday night, every Wednesday and Friday morning, for months, and I never gave a single fuck. Now, it’s as if my brain is going into overdrive to compensate. He’s not the same man who sat on the barstools beside me and served me steak and asparagus, the one who dressed and undressed me like a ritual, the one who never took off his mask and was therefore a blank cutout of a person to me.
He’s the Phantom, a man with a mask and a safe place for my body to rest while my soul was gone.
He’s Mr. D, a man with a keyboard and a sick mind, digging for secrets and hoarding them like a dragon.
He’s Preston Darling, a man whose house I destroyed, whose bed I destroyed when Royal made me cum so hard I drenched the mattress, whose leather jacket I stole.
He’s alive and utterly fascinating. He has a family. A name. A face. He smirks and rages. Maybe, he even laughs. I want to devour his soul, to dissect his brain, to study it under a microscope.
“Trust me when I say that fucking Harper is the furthest thing from a punishment,” he says when he’s finished rolling his sleeve with painstaking care.