“Theouroboros,” I murmur, and Noelle nods.
“You go around and around, hurting others and yourself because you’ve convinced yourself all you deserve is pain. You try to help others, but your own pain and hatred of yourself bleeds into it and poisons it. Even us—” She sucks in a breath, shaking her head. “I don’t know. If you had let me go, we would have never seen each other again. I don’t know how to reconcile all of this with the man I’ve cared for since that night, with the man I’ve wanted—”
“You didn’t know.”
“And now?” She looks at me with wide, tortured eyes. “It doesn’t change. I amhorrifiedby you, Alexandre, by a part of you—and yet another part, I—”
She trails off, her eyes glistening with tears. “To love another person is to see the face of God.Les Misérables—your favorite book, you said. You have seen God twice now, then. But you made yourself a personal hell instead. No sane person would judge you for loving Margot. No sane person would judge you for losing your mind and taking revenge on the people who butchered her. Everything came from that—because you blamed yourself. If you had seen that the problem there never lay with you—it would have all been different. And now—”
“Now I have a chance to make it right.”
Noelle looks at me, startled. “How?”
“You can leave. Whenever you wish. There is a safe in my room. I will give you the code. There’s plenty of money inside.”
“My passport—”
“Was sent to me, too.” I look at her sadly, the final blow falling. “What you need is there, and it is yours. It should have been long before this.”
She stares at me as if she’s seen a ghost, and I feel my heart shatter for the final time. Whatever comes next, I will never feel this again—not the exquisite pleasure of love…or the violent pain of losing it.
“You are free, Noelle.”
21
NOELLE
It takes a moment for me to register what he’s saying. For what feels like hours, I’ve sat here, listening to his confession, to the sordid tale of a life that I would hardly believe if I hadn’t seen the evidence of it all around.
He’s done horrible things. He wasn’t responsible for what happened to Margot—but he hurt Anastasia. It’s hard to reconcile the man who would have done those things with the one sitting in front of me now, wracked with guilt and grief.
The man who is letting me go—even if he should never have kept me in the first place.
I’m not going to miss the chance to go back to Georgie. I had planned to leave, and I intend to do precisely that now that Alexandre has given me a way. My old life wasn’t much to speak of—but it wasmine, and I still have someone else who needs me. Who relies on me. Who I can’t allow to go on thinking that he’s lost me.
But a part of me, one that I’m a little afraid to examine too closely, doesn’t want to leave Alexandre. Part of me wishes there was a way I could stay.
If I did, would he go back to the way he was before? Would the sickness in his mind take over again? Would he hurt me, even if he hated himself for it?
I can’t know. And I won’t find out. I’ve seen a different side of him since that night, a different man, one I feel a connection to. I know what it feels like to be lonely, to want love and touch and gentleness and be afraid that I’ll never find it. I know what it feels like to crave being loved. I know what it feels like to feel betrayed by family.
But I have to go back to Georgie. Iwantto go back, more than I want to stay. Even if it means leaving my beast—my Alexandre.
In a way, it feels as if I brought him back to life.
“Give me the code,” I say quietly. “Please.”
“03210617,” Alexandre says it clearly, repeating it as I scramble for something to write it down on. “My birthday—and Margot’s.”
“Thank you,” I say softly, slipping off of the bed. I have to know if he’s telling the truth before I know what to say next. Before I can form another word in his direction.
As it turns out, he is. The safe is in his bedroom closet, just as he’d said. Inside is my passport—and more money than I’ve ever seen in one place. I take all of it, rolling it into a ball, and go back to the bedroom downstairs.
I stand at the foot of the bed, suddenly unsure what to do.Do I leave now? In the morning? What if he changes his mind?I should go this instant, as soon as possible—it feels wrong not to—but at the same time, it’s the middle of the night, in a strange city. I shouldn’t be walking around with a pocket full of cash, a woman alone at night.
“I don’t deserve anything else from you,” Alexandre says quietly. “But if there is one thing—”
“What?” I look up at him sharply, my chest aching. I feel quite suddenly as if I’m being torn in two—between the life I had and the one I’m living now, between where I know I have to go and where I wish I could stay.