Shadow Man (Grayson Duet #1) - Catherine Wiltcher Page 0,61

pool area. It’s still the same palm tree oasis I remembered, encircling an Olympic-sized pool that’s lined with the finest Sicilian gray marble.

I find her sitting cross-legged by the edge of the water, chewing on her nails and staring up at a melting pot of color that’s sinking slow and steady into the rainforest in the distance. She looks like a child who lost an argument with a bottle of red sauce. Her white T-shirt and denim skirt are stained dark and ugly with my blood, and her wild golden hair has been dulled with dirt and tangles.

She still burns brighter than any sunset.

But it’s the moon she really outshines.

She looks over when she hears me approach and scrambles to her feet. Her delicate face is a mask of shock. Her river-deep blue eyes are unsure and fearful.

“How are you even walking?” she whispers. “Ten hours ago you were dying in my arms.”

“It’s called morphine and a good doctor, sweetheart.” I come to an awkward stop in front of her, breathing shallowly to keep the peaks of pain to a foothill, not a mountain.

“Do they amputate hurtful revelations as well?”

She looks away, but I still see the glass in her eyes.

“Hey.” When she doesn't respond, I catch her chin between my fingers and jerk her back to me. “Do I still make you feel?” I demand, ignoring the pull across my freshly stitched wound; needing the hurt of her confirmation more. “Like that time in the motel room. Tell me, Luna.”

“I’m nothing but a guilt fuck to you.”

“You have never been a guilt fuck to me.” Letting go of her chin, I get right up in her face. She seems so small and fragile with my great shadow overwhelming her light. “Answer my goddamn question. Do I still make you feel?”

“Yes, you still make me feel,” she admits reluctantly, refusing to break eye contact because that’s how fucking brave she is. “But it’s the worst kind now. It’s hurt and betrayal; it’s lies and confusion.”

“I still feel you too, Luna,” I tell her, impressing my words on her so forcefully she has no choice but to accept them. “I feel you so deep and so hard that sometimes, when you breathe, it’s my fucking oxygen that you’re stealing.” I watch her eyes widen as she takes a step back, stumbling in the face of my own revelation. “Shall I continue?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what happened six months ago?” She takes another step back, and then another, as if she’s scared of my answer.

“Because I chose to make amends instead. Because I chose to hunt down every single man who took you and hurt you, and kill them as slowly and painfully as possible. I had no fucking idea how deep my sadism ran until I had those men in a room with my knife.” I follow her step for step until I have her pinned up against the side of the house. “Because I made that shit right.” I say, repeating my life mantra for the second time today, as if it’s somehow going to fix everything between us.

“But you didn’t,” she says sadly. “I needed the truth. I needed it to heal, and you withheld that from me.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” It feels like someone just shot me again. I’m in blinding agony thinking I may have contributed to her pain.

“Maybe if I’d known about the Russians, about what they did to Dante’s daughter, about why you were hunting them, about why they targeted me, I could have come to terms with everything. I could have moved on instead of being stuck in some hellish purgatory screaming ‘why me?’ at the walls every day.”

She’s crying now, but she’s refusing to wipe her tears away. She’s making me drown in her anguish, and I am. By fucking Christ, I am.

“Do you want to know what they did to me, Joseph? Do you want to know every dirty, sordid detail? Would it help you to understand how hard it’s been for me? To fully grasp the peace you denied me?”

“No.” I turn away, shaking my head furiously, not wanting to hear a single word, but she keeps on talking anyway. I forced my veracity on her and now I need to listen to hers.

“They tied me down to a dirty mattress in a basement, Joseph. They pissed on me; they threw their drinks on me. When they got bored, they took turns fucking me, over and over again, to