And now that I had her…really had her, I’ll be dead before I let her go or let someone try to take her from me. “I can’t say I’m sorry for any of it, Fiona. I know you deserve an apology and I know I should feel bad for a lot of the things I put you through, but I just don’t. I was mean and manipulative because I didn’t know how to handle the way you made me feel. You think I tormented you every day, but it was you who tortured the fuck out of me every minute of every goddamn day, Halloween.” Truth be told, she still tormented me. Her very being was the source of my existence.
Her eyes spilled over and I just prayed they were happy tears as I continued, “There was never a moment in my life where you weren’t the only option, regretting or being sorry would imply that there was, and that’s simply not true.”
Fiona wrapped her delicate hands around my wrists. “You can’t hurt me anymore, Damien.” I nodded in earnest, but she kept going. “You can’t lie to me or threaten the people I love. You just can’t. I love you so much, but the trust isn’t coming so easily, so just please, please promise me.”
I could only promise her one of those things and in promising that, I couldn’t promise her the other two. “I promise to never lie to you ever again, by outright or by omission. But because I can’t promise never to threaten your family or your friends, I can’t promise to never hurt you because I know threatening the people you care about would hurt you.”
Hey eyes were imploring. “Why?”
I stood to my full height and wrapped my arms around her, hugging her to me. “In case you haven’t noticed by now, Halloween, I’ll do anything to be with you. And now that you’ve come here and given yourself to me, I’ll do anything to keep you. If…if I have to ruin everyone around you to keep you with me, I’ll do it.”
“Damien…”
“I know a lot of people will say that forcing someone to be with you isn’t real love. There’s all that nonsense about if you love something set it free and all that shit and that if you really love a person, you should put their happiness above your own and whatever.” I held her tighter. “And maybe that’s true for some people, but not me. I’m going to love you like my life depends on it, because it does, Fiona.”
I felt her small arms encircle my waist and hug me back. I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering where the nearest jewelry store was and if they were still open. Then the more savage part of me imagined her bleeding as I sliced her wide open, yanking that goddamn birth control insert out of her arm. The picture turned more gruesome as I imagined fucking her raw and cumming inside her as she still bled from her arm.
Fuck. Fiona surrendering to me was supposed to ease the madness, not drive it up ten notches.
I bent down and, grabbing her by her thighs, wrapped them around me and walked over to sit in my chair. Once I sat down, I adjusted her legs so that she was sitting sideways across my lap, her legs draped over mine. I had one arm wrapped around her back and the other wrapped around her thigh, holding her to me. I knew I was on the extreme side of crazy when it came to Fiona, but if I could just have her sit right here, Monday through Friday curled up against me like this, I’d never have a bad day at work.
Fiona brought me out of my irrational thoughts as she sat up. “Um, what’s that?”
I tilted my head around her to see what she was talking about. “What?”
She stretched her body to reach over to pluck her picture off my desk. She held it in her hands as she looked down at it, realizing what it was. She lifted her head to look at me. “This is from the day I opened Fiona’s.”
“I know.”
“You’ve had this on your desk for two years?” she asked, incredulously.
“Yep,” I answered and thought I might as well tell her all of it. “Open it.”