could get my thoughts out of my head without screaming. If I didn’t have it as an outlet, I don’t know what I would have done. It was easier to endure it all as long as I had an escape.”
A safe place to voice the complaints my parents never wanted to hear.
The emotions enduring Branden’s control forced me to suppress.
Everything.
“Endure?” he prods, his tone gruffer. “Don’t tell me that talk about your innocent, perfect childhood was bullshit?”
If anything, he doesn’t sound surprised. Did he suspect as much all along?
I incline my head, gazing at him with a newer perspective. However, his face is still angled away from me, keeping whatever emotions it may reveal to himself.
“Everyone has their problems,” I murmur. “Writing was the one thing that always gave me…a way out? It got me a scholarship to come here. Chasing that dream gave me enough courage to leave. I still feel like it was worth it, even if Bran—” I break off, alarmed by how close I’ve come to slipping up. Confessing.
“He followed you?” He sounds so deceptively calm. So nonjudgmental.
I’m woefully unprepared for the spell his baritone can cast when uttered so gently.
“He followed me.” I close my eyes and inhale, fighting back the wave of anger I’m not expecting. Pain. “I was stupid enough to think that he wouldn’t. That he would ever let me go.”
But he didn’t, forcing me to leave the dorms the week I’d moved in. Using his career as a police officer back in Wellington, he’d had no trouble joining the local force, and I had no choice but to move into his home. You need me, he’d insisted. Even after he met Kaitlin over a year ago, it seemed like I would never get the chance to leave him.
Break free.
“If I didn’t have my writing, I would have suffocated. I…” Confusion leaves me frowning. I’ve never admitted this to anyone.
No one’s ever asked.
I’ve never met anyone so open in his own expression yet so secretive at the same time. Displaying his drawings for the world to see but tensing up the moment he’s questioned on the meaning behind them. He told me once that his writing was in flesh. Pain. And I understand now more than ever what he meant. Hidden prose lurks within every inch of ink, locked away behind his silence.
And I can’t stop myself from chasing his secrets with the same fervor he delved into my notebook with.
“You designed this,” I suspect out loud, gathering up the nerve to trace the edge of the creature’s contorting back. He may not have inked it himself, but the artwork carries all his hallmarks—bold lines, expressive subjects, elusive emotion.
I gaze into those glaring red eyes and see a creature staring back, one accustomed to viewing the rest of the world as prey. A monster poised to spit fire at a moment’s notice.
“You were angry when you designed it.” He pulls away, leaving my fingers hanging in the air. Slowly, I lower them to my side. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” A muscle in his jaw twitches, and he stops short. I’ve irritated him. “You always apologize.” He makes it sound so strange, so aggravating. “Even for asking a fucking question.”
“I’m sorr—”
“It symbolizes power,” he says over me, but his voice is softer. Absently, he trails a hand along his shoulder, following the path my fingers had traveled seconds earlier. “Strength. A reminder, so I never forget what it fucking takes…”
“Takes to what?” I ask when he falls silent for good.
“To survive.” He sounds hesitant, and I can assume why, using my own slip of the tongue around him as a precedent. He isn’t used to speaking unbidden, not about this.
“It’s beautiful,” I repeat, unashamed by the awe tainting my voice. I inch closer, letting my hand fall between his shoulder blades. “Your drawings are beautiful.”
“You sound surprised, bunny.” He turns and deliberately lifts my hand, placing my fingers against the planes of his jaw instead. “Why?” he demands, letting me feel his mouth shape the word, how much tension such a simple motion carries. “Because I’m some illiterate punk? Too dumb for your lofty, artsy ways?”
“Because you’re talented,” I say simply. “But…”
His eyes narrow to slits. “But?”
“But it’s like you don’t want anyone to notice. Not really.” A blind man could see his bravado for what it is. Defensiveness. I’m so confident of that, I’m willing to go a step further. “You’d rather someone see you as a punk than an artist.”