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“Free?” she echoes dully. She’s not even looking at me, her eyes on the monitors, wide and unblinking. “Prison? He’s inprison?”
“He’s in prison, Willow, and I can promise you he’ll be dead before he ever gets out. I’ve destroyed everything this man might ever hold on to, I’ve made his life a pit for him to die at the bottom of.”
She finally looks at me. A cold, empty gaze. It makes my blood run sharp and cold through my veins; it makes my chest ache like there’s a new hole in my heart, a hole shaped like the empty darkness of Willow’s eyes.
“Why did you do this?” she whispers.
“What do you think?” The words take the breath out of my chest. “For you, Lynch. Don’t you fucking get it? I hurt him because he hurtyou, I want him dead because ofyou. I put him in prison foryou, I’m going to make him suffer because of what he did toyou. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Revenge? Well, here it is. I told you I wanted to be generous to you.”
“Revenge is something youtake.” She shakes her head at me like I’m fucking stupid, like I’m a joke. “Not something you havehandedto you.”
“I’m not handing it to you. I’mgivingit to you. A gift.”
“I didn’taskyou to do this! I didn’taskyou for a gift.”
“People don’t give each other gifts because they are asked! For such a sharp woman, how are you not understanding this? Iwantedto give you this. Iwantedto do this for you. For fuck’s sake, Lynch, you’re not dense, you’re not blind. Can’t you see that I’m trying to please you?”
A horrifying smile stretches her mouth, cruel and insincere. “If you want to please me, Luca, stick to using your dick and your mouth. I don’t need you for anything else.”
Now it’s my turn to go cold all over. I stare down at her like my pride isn’t in tatters, like the hole in my heart isn’t gaping wide and aching.
“You don’t need me at all. Don’t you think I know that? You could get dick wherever you wanted, you could have a whole army of men bent over backwards for you, Lynch. That’s the kind of woman you are. That’s the kind of power you have. I’m not fucking stupid. You told me to earn you, didn’t you? How does one do that?”
I step into her, trapping her body between the filing cabinets and me, forcing her to look into my eyes, forcing her to face this moment rather than cut and run, the way she always fucking does.
“How does oneearnWillow Lynch? Not with money or jewels or orgasms, not with fucking poems and roses and love confessions. So I gave you the thing you wanted the most, something only I could give you. I gave you Richard Thornton’s destruction.”
“You didn’t give me his destruction.” She puts her hand against my chest and shoves hard, pushing me away. “Youstoleit from me.”
Her anger is contagious, the venom of it seeping through, searing into my skin, turning the network of veins inside me green and acidic. I deny her the space she’s put between us, taking her by the neck to pull her back to me.
“You didn’t have anything for me to steal. Ungrateful little shit. He’s in prison. His family is done. His name is done. His freedom is gone. His days are counted, and each one of them will be fucking torture. It’s what youwanted.”
She fists her hand in my collar, pulling tight. The pallor of her face has faded, replaced by a high flush.
“You selfish, narcissistic, power-hungry asshole.Iwanted to be the one to put him in prison!Iwanted to be the one to takehis family away from him! I wanted to take his freedom away. I wanted to be the one to make his remaining days fucking torture! All this fear and pain and resentmenthemade me feel—Iwanted to be the one to make him feel it!”
“So what?” I sneer. “You wanted to be the executioner? Get your pretty hands dirty with his blood? Fly the fucking plane of your existence straight into his, assure his destruction through your own? Let him take you down with you just to feed your addiction to vengeance?”
It’s devastating, but Willow Lynch is beautiful even in her fury. She’s poison and rage and the crackling electricity of thunder, and watching her is filling my heart with the poison and rage and electricity of her. My chest aches violently, like each separate rib might crack and snap, like my heart might explode out of my chest.
“You stupid fuck!” She laughs in my face, harsh and mirthless. “Yes!Yes, I wanted to be the executioner;yes, I wanted my hands dirty with his blood. A kamikaze dies taking down their enemy, but they’redrivingthe plane! They’re in control until the final moment. I wanted to be in control—not him, not you.Me.”
She punctuates each sentence by slamming her fists into me, but I grab her wrists and slam her back against the filing cabinets, pinning her arms above her head.
“Youarein control, Lynch.Ofme.Throughme.How do you not see this? Don’t I fucking drop to my knees for you? Don’t I debase myself for you, crawl around in the mud for you? Have I not killed for you? You didn’t have to get your hands dirty becauseIgot mine dirty soyouwouldn’t have to. I put an arrow through two men’s hearts because they dared lay their hands onyou. Destroyed McConnolly soyouwould be free. Executed Thornton becauseyouwilled it. I didn’t drive the plane or take it from you, Iamthe fucking plane! I’m the fucking knife in your boot, and if you needed me to be, I’d be the bullet in yourgun, the strychnine in your needle. Your weapon, under your control, becauseyoufucking—” I stop to hiss air into my empty lungs. “Because there’s nothing butyouinside my fucking head, because there’s nothing I can even imagine wanting aside fromyou, your attention, your satisfaction, your pleasure.”
It’s every word I can think of saying without saying the one word that hangs over us. That stupid, trivial, over-used, insignificant word that stands like an inferno around us, burning on the edges of our conversation while we both insist on ignoring it.
There’s nothing but silence then. A silence filled with the roaring of that unsaid word, a silence full of Willow’s panting breath and the thundering of my pulse. Her lips move but she says nothing, and my eyes stay on her mouth, that stupid goddamn mouth. The things I would do for that mouth, that face, that body and the indomitable soul inside it. The things I would do for this reckless, ruthless chaos creature, this hellish angel, this divine fucking demon.
“Idareyou to say it,” she whispers.
The hole in my heart widens, my chest aching around it. I can hardly breathe. This is the most alien I’ve ever felt, so far beyond the limits of my own control, spinning into the black void that is Willow.
“You don’t need me to say it,” I bite out.
“I want you to.” Her mouth is twisted in a smirk of exquisite cruelty. “Iwillit.”
