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“What time is it?”
“Were you asleep?” I ask.
“Mm-hmm,” she mumbles.
“I’m sorry, Little One, I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep, I’ll speak to you in the morning.”
She makes a soft, sleepy purr of agreement, but she doesn’t end the call, and I find myself slipping into one of the Adirondack chairs outside the building and listening to the sound of her breathing.
Just when I think she’s asleep, she speaks.
“Oz.”
“Yeah.”
“I really don’t want to want you,” she whispers.
“I’m not sorry that you do.”
“I thought about running,” she confesses, her voice so quiet I can barely hear her.
“You did?” I can’t help the lethal steel that fills my voice.
“I planned to ask Betty to take me down into town.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No,” she whispers. “I didn’t.”
“Good.”
“That’s it?”
“What did you think I’d say?”
“I thought you’d be angry.”
“If I’d had to hunt you down, I’d have been furious, but you didn’t run.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t,” she confesses on a whimper.
“You didn’t leave, because you know you’re mine, don’t you, Little One?”
“You’re my monster.” The words sound like they’re wrenched from the depths of her soul.
“Completely, undeniably yours, your monster, your man—just yours,” I agree.
“Good night, Oz.”
“Good night, Etta,” I purr, smiling as I end the call and head back inside.
9
ETTA
I’m not sure where Oz put my suitcase after he unpacked my clothes yesterday, but when I stepped out of his house last night, I had as many of my clothes as I could fit stuffed into my purse. When I called Betty after Oz left yesterday, I fully intended on asking her if there was any way she could take me into town. I’d planned to check into the hotel I’d booked for myself and run away from the man who’s starred in every single one of my nightmares for decades.
But when she answered her cell and I heard her voice, the words just wouldn’t come out. The moment she found out I was in Rockhead Point, she immediately asked me to join her and her family for dinner. When I told her I was staying with Oz and who he was to me, she told me she’d be right over, and ten minutes later, she was outside the house in a golf cart, her pregnant belly almost touching the steering wheel.
