Page 44 of Into Pitch

This is my favorite part of the day. When the world stops asking me to pretend.

And Sadie just made it better by granting me the greatest kindness.

She removed the last remaining obligation to play by the rules I never respected in the first place. She’s angry about that, of course she is. She should be. But anger is the first honest emotion most people allow themselves when they realize they’ve been made a fool of. It gives the illusion of control, but underneath it, I can taste something else.

A tremor.

Fear? Maybe.

Not of what happened in the mirror room. She’s already metabolized that in her own way and turned it into a story she can hold without breaking.

If she is fearful, then it is about the fact that the man who listened to her describe her mother’s failures is the same one who pressed her against a mirror and asked her what she wanted to feel.

The fear is about proximity.

I enjoy that too. Maybe a little more than I should.

Sadie—despite what she wants to believe—thrives in structure. She strived on the repeated language and the contrived words that I sank into her mind to hook. She finally saw the shape of me in both places and allowed herself to accept what her instincts have been screaming at her since the moment she stepped inside of this office.

She didn’t want to believe it, and it was the only reason her clever, beautiful mind hadn’t put the pieces together until now. Until she met with the weak little man I had let survive last year when Pitch was being hosted in an old conservatory.

I knew he would come in handy, I just hadn’t known how handy.

All she needed was one other person to draw the conclusion for her to see plainly. To open up the possibility that all the answers she was searching for were right in front of her the entire time.

I love that for her.

If she was going to be mine, if she was going to be more than a body in a mirrored room, then she needed to be capable of seeing the truth and still stepping closer. The other man she met at the bar proved something else too. Not just that Pitch isn’t fair, or that Plague can be cruel in ways most people can’t fathom.

He proved to her how distinct she is from everyone else.

My little fox.

Yes, that is exactly what she is.

I could pretend otherwise, but there’s no point in it now. I move the cursor to the reply box, but I don’t type anything.

Not because I don’t have a response—there are a hundred things I could send. I could taunt or soothe, I could even deny it just to watch her squirm and pick herself apart. But I don’t want to give her the comfort of distance, and the portal message is too clean.

Far too safe.

I want her reaction in real time when I tell her she is right. I want to see her eyes when she realizes I’m not going to apologize or panic or retreat behind professionalism and pretend lines matter.

So I don’t bother with a reply.

I close the window with a calm click and reach for my car keys. I could worry about the ethics board or the codes of conduct, or even the phrase do no harm and how easily it’s weaponized as a disguise. But there was never going to be an ethical version of this.

The moment she walked into Pitch and met my mask without flinching, this became inevitable.

My little fox doesn’t need fixing or ‘maintenance’ as she told me her friend had called it, she needs direction and someone willing to take her seriously when she says she doesn’t want to rot. That is what she told me in the mirrored room. She had stood so boldly and said that she wanted to feel, and that is something I can give her in spades.

More than anyone else ever has.

I stand from my chair and shrug on my coat, not bothering to hurry as I lock my office and turn off the lights. The walk down the hallway on the way out smells faintly of cleaning solution and quiet money. The lobby is empty and my footsteps echo across the tile before I push into the night and lock the building.

Cold air cleans my lungs and in the distance is the faint wail of a siren that fades away. My car waits in its usual spot, the sleek black paint freshly washed as I sink into the driver’s seat and steady my hands on the wheel.

I don’t feel conflicted or guilty, as I suspect any normal person should. But I’m also aware that I am not normal. More than anything, I am relieved that all the pretending is finally over. That I can rip off the second mask I have worn for her benefit and be exactly who I have been all along and who I have leashed.