Page 144 of Yours to Keep
The house appears at the end of the drive: glass, stone, timber. I used to think it was beautiful. I was wrong. It was a house, never a home.
* * *
The SUV stops, and Adrian turns to me.
“Welcome home, sweetheart.” He hears my breathing quicken. “You remember.”
He leans over and grips my chin again. “Good.”
A coldness breaks out over my skin, crawling down my spine. He wants me to remember every bruise, every lie, every moment he broke me.
He opens the door and steps out. Cold air rushes into the cabin, and the smell hits me first: salt from the ocean, pine from the trees that border us.
Adrian reaches in and pulls me from the vehicle. My legs fail me, and I hit the gravel hard. Pain shoots through my knees asthe stones cut into my skin, but he hauls me back up before I can stay down. I can feel blood seeping into my jeans.
Behind me, Finn is dragged from the SUV and carried toward the house.
“Be careful with him,” I say before I can stop myself.
One of the men laughs. Adrian looks amused as we start walking.
He opens the front door, and suddenly I’m back there. It’s real again. The smells and sounds of the place I escaped flood back into me, wrapping around my skin like something alive. This is the place that destroyed me.
A numbness settles over me then. Not peace. Not acceptance. Something quieter. A surrender of the fight. I’ve seen it before in patients who know there is nothing left to resist, a stillness that comes before the end.
Deep down, I know this is it. There is no hiding anymore.
Adrian could have taken me anywhere. We could have disappeared. But no. He brought me here. His house, his territory, his stage.
I understand then that this is the final act of Doctor Adrian Blackwell, because he knows I will never bow to him again.
“You know why I brought you back, sweetheart.” His smile is slow.
My blood runs cold.
“Because you’re going to kill me.”
The words hang between us. For once, Adrian doesn’t smile wider.
“Not yet, sweetheart.” He nudges me further inside. “Come inside.”
I walk beside him quietly, watching as the man carrying Finn drops him onto the couch. My gaze drifts through the room, then out through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the cliffs beyond and the dark water waiting below.
This is the place where it all started. This is the place where it will end. Not because he brought me home, but because he brought me back to finish what he started.
* * *
“Walk with me.”
Adrian’s voice is too quiet. Calm, almost careful, like something is already breaking beneath it.
I look at him, and for the first time since he took me, I see it all clearly. I see how his eyes are empty. I know then, he isn’t fully here anymore.
His hand hangs close to his side, too still, too deliberate. I follow the angle of his arm, then his gaze. I’ve seen enough. I know what he is holding. I know why he kept me away from everyone else.
The weight of the gun settles into the air between us, heavier than the silence.
My feet move before I decide to move, habit more than choice.He moves, I move.But another part of me already knows. This is it.
