Chapter 24

Noah

My eye is glued to the screen of the TV in our bedroom, which hangs above our fireplace. It is still on, playing one of my many bird documentaries. The melodic songs of birds are one of the few things that keep me calm and prevent my brain from spiraling into a state of panic. They are on all the time, buzzing in the background, sometimes interrupted by the occasional movie or TV show to provide a constant noise throughout the house.

I take my attention off the screen and tilt my head to my left, where Evelyn is lying on her side, facing me, asleep, hugging her fluffy pink blanket that peeps out from under the covers close to her chest.

My heart skips a painful beat at the sight of her beautiful face, so pure, so soft, not a single imperfection in sight. Her features are relaxed, her mouth slightly open, and a quiet whistle escapes her lips with each breath. I lift my hand and brush one of the loose brown strands of her curtain bangs out of her face before running my thumb across her rosy cheek, her skin soft against my rough fingertips. A small smile curls on her lips, and she squirms in her sleep but doesn't wake up.

She is so beautiful and I—I have turned into a monster. In the calm after the raging storm of my attempt to kill Kyle, his words echo through my mind: If you're not strong enough, your Little Dove will leave your sorry, disfigured ass.

Pulling my hand back, I take a deep, shaky breath and roll over to the edge of the bed. I push away the blanket and get up, making my way to our bathroom. I stop in front of the large mirror, planting my hands on the counter to balance my weight as I stare at my own reflection looking back at me. My stomach twists into a tight knot at the sight of my face and the band-aids covering my eye and ear. Without hesitation, I reach up and pick at the sticky edges and peel off the protective cover, revealing my sutured eye socket and missing ear.

My remaining eye stings at the sight, and I swallow the lump crawling up my throat, suppressing the raging emotions that well up inside me. I shouldn't be here. I should be dead. I should be in hell, where all the souls I killed are waiting for me, waiting for their revenge.

My mind has been clouded by the same depressing thoughts that have been haunting me since the first time I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I'd like to believe that I never cared about my looks that much. Sure, I made sure I shaved, went to the barber on a regular basis, and wore good clothes to look well put together. Yes, I hid my scars, but not because I'm ashamed of them, more because society isn't used to seeing all those marks on a single human and I prefer to blend in. But this new addition is too much even for me. I won't be able to fit in; instead, I will stand out.

My heartbeat quickens and I clutch the edge of the counter as the room spins in circles all around me. Breathing becomes increasingly difficult as I gasp for air and spiral into a state of hyperventilation. Nausea creeps from my stomach up my throat, the taste of bile fills my mouth, and I hunch over as the contents of my stomach force their way out and splash into the sink.

My head jerks up as a pair of slim arms wrap around my stomach from behind, hands coming to rest flat on my chest. "Everything's okay." Evelyn's voice fills the room, speaking over my heavy gasps.

"Nothing is okay," I snap, but she tightens her arms around me. "Leave me the fuck alone." I raise my voice, my arms trembling as I hunch down again and another spurt of bile hits the sink.

"No," she protests. "I'm not going anywhere, I'm right here and we'll get through this together." I remain silent, gripping the marble counter, my knuckles turning white.

"Why couldn't you just let me die?" I choke out, my voice raw, slamming my fists onto the marble as a violent impulse runs through my mind. I push myself off the counter, forcing myself back into her embrace, causing Evelyn to stagger back with me, almost tripping backwards as her arms remain wrapped around me.

"Because I love you." Her arms tighten around me, her face pressing between my shoulder blades as she clings to my shirt.

"Bullshit, stop fucking pitying me, you don't love me."

"I do," she insists, her voice quavering.

"Stop lying and leave me already." I raise my voice. "You pity me. That's what this is. Pity." The words taste bitter on my tongue, but I can't stop myself. "I don't need this. Especially not your pathetic blowjobs, pretending you're not disgusted by me. I can see it. You're repulsed."

"Noah, please stop, that's not true, focus on me, not your thoughts, breathe with me, please. I'm not disgusted by you. I love you more than anything," she begs, her arms tightening around me, her nails digging into my chest.

Closing my eye, I suppress the resentment toward her and follow her desperate plea, focusing on the sensation of her chest rising against my back, slowly copying her breathing pattern until we are in perfect sync. When my limbs stop shaking and my breathing slows, Evelyn pulls her arms away from me and steps up beside me.

"Better?" she asks and I nod in response. "Good." Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her reaching for my toothbrush and toothpaste, wetting the bristles and letting the water run, washing away my vomit before squirting a good amount of the paste on my toothbrush. "You'll feel even better when you freshen up." She smiles through the delicate drops of tears that frame her eyes. All I do is open my mouth for her to brush my teeth, which she does without hesitation. When done, I bend forward and rinse while she cleans the toothbrush before putting it back in its cup.

"Come, let me get you back into bed," she says, wrapping her hands around my biceps and leading me back into our room, where I sit down on the edge of the bed. She steps between my legs, cupping my cheeks in her hands and tilts my head back to look at me. "You need to keep your stitches covered." She leaves me and fetches the first aid kit from the bathroom. During the entire process of cleaning and covering my eye socket and ear again, I remain silent and let Evelyn take care of me without further complaint.

"I'm sorry," I mumble, looking down at my feet once she is done and busy putting everything back into the kit.

Her face comes into view as she crouches between my legs, placing her hands on my thighs. "You don't have to apologize for how you feel."

"I know, but…"

"What is it?" she asks with a small smile on her lips.

"I don't feel like myself."

"Then how do you feel?"

"Not like adult me…more like the child me."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Yes. Because that means I'm vulnerable, I can't protect myself, and most importantly, I can't protect you."

"You don't have to protect me, you, us all alone. I can do it just fine. You can let go."

"I can't."

"Why?" She scoots closer and kneels in front of me, wrapping her arms around my stomach.

"Because I can't let him down."

"Who? "

"Me."

"Do you mean your inner child by any chance?" she asks and my head jerks up, my eye wide. "I can protect you and him, I promise."

"Evelyn…"

"Can you tell me about him?" she asks.

"I don't know. I've never told anyone about this part of my life." I close my eye, drape my arms over her shoulders, and bury my face in her hair, inhaling the soothing scent of her shampoo.

"Why don't I show you?"

"What do you mean by that?" I pull back and look down at her.

"I'll tell you about my childhood, how I got into killing, how I left, simply show you that it's not so scary to be honest and vulnerable with the person you supposedly love." She looks up at me with a reassuring smile on her lips.

"We can try that," I say with a sigh.

"Good," she says and dives right in. "You know my birth parents abuse substances, right?"

"Yes, they have binders full of police reports." I nod and she chuckles in response. The information about her parents were some of the first details I found when I looked her up for the job a year ago .

"Well, as you can imagine, they always put their addiction before me. The older I got, the worse it got… They neglected me for most of my life, but eventually it turned into abuse if I wasn't useful to them and provided money for their drugs. As soon as I turned eighteen, I moved out, wanted to break the cycle of bad decisions and started working in this bar, which obviously led to the polar opposite." She pushes herself to her feet and sits down next to me on the bed. "I was young and naive, fresh meat. It was easy for my first client to seduce me with the promise of a shitload of money that I desperately needed."

"How did you feel the first time you killed someone?" The question rolls off my tongue without a second thought. It's more than just curiosity—I want to hear that at least some part of us is the same, that maybe we're not so different after all.

"I was terrified, but it was also exciting; the power was intoxicating. After so many years of feeling helpless, I was in control, so much so that it became a form of drug for me." She reaches for my hands. "One day the organization I was a part of approached me because I was doing these kinds of jobs in their territory. They offered me to join them, I agreed, and they trained me. From then on, everything was perfect. I made a lot more money and felt powerful. I was more skilled, and I didn't have to prostitute myself and sleep with my targets to get them to let their guard down." Her palms turn sweaty as her hands begin to tremble in mine at the revelation that she had to sleep with her targets.

"If you felt so good, why did you want to give it up?" I furrow my eyebrows.

"The thrill wore off and what I had always wanted for my life caught up with me. I was lucky that the boss had a soft spot for me and was kind enough to let me go, under certain conditions." She leans against me and rests her head on my shoulder.

"These conditions are?"

"That I get away from this lifestyle as far as possible."

"Well, you failed at that…" She chuckles at my comment and bumps into me.

"It's your fault," she says with a smile. "I hope you still think of me as your Little Dove."

"You are…" I lean my head against hers. "Despite everything, you're still a kind and caring person."

"Thanks to my friends. They couldn't save me, but they taught me what it could look like, what it could feel like. I lived two completely different lives side by side for years, experiencing the best and the worst of humanity."

"And you're teaching me now, huh?"

"I try." She tilts her head to plant a kiss to my cheek. "Do you want to give it a shot? We can take it step by step and stop anytime you feel uncomfortable."

Suddenly the room feels smaller, the air thicker. I glance down at my hands, fingers rubbing together nervously, before I look back up at her. I remain silent, trying to find the right words, the right way to start, since I've never actively talked about it. "How much do you know about my time in foster care?"

"Not much. All I know is from the official records Riley found last year, including that you were abandoned outside a hospital, the foster families you lived with, some school records, and of course the fact that you were emancipated at sixteen."

"Okay, that means the basics." I pull away from her, putting some distance between us, and take a deep breath before continuing. "I'm going to start by clearing something up. The first time I killed wasn't for money like I told you in the past. I killed my foster mother and one of my abusers."

Her eyes widen in shock. "You killed your foster mother? Why?"

"She had it coming after all she put me through," I say, my gaze drifting to her neck, her muscles pulsing as she swallows.

"Do you feel comfortable telling me what she did?"

"Let's just say she allowed grown men to do whatever they wanted to me. Any form of abuse, torture, or rape—they could act out their darkest fantasies as long as they paid." As the words roll off my lips, memories stored deep in my mind push to the surface and the taste of bile follows, itching my vocal cords, but I swallow the urge to vomit. Instead, I focus on Evelyn as she sits in front of me, her eyes bloodshot, bulging as a veil of tears settles over them and her jaw slack.

"Is that why you castrate all the men before you kill them?" she asks, and I raise my eyebrows at her question.

"Of all the reactions you could have had, your brain went there first?" I can't help but smirk.

"I…I'm sorry." She trips over her words. "My brain is short-circuiting and I don't know how to react." She blinks away the small tears that are gathering in the corners of her eyes and scoots closer to me. "And I guess that's something I've always been curious about, because as a man, don't you sympathize with pain when you see it?" She chuckles nervously.

I can't help a breathy chuckle rising from my stomach. "Don't be sorry. A response like that is better than someone just feeling sorry for me. Sympathy doesn't change anything or erase what happened." I sigh and look down as she takes my hands back in hers and moves even closer, her fingers nervously beginning to pick at my skin, pulling at one of the prominent scars on my hand.

"How did you kill her?"

"One day something inside me snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. I tampered with a gas pipe in the basement, and while they were in there, I locked the room from the outside. As soon as one of them lit a cigarette, they went up in flames." I close my eye and allow the images of the day to flash before my mind's eye. The blazing flames swallowing the small suburban home where I grew up outside New York City, the desperate cries for help, the sirens of fire trucks in the distance and the screams of neighbors outside. "I stayed in the house long enough for their cries for help to quiet down, then burned myself to make it look believable." My hand automatically moves to the burn scar on my chest, covered by my shirt. Evelyn's hand follows, landing on top of mine.

I open my eye again and find her staring at me, with tears rolling down her cheeks. "What happened to you after all this? You were emancipated; that seems strange in that situation."

"I was in the hospital for months. My foster dad and siblings vanished into thin air. Instead, Kyle and his parents took care of me during that time."

"So you really went to school with Kyle ?

"Yeah, that wasn't a lie."

"Then how did you two get into professional killing?"

"Kyle's dad worked for the Mob and he was always supposed to follow in his father's footsteps. I was just a bonus. His parents knew immediately what I had done and made it their priority to get a hold of me by any means necessary. They were afraid that if they didn't teach me I would end up as a serial killer."

"So they turned you into a hitman instead? That's just a different kind of serial killer."

"Yes, but like that, who I killed was mostly controlled. I only killed people who were not targets when they actively got in my way."

"Right," she says, scooting closer, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, climbing onto my lap, and I put my hands on her hips. "Did it feel good to kill your foster mother?"

"Yes," I admit with a smile. Evelyn just nods and inches closer until her body is pressed against mine.

"Does it feel good when you kill altogether?"

"Yes." I say, my tone flat and detached, with no emotion behind my answer. We both fall silent, her eyes meeting mine as she nods.

"Thank you for telling me all this." She breaks the silence and guides my face into the crook of her neck while the fingers of her other hand trace soothing patterns on my back. "I promise no one will ever hurt you again. I will protect you, us."

I close my eye and wrap my arms around her waist, breathing in her sweet and inviting scent, a mix of cherry, vanilla and her own unique smell. The warmth of her body seeps into mine, melting the barriers I've built around myself and calming the storm within. I can feel her steady heartbeat against my chest, matching the rhythm of her gentle breathing.

For the first time I don't feel the need to hide, to put up a front, to keep my guard up. I feel truly safe and understood and I allow myself to be vulnerable in a way I never thought possible. I tighten my arms around her, holding on to her as if letting go would mean losing this newfound sense of security.