Chapter 50

“Cora, it’s time.”

A surge of panic rushes through me at Slater’s words. Of course, he would accost me in the bath - some things never change. It doesn’t matter that for the last few weeks since he was released from the hospital he’s tried time and time again to talk about…the trigger for that night, I’ve managed to successfully avoid this conversation every single time.

But right now, relaxing in the bath with him, surrounded by candles and with a glass of wine in hand, there’s no avoiding it. No running to the store, or a call that I need to take from Lizzy, or an emergency with my mom that I need to take off for.

Basically, I realize as my heart sinks, there’s no getting out of it this time.

I sigh.

“Slater, don’t,” I half warn, half plead. “Why spoil a lovely evening?”

Damn it. I should have known he was buttering me up. He cooked us a lovely meal, hand fed me my favorite dessert - s’mores strawberries - and kept my wine glass topped up all evening. I should have guessed the romantic bubble bath was a ploy to get me vulnerable and trapped.

I pout. “I thought we were going to have sex.” Oops, maybe I’ve had a little too much to drink. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.

Slater chuckles and gives me a kind, patient smile. “I figured you couldn’t run like this.”

What is it with us and bathtubs? So many memories.

I shift uncomfortably and water sloshes over the rim and splashes onto the floor.

“I should clean that up,” I say, starting to push myself up, but Slater stops me, grabbing my wrist and shaking his head.

“Cora—”

“Slater. Everything’s been perfect. The last few weeks have been great. We don’t have to do this.”

“We do. If we’re going to have a real future together, we have to talk about stuff.”

“So, you really do want a future with me?” I smile, leaning forward into him, watching the way his lips move as he speaks. He’s so handsome. God, I’m obsessed with him. “I want that too.” I say, almost dreamily.

“Of course I do.” He takes my free hand in his, before plucking the wine glass out of my hand and setting it aside. I nibble my bottom lip feeling the wine and warm water surrounding me. I feel safe and comforted.

Happy.

I’ve been living in blissful denial since Slater came out of hospital, but secretly, inside, I’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop. For him to get bored or decide I’m not enough and leave.

I love him, but I’ve been waiting for us to burn out. For him to realize I’m not what he needs. The reassurance feels so good. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of hearing him tell me he wants me.

“But, that can’t happen unless we start being open and honest with each other, Cora. You do understand that, right?” The way he stares into my eyes, like he’s worried his words won’t be enough to get through to me, ultimately makes me cave.

I slowly nod, knowing that he’s right, but hating it all the same. Why can’t I carry on living in my little bubble of bliss? The past is painful. My own past is a nightmare, but I know the tragedy Slater has suffered, and digging that up feels like opening a deep wound.

“Don’t you have questions?” Slater asks, sounding a little exasperated with me. I stare at the water and don’t meet his gaze. I hold his hands tighter, wanting him to know I’m trying. I want to be here for him, but I don’t know if I’m ready to face the truth. These unresolved feelings have a way of haunting you though. Time to woman up, as much as I freaking hate it. I must take too long to think of my question, because Slater pushes again.

“Do you want to know why I did it?” His tone is firm, but not harsh. He’s not going to give up. Maybe it’s time to stop being so selfish. It’s clear Slater needs to have this conversation. Why am I so stubborn?

Do I want to know why he did what he did? No. Because ever since I found out the masked man was Slater, so many reasons why have circled around and around in my head, and I just can’t comprehend an answer where it’s anything other than because you made it too easy, Cora…

Was I an easy target? Was I just there, available? Could I have been any other girl?

The sharp pain in my chest has me second guessing my resolve to have this conversation, and I tug my hands away from his. I don’t want to hear him say those words.

“It’s getting cold in here.” I murmur with a shiver that’s not entirely forced. “I might get out.”

“Cora.” The firmness in Slater’s voice stops me in my tracks. “We’re doing this.”

There’s nothing to hide behind as he stares into my eyes intently, but that doesn’t stop me from gathering the remaining bubbles in my arms and pulling them toward my chest in some futile attempt at comfort.

“There’s a lot to unpack,” Slater says softly. “I’ve been a bit unsure where to start.”

I risk peeking at him through my lashes when he says that. Slater’s always come across as so confident, but I can hear something in his voice that makes me pause. Is he…worried?

“I love you,” I mumble, trying to reassure him that nothing he says will change that. But I think it just comes off pathetic and needy.

“I’ve always wanted you, Cora. From the first time we met.” I frown at his confession but don’t interrupt. “From the first day in the park when you didn’t shy away from me being volatile to the other children, I wanted you as a friend. When our parents started dating and eventually married and moved us all in together, I thought it was amazing that we could be friends and live together, and then you became my sister too. That’s probably when things started to get a little more confusing.”

“You never treated me like a sister.”

“You never felt like a sister. No matter how much our parents tried to insist that’s what we were, it never felt like that.”

I look up at him. “Because we were friends?”

Slater shakes his head. “Because you were my first crush. But instead of growing out of it, it developed into an obsession.”

“Okaaay.” My cheeks feel flush, and it’s nothing to do with the wine or the heat in the bathroom, which hasn’t diminished at all. I was lying before, trying to get out of what I knew would be a painfully awkward conversation.

What do you say when you find out that your stepbrother-turned-boyfriend is the masked man who has been stalking and violating you? Especially when you just don’t care all that much. But most importantly, when you’ve grown to crave it. To need it.

“You were pretty awful to me as we grew older,” I point out. His actions before all this do not speak of someone obsessed.

“First, I didn’t know how to handle my feelings for you. Everyone kept saying you were my sister, but I wasn’t feeling very brotherly toward you. Then, there was my father’s interest in you. Even right at the start I could tell it wasn’t healthy, and I thought maybe if there was distance between us, he might back off and leave you alone. Then, there was H-Heather.” He stumbles a little saying her name, and it’s the push I need to fully engage in the conversation.

I sit up, lean forward, and place my hand over his heart. There’s pain in his gaze, which I hate, but there’s gratitude too. No more hiding, Cora. If you want this to work you need to stop running. Lady the fuck up. Be the woman he deserves. The woman that put an end to his abuser…

“She ruined me and fucked my head up the summer she got her claws into me, and I was never the same again.”

I nod, knowing exactly which summer he’s referring to. He went away for the whole break, and I never saw him once. Then, when he returned, the change in him was remarkable. He was like a stranger once we went back to school. That’s when his friends started being mean to me, and he never did a thing to stop them.

“She trained me like a dog, using a whistle, to obey her every command. She took what I wasn’t willing to give, and she made me crave every release. I’ll spare you the specific details, but it took me to a very dark place, and even now, with her gone, that darkness still lives inside of me. Maybe I always had the seed within me, but she planted it and watered it, and cultivated me into a monster. I couldn’t cut the darkness, that part of me, out with a knife if I tried, and if I’m honest, I wouldn’t even want to.”

I open my mouth to speak, but I don’t even know what to say, so I close it again and frown.

I knew Slater suffered at the hands of his aunt. Something in me just instinctively knew that the day I found them in the basement together wasn’t the first time. I think that’s what made me snap and stab her. Knowing that Slater had been on his own, trying to face her alone for all those years, and feeling clueless and stupid and useless for not seeing it sooner or helping him.

“I’m sorry for the night of my birthday.”

It takes a moment for his words to sink in.

“She triggered you,” I whisper.

He nods and scrubs a hand through his hair, clearly agitated. “God, Cora, I never meant…” For a second I think he’s going to say to hurt you, but then he trails off and says nothing for a beat. “I never meant for things to go that far. I was so out of control that night, and you paid the price.”

The masked man took my virginity that night. Ripped it away from me in the most brutal way possible. With a darkness and a depraved madness I’ve grown to crave. But doesn’t Slater know I would have offered it up to him freely if he’d just asked?

I’d already accepted my fate before that night. I knew what was coming, what the masked man wanted from me, and that he wouldn’t stop our games until he had it. I’d made peace with that, deep down, but I wasn’t prepared for his vanishing act that came afterward, because I’d already latched on to the attention he was giving me, and I didn’t want to give it up.

“You felt guilty,” I state flatly. “That’s why the masked man vanished after that night. It wasn’t because he finally got what he wanted and was done with me.”

It’s pathetic how relieved I am to realize it. A gasping sort of sob releases from my throat, as tears fill my eyes, and I smile up at Slater.

“I thought you were just done with me…that I wasn’t worth more than my virginity. That you just wanted to break me, and leave me there alone. To show me I meant nothing.” The confession slips free, and I swallow thickly.

Slater’s gaze darkens and when he speaks, the words are a low rumble. “I’ll never be done with you, Cora. You. Are. Mine. Now more than ever.” He pulls me into his lap, his hands cupping my cheeks as I straddle him. Our chests pressed together as we both breathe heavily. “I was always going to be yours too. You have never been, and never will be, nothing, little darkness. You are everything.”

Now is not the time to be getting turned on, but fuck, if the masked man didn’t train my body well. I can’t help the way I respond to his possessive tone, even if alarm bells in the back of my head ring over the similarities between the way he treated me, and the way Heather treated him.

It’s not the same. Slater loves me. I take his pain away, by allowing him to inflict it.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you and keep you safe. You’ve killed for me. I’ll kill for you. I would have killed my father if your mom hadn’t gotten there first. I’ll destroy anyone who even looks at you the wrong way, and I’ll enjoy doing it. Little darkness, my love for you is intense and violent, but I won’t apologize for that.”

Why do his words fill me with warmth? The urge to smile is overwhelming. I always wanted a love that drove someone to lose control for me, and in Slater as the masked man, I found that. Now he’s sitting in front of me swearing to do the same as Slater and it’s…everything. I push my fingers into his hair, holding him tightly.

“Why did you come back into my life?” I ask, needing to hear the rest of the story, even if I already know the ending.

“After my birthday, I snapped. I had to get away. Get some help. It was working, for a while at least.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you mean?”

“The first time, before the masked man, when you just suddenly came back. And started…taking care of me. The night of the football game.”

“Cora, I was always the masked man. You need to stop thinking of me and him as two different people when you know we’re one and the same,” he says firmly, and I nod. He’s right. Slater is my masked man.

“And I came back because, well, I never truly left. I realized what was happening between you and Victor, and knew I needed to do something. Immediately. But being around you again made me realize that the feelings I had for you never went away. They were just being suppressed.”

“Why the mask then, if you wanted to protect me? Why start…well, assaulting me, for lack of a better word?”

He gives me a wry smile. “I liked it. At first, it was just to scare Victor away, but when you reacted so beautifully, I realized you liked it too. I thought why not continue. It was fun, and we both enjoyed it.”

“I did not like it! That is not what I would call fun, Slater.” I frown at him, even though, as the words come out, I can taste the lie.

“I thought we were being honest?” He raises a brow and smirks at me, immediately calling me on my bullshit.

“You made me like it,” I protest, swallowing nervously. The lie tastes bitter on my tongue this time around, and my pussy throbs. “You made me crave it.” He’ll have to pry the confession out of me… I’m not fessing up to shit.

“Did I? Or did I just bring your attention to what was already inside you and awaken it?” Slater leans forward until his lips ever so lightly brush against mine, “Did I corrupt you, or did I simply free you. Release you from the chains of your own guilt and shame.” His lips press featherlight kisses across my jaw.

“What do you mean?” I ask, pursing my lips and tilting my head to the side, considering his words, but also giving him better access. “And stop trying to distract me by turning me on…”

“I’ve read your diary. More than once. Even when we were younger, I knew your deepest, darkest desires…” He emphasizes the words with a bite to my earlobe.

I squirm uncomfortably at what he’s saying, but his admission does not surprise me. Slater and boundaries never really went hand in hand. But when I think of some of the things I’ve written…my body burns with shame. I wiggle, trying to escape his hold on me, but he’s so strong. He easily keeps me in his lap. I’m not pressed close enough to feel his hardness, and I’m wondering if that”s intentional. He’s trying to comfort me…relax me, as we discuss these uncomfortable things.

“Cora, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Everyone has fantasies.” His hands caress my wet skin, from my hips to my ribs, firm and possessive. “Your fantasies are normal. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

I shake my head, swallowing around the lump in my throat. They’re not just any old fantasies though, are they?

I dream of depravity. Always have. There’s something wrong with me.

Ever since I was younger - too young - I’ve had dark desires. With no outlet for them, I did the only thing I could think of and wrote them in my journal.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Cora. You’re just like me. Your darkness and mine fit together like two pieces of a puzzle that were made for one another. We’re one and the same, not me and the mask.”

I want to believe Slater’s pretty words, but I can’t. Good girls don’t want…they don’t dream of…

“You knew,” I whisper, tears welling in my eyes.

“Knew that you had a —”

“Please don’t say it,” I beg, my shame spilling down my cheeks in hot, salty rivulets.

“Cora, lots of people…engage in consensual non-consent. It’s normal.”

“What we did wasn’t consensual,” I point out. Though I guess I should have said what he did wasn’t consensual.

Was it?

I’m so confused.

“I knew you wanted it. Craved it. Needed it. You just required a little encouragement to explore that side of yourself, Cora. How did you feel when you watched that video of me while you were sleeping?”

“Turned on,” I whisper, closing my eyes, so my sin is easier to confess.

“Exactly. I don’t regret it, and if you’re honest with yourself, neither do you.”

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Slater saw me. Saw my darkness and decided to hone and shape it into something he could use to his advantage.

Yet, I don’t regret it. He knows me too well.

“Where does that leave us now?” I ask, huffing as I open my eyes and am forced to accept that my stepbrother is right. He’s always so damn right. And this conversation has me all kinds of messed up, but the overriding feeling I have right now is one of need.

As he smiles at me, he grips my hips firmly, tugging me down into his hard length. It slides across my pussy, rubbing my clit and making me gasp.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but this water’s getting cold, and I’m ready to remind you just how much you crave what only I can give you, my little darkness.”