Page 105 of Endgame

“Okay, cool.” My smile is hesitant. The caveat, I feel it coming. “I’ll volunteer there as…?”

His thumb strokes my jaw. A menacing touch. “A baby cuddler. Only with babies who were sent there for a few hours from orphan homes in the area.”

Two sentences. A bunch of words.

And my world comes crashing down on me.

Everett watches intently as my face crumples. My lips quiver. Hot tears prickle the corners of my eyes.

My empty stomach revolts, but I have nothing to throw up.

“No.” I grab the front of his T-shirt, twisting the fabric in my hands. “No. Please. You must know I was left at my parents’ doorstep. Alone. I needed someone”—a real someone, not my awful adoptive parents—“to hug me and love me. If you send me there, all I’ll think about is how helpless I was. How no one was there for me. How no one will ever be there for me. Please, Everett.”

The look of confusion on his face gives me hope. Then his jaw tics. His shoulders tense.

The wall is up. “My decision is final.”

“I’m begging you.” Tears roll down my cheeks, landing on his hand. “You don’t have to be this cruel. Use me. Fuck me. Do anything. Not this. I haven’t even stepped foot in that hospital, and it hurts everywhere.”

“Don’t care.”

“You…”

Yesterday’s breakfast flashes before my eyes. He got off on me being on all fours.

On me crawling.

With my last ounce of strength, I rip his hand off me, move to the side. Drop to my hands and knees.

Beneath his cruel gaze, I inch as close as possible to him.

My fingertips are at his feet. My sanity is too.

“Get.” He grabs me by the hair, pulling me off the floor. I’m backed up against the shelves. “Up.”

My hair is released. My chin is in his grip.

“Why? It would crush me, Everett.” I’m blabbering. I’m sobbing. “It would really, really hurt me. Can’t you see that? You can’t be that cruel. You aren’t that cruel.”

“I am who I am.”

The slice of humanity I saw in him? It isn’t there.

I’ve been fooling myself again.

“I won’t change.” His free hand wraps around my wrists. “I won’t fucking change, do you hear me?”

“I’m not asking you to change.” In a last-ditch effort to save my sanity, I pull our hands up to his face. His scruff is scratchy beneath my fingertips. “I’m begging you to be compassionate. Please.”

Briefly, he turns his lips to my hands. Presses them to my knuckles.

I hold my breath.

“My compassion, or any other soft emotion I had, was stolen from me.” He backs up, leaving me shocked, grasping the books behind me to hold myself up. “I have none left. You will go tomorrow. You will cuddle those babies. This isn’t a request. It’s an order.”

“But—” I start.

He’s already at the door, slamming it behind him.