Page 23 of Little Author

I watched the porch light flicker before I stepped through the gate.

She was here. I didn’t need proof. I could feel it in the bones of the place, in the warmth bleeding through the windows, in the way her shadow moved on the other side of the curtains like she still thought she had time.

I didn’t knock.

The door wasn’t locked. How sweet. How civilized.

I slipped in quietly, making sure I was no threat until I needed to be. The house smelled like soap, dog hair, and masculinity. It smelled of a weaker man, maybe a kind one. Someone who thought gentleness could save a woman like Elodie.

Fucking idiot. Elodie didn’t want to be saved. She wanted to be corrupted.

She belonged to something sharp. She needed the rot and ruin and the kind of love that branded her.

Not this.

Mine.

I saw them in the living room before they saw me, her curled on the couch, wrapped in a blanket like some wounded animal. The fucking cop was sitting too close, hands on his knees, brow furrowed, voice low and careful like he was deprogramming a cult survivor.

She was crying.

That did something to me, not the crying, but the fact that she wasn’t crying for me. I moved faster than either of them expected.

The cop stood and turned. “Hey, what the?—”

I hit him first, my shoulder right into his ribs.

A quick and easy take-down. He crashed against the coffee table, with a grunt, while reaching for something under the coat that was wrapped around his arm.

I kicked the jacket away, hard enough to crack his wrist with my boot. He yelled and tried to scramble back.

“Elodie, run,” he shouted.

She didn’t.

Good girl.

She just stood there, staring at me with wide, glassy eyes, the blanket half-fallen off her shoulders. There was blood still on her nightgown: their blood, her blood, my blood…our blood.

“Elodie,” I said, low and quiet. “You brought someone else into our story.”

“I had to,” she whispered. “You weren’t stopping. You left me no choice, Roux.”

“I’m waiting,” I said. “To see how you wanted your story to end.”

The cop reached again, and this time I saw metal flash. I went for him, but she was the one who moved faster than I thought she would.

Her hands shook as she grabbed the gun from the floor. The cops’ shiny toy. Her breath caught in her throat as she lifted it. Her arms trembled. It looked too big in her small hands. For a second…

She pointed it at me.

“Elodie,” the cop gasped, holding his ribs. “Don’t let him get near you. He’ll kill us both.”

“Elodie,” I said, stepping closer, slow and careful, my hands held up in surrender for her, only her. “Look at me. Not him. Me. Where does your story end? Where does ours?”

Her eyes slowly locked with mine.

God, she looked breathtaking, torn and wrecked, but divine.

The gun moved, now pointed at him.

Then me.

Then back.

“Who will my Little Author choose?” I said softly. “You already know how this story ends. Who will you pick?”

Her mouth opened, her lip quivered. Soft whimpers escaped her like a song meant for me.

“C’mon, Elodie. Do you choose to be the hero? Or will you keep fucking your villain?”

“Elodie,” the cop begged, realizing for the first time Elodie was not the broken woman he thought. She wasn’t a sad, scared doe running from a predator. “You’re not like him. You’re not. You are confused and scared. I get it. I do. Just put the gun down. It’s okay.”

But she was exactly like me. Her mind was an intricate web, tangled in the binds of society’s hold. She was caged from her own beautiful potential, stuck in the trappings of the mold of what she was told to believe.

I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to see her die. I tried to free her, too. Let her out of the cage of her mind.

Free her from the narrative of the world.

I saw it in the way her finger hovered over the trigger. The way she shook, as if her body was pulled in two directions.

She didn’t know who she was.

But I did.

She was mine.

Mine to mold. Mine to own. Mine to watch blossom into the true creator she always has been.

I stepped forward again, slowly and carefully.

Her arms didn’t drop.

They still shook, the gun pointed between me and the cop.

She had to choose.

She knew this was the end of her novel.

She knew this was always the final part of the story she created.

The path she knew she couldn’t outrun.

“You have always seen me, Elodie,” My voice warm, soft like a melody.

“I can see you too. The real you. Not the person you pretend to be, so you’re loved.

I see your darkness, even when people like him try to blind it with their light.

I see you, Little Author . The only question is, can you see yourself? ”

“Elodie! Don’t listen to him. He’s manipulating you. I want to save you. Just give me the gun, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

“You don’t save girls like her,” I said.

“You bury them, fuck them, or turn them into case files. I see her. I made her stories real so she could feel them herself. You? You just want to erase her and create your own ending. Be the hero and take down anyone who tries to take away that trophy for being a good, obedient dog to the masses.”

I watched her eyes. Saw the switch in the way the brown smoldered like warm chocolate.

I watched her trigger finger twitch.

And in that one, breathless second.

She chose her ending.