Page 167 of Only for Him

“He’s in danger, Ida,” I sputter. “It’s my fault. He doesn’t want me anymore, and he’s going to die, and it’s all my fucking fault.”

What if he’s already bleeding out somewhere, Pavel standing over him, laughing?

“No,” she coos into my hair. We must be making quite the scene, but I don’t care. These onlookers don’t know the half of it. “No, Giselle. It’ll be okay. It’ll all be okay.”

She’s wrong but, God, it feels good to believe her. For a moment, I let myself.

Roman won’t die at Pavel’s hand. He’ll stay locked away, alive, in that cold, beautiful mansion.

I’ll go back to being a detective, and it’ll always hurt a little bit when I hear piano music and remember what it felt like to be touched and seen fully, even if only once in a lifetime, and I’ll never again feel like someone’s salvation, but I’ll live with it.

Just like I’ve lived with Serena’s murder.

But you haven’t lived with that at all, Giselle. What you were doing before Roman? That wasn’t living. And you won’t live after this, either. There is no life without him.

“Was it love, Giselle?” Ida asks, and I’m so surprised that I answer before thinking about it.

That’s not true —I’ve thought about it a lot. Too fucking much.

People don’t generally shoot people they love.

They also don’t waste away into nothing when they shoot people they hate.

Whatever I feel for Roman, it’s all-encompassing. A religion. Obsessive and toxic and delicious enough for me to eat myself alive when I’m starved of it.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I don’t even know if I hate him or not. And I don’t know if I want to know. Maybe knowing would only make it hurt more.”

For a moment, Ida just watches me, tears now streaming down her cheeks, too. And then something sparks in her eyes. She opens her mouth, and I choke out a laugh. I know what she’s about to say.

“Ireallydon’t think that going to the animal shelter and looking at puppies will help,” I say through a fresh sob, wiping at my cheeks.

“It was worth a shot,” she says, shrugging through a watery smile.

And in that moment, with her beside me, I understand something I didn’t before: whatever future’s waiting out there is paved with the consequences of choices I’ve already made.

The dark feels closer than ever. But I’ve been living in the dark my whole life—and if this is where I belong, then I better learn how to see in it.

43

GISELLE

The fluorescent bulbshiss in the ceiling like they're angry about being here, too. I got the call this morning to come in “to answer a couple of questions.” About Russo, no doubt.

I sit in the narrow chair, spine a ruler against the backrest, hands folded on the table so I look as harmless as possible. Internal Affairs loves a performance.

Detective Lawson sits across from me. He’s got the look of a guy who hates his job but loves catching someone else hating theirs.

Well, he’s in luck. I fucking hate everything right now.

“You know why you’re here, Detective Cantiano?”

I do, but I shake my head anyway. “No, sir.”

Lawson fans open a file. In the photo, Russo’s eyes are half-open, even in death refusing to miss a trick. It’s not the same look I saw on him when he died. Rigor mortis has removed that shade of humanity.

I recognize the warehouse in the background: Long Island. Waterfront. Last month’s auction site.

The same auction that Russo was at.