Page 32 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)
Birdie
“You can’t fall apart, little bird. Not yet.”
I know that voice. I know who it belongs to, but I just can’t get the name in my brain. I struggle to open my eyes, to make out his face, but they are too heavy to open, stinging. From the bathwater or have I shed those tears at last?
It doesn’t matter. He’s here. I can hear his voice. Low. Familiar. Dangerous in its softness. I should scream for help. But I’m limp and soaked and too tired to shout. “I hate that name…little bird. Why are you calling me little bird?”
“I think you know why.”
“Get away from me,” I whisper, or maybe I don’t. Maybe I just think it.
He crouches in front of me. My vision blurs to take in the shape of him: black clothes. Leather gloves. A face obscured by a hood and mask.
Butterfly Man.
“You’re real,” I murmur. “You’re not—”
“A hallucination? Maybe. You hurt your head the other day, and now, you’re sleeping in the tub, head underwater, perhaps for too long…”
“What?” Disoriented, I try to take in my surroundings, but I can’t move. This is another nightmare, where I’ve been paralyzed.
His gloved fingers push damp strands of hair from my face. I flinch, but I don’t move away. If anything, I press my cheek to the leather and purr like a horny cat. This is definitely a nightmare.
“Why are you here?” Not that you can be here. There’s no way you’ll get past Brandon. Unless you killed him. Dare I ask?
No. You wouldn’t. You don’t lose control—you ration it. Every touch, every word, every gesture, every silence, precisely calibrated. You don’t act on impulse. You drip-feed your madness like venom, just enough to paralyze without killing.
You enjoy the unraveling, don’t you? Watching me flinch while you stay so precise, so calm—like a god dissecting his favorite creation. You administer chaos like it’s medicine—your twisted cure for a sickness you believe I have but can’t see.
“Why are you here now?” I repeat.
“To remind you that you’re not safe.”
“Because of you.”
“No, darling. Not from me. From yourself.” His head tilts slightly. “You think you’re trapped in this hotel. But you’ve always been trapped, Reagan. Since long before Blake. Since long before me.”
I swallow, water in my throat, in my lungs. “You don’t know me,” I cough, a small muffled noise, like my voice doesn’t belong to me anymore.
“I do,” he says gently. “I know the sound you make when you’re about to cry but don’t. I know the way your breath catches when you lie. And I know what they did to you.”
“Don’t.”
“No matter how hard you try not to remember it, it still lives in you. It will always live in you.”
“I said don’t.”
“You think I’m the monster? I’m not the one who locked you in closets and basements or slammed your head against the edge of a porcelain sink. I didn’t punish you for crying. I didn’t strip you of your own voice. I didn’t rip—”
“You’re punishing me now,” I snap, though it comes out too soft, a breath laced with ache. “Stalking me. Playing your little game. Controlling me, just like…”
“Like who? Your mother? Your husbands? Your bodyguards?” He leans in. “It’s time you woke up, Reagan.”
“I don’t want to be awake.” The confession comes out raw. Ugly. Too honest.
He smiles under the mask. I know it, even if I can’t see it.
“I know,” he says. “That’s why you married him.”
“Blake?”
“He’s the reason you’re in this hotel. Blake and Tristan, they’re playing each other to own you. You’re the prize, little bird. Not the player.”
There are noises disrupting the water. A knock on the door? A door breaking?
It’s finally catching up to me. The water I’m under, filling my lungs. I can’t breathe.
No. Mom. Please! Another voice joins.
Is it a memory or the here and now? The voice is so distant underwater. Is it mine? Have I made that plea before?
“But I’m different,” Butterfly Man says, as if we’re alone, as if I’m the only one hearing that, now screaming, voice, and his gloved hand brushes my neck. Just once. Just enough to make every nerve in my body seize. “I’m not playing,” he whispers. “I’m saving you.”
You think you’re saving me. That dragging me into the dark is some kind of mercy. And maybe the worst part is…sometimes, I almost believe you. Because you don’t just haunt me—you know me. The parts of me I bury in fiction and pretend aren’t mine. You see them. And instead of running, you…stay.
That’s what makes you dangerous. Not the way you stalk me. But the way you make me wonder if I want to be found.
“You’re not my savior,” I slur.
“And yet here I am, dragging you out of the water when the people guarding you didn’t even notice you went under.”
My heart slams so hard against my ribs, and yet the beat is so faint. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m just the part of your mind that doesn’t want to die. The part that refuses to be caged.”
“Or maybe you’re just what I deserve.”
He leans in until his masked lips are inches from my ear. “No, little bird. I’m what you created.”