Twisted Devotion

Thirty Three

The chill in the air was sharper today, crisp and biting against Ava's skin. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to shake off the shiver as she stood outside the cabin, waiting. Dominic was a step behind, watching her with his usual intensity. But for the first time, he'd allowed her this—an escape, if only to the trees that seemed to stretch on forever, silent witnesses to Ava's captivity.

"Ready?" he asked, his voice low, like a rumble against the quiet backdrop of the forest.

Ava nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. "Yes."

With that, they began walking, his heavy footsteps crunching through fallen leaves behind her. She tried to find patterns in his movements since she'd been here, tiny cracks in the rigid armor he wore like a second skin. It was easier to think that he was just a monster, that nothing human lay beneath those dark eyes. But today, something felt different.

They walked in silence at first, as they always did, the tension between them as thick as the trees. Ava kept her gaze forward, refusing to look at him, even when she could feel his eyes on her. But then, as if testing some invisible boundary, he spoke.

"I used to come out here when I was a kid," he said, his voice barely a murmur. "These woods... they were the only place I felt I could breathe."

Ava stopped, surprised, glancing back at him. His eyes were on the trees, not on her, and for a fleeting moment, he looked vulnerable, almost lost.

"Why?" Ava asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of her voice.

He shrugged, his gaze still fixed on the forest. "Sometimes you need an escape."

It was such a simple answer, but the way he said it, the weight behind his words—it told her everything and nothing all at once. This man, who had taken so much from her, had once been a boy who needed to run, to hide. She wanted to ask more, to dig deeper, but she knew better than to push.

So they continued, their footsteps merging into a shared rhythm as they wound their way through the trees. Every day, he'd give her a little more—a line, a look, a brief glimpse into his past. Each piece was like a thread, delicate and fragile, but it was enough to start stitching together a new picture of him. One that blurred the lines of the monster she'd imagined and the human he was slowly revealing himself to be.

Today, he told her about his brother. It was a slip, a single sentence about "the two of us running through here, thinking we were kings of the forest." The ache in his voice was undeniable, and it stirred something inside Ava she didn't want to feel—sympathy, connection.

But Dominic didn't give her time to dwell. He broke off, the walls he'd lowered snapping back up, his expression hardening once more. He turned away, his pace quickening, as if fleeing from the vulnerability he'd just shown.

Yet she couldn't shake the image of that boy in the forest, chasing some fleeting freedom. She couldn't unhear the catch in his voice when he'd spoken about his brother.

Every step she took felt heavier, weighed down by the strange, unsettling understanding growing between them. Each piece he gave Ava was dangerous, drawing her in, making her wonder if, somewhere deep down, she was beginning to understand him—and if that understanding would be the very thing that kept her bound to him.