Chapter 8

Victor’s POV

She left with my son, and I stood at the window watching them drive away. I should have felt guilty because he is my son, the only good thing I ever made in this life, the boy I held when he cried and the man I watched grow into someone decent and kind and nothing like me. I should have felt guilty, but instead I felt nothing but hunger.

I watched the taillights disappear around the curve at the end of the long driveway. The red glow faded and then there was nothing but darkness and the reflection of my own face in the glass. I did not recognize the man staring back at me.

I turned away from the window and walked back to the sitting room. The wine glasses still sat on the table where we left them. Hers was half full because she barely drank, the smart girl knowing she needed to keep her head clear around me. I picked up her glass and held it, thinking about the rim where her lips touched and the warmth that had long since faded, though I imagined I could still feel her there. I brought the glass to my mouth and drank what was left. It tasted like nothing and everything all at once.

I poured myself something stronger from the decanter by the fireplace and lowered myself onto the couch in the same spot where she had sat. The leather still held a faint warmth from her body, so I spread my hand over it and closed my eyes. She smelled like flowers, so clean, young and untouched that I wanted to ruin her for everyone else. I wanted to cover that clean smell with my own and mark her so deep that she would never wash me off.

The first moment I saw her, I knew. She stood at my door with my son beside her, and she looked up at me with those hazel eyes, and something in my chest cracked open. Not broke but cracked, like ice on a frozen lake when the thaw comes. I took her hand and felt her pulse jump under my thumb, fast and scared and excited all at once, though she did not know which one it was either. But I knew everything in that single touch.

I have had women, plenty of them. After my wife died, I filled the emptiness with bodies, soft curves and warm mouths and names I forgot by morning. They wanted my money, name and attention. I gave them what they wanted and took what I needed and walked away feeling nothing.

But Iris looked at me and she saw me, not the empire or the money or the power but me, the man underneath all of it. She looked at me like I was a character in one of her books, like she wanted to write me. No one has looked at me that way in twenty years.

I finished my drink and poured another. The house was too quiet. It was always too quiet, but tonight the silence felt like a living thing pressing against my ears. I pulled out my phone. Her number was saved under a name even she would not recognize. I typed a message asking if she got home safe, and my thumb hovered over send, but I knew it was too soon and too desperate. She would see it and build higher walls, making me lose the ground I had gained tonight. So I deleted it.

I thought about my son Marcus. He called me tonight with that easy warmth in his voice, trusting me with his woman and never imagining what his father was thinking while he sat across from her.

He is a good kid, soft in ways I never was. His mother raised him right before the cancer took her. She would hate what I am doing and hate what I am becoming. But it does not matter because ‘want’ has never cared about ‘deserve’.

I wanted his mother back when we were teenagers. We were both young and sure that love was enough. I wanted her, wooed her and I got her to marry me. I was so sure I have found my forever until she died in my arms, and that nearly destroyed me.

My desire for Iris transcends all reasonable thoughts. I know fully well what it cost me but the knowledge does nothing to dampen my desire.

I went to bed at midnight and lay in the dark staring at the ceiling. Her face was there every time I closed my eyes, her smile and the way she bit her lip when I asked about her writing and the way her breath caught when I moved closer.

I dreamed of her coming to me willingly with no Marcus and no engagement, just both of us in this bed, her body soft and warm beneath mine.

She said my name the way I had been hearing it in my head for days, not Victor like everyone else says it but Victor like she meant it, like it was just for her.

I woke up with a wood hard enough to cut diamonds. The clock said 4:47, and gray light was starting to creep through the curtains. I lay there with my heart pounding and my hand wrapped around myself, and I hated how desperate I felt and how much I needed her. I have not needed anyone in twenty years.

I got up and showered cold until my body stopped screaming. I stared at myself in the mirror while water dripped down my face, and I did not recognize the man staring back. He looked hungry and feral, like something that had been caged too long and finally found the door open.

I have not felt this alive since my wife died, and that is the truth. For twenty years I have been walking through life numb and empty. I was totally fine with not feeling and not wanting. Now I just had to take candy from my son’s mouth.

After I dressed, I made coffee and watched the sun come up over the gardens she admired at dinner.

I picked it up my phone and typed her number, those ten digits I had memorized after one text. I wrote that I hoped she slept well, simple and casual and not desperate, and I sent it before I could stop myself.

Then I sat there with my coffee growing cold and stared at the screen waiting for three little dots to appear. They did not. She was probably still asleep or awake and ignoring me, but either way she had seen it and either way she was thinking about me now. That is what matters, the only thing that matters. She is in my head now, and soon I will be in hers.

I finished my coffee and went to the window. The driveway was empty and the world was quiet. I thought about what it would cost, my son and his trust and his love and the family name and everything I built. Then I thought about her face when she looked at me across the couch, the way her lips parted just slightly and the way her pulse jumped in her throat.

I do not care what it costs or who gets hurt or if Marcus never speaks to me again or if the world calls me a monster. I have been a monster for twenty years, and at least now I have a reason.

The woman who looked at me like she saw me. I will make her see me every day for the rest of her life, whatever it takes and whatever it costs.

She is mine now. She just does not know it yet.

But she will. I will make sure of it.