Uncovering You 6: Deliverance by Scarlett Edwards Read Free Book Online Page A

again. I’ve completely conceded power by remaining on the floor. And I can’t do anything to help that now.
    “I can’t,” I say. My voice trembles.
    “You can’t.” He laughs. “Well, I can. Every single one from kindergarten to the eighth grade. There was St. Martin’s. Ridgeway. Ostelli. Marekson and Argyle. Handsworth, East Bay Park, and Eileen’s Mountainside.”
    All those names . . . every one of them . . . send a rush of long-forgotten memories swirl to the surface. He’s right. He’s got them. Every single one.
    “I know that you skipped senior year prom because your neighbor’s cat got sick. I know exactly where you were when you received your Yale admission letter. Only I knew the truth of your birth father, until I shared that with you weeks ago.”
    “Why… why are you telling me this?”
    “Because, Lilly, you would think that such thoroughness would imply an obsession. You would think that knowing all that, that following you for as long as I have, would naturally lend itself to falling in love.”
    “I’d never think that,” I say.
    “And, once again, you prove how young you are. There are different types of love, Lilly. The love a mother feels for her newborn child is very different from the love a sister feels for her twin. It’s very different from the love a stalker gives his target. Those are all different types, Lilly, and not one of them is less valid than the other.”
    “So that’s what you’re saying, then?” The heat in his voice has started to invigorate me. The clashing overtones give me enough strength to stand. “That you love me because you’ve stalked me for so long? And you want me to reciprocate? ”
    “No,” he says. “That’s not it at all. What I’m saying is that all the pieces were there for this,” he gestures between us, “—for you, for us, to become my obsession. But I kept emotions out of it the entire time. I knew all those things about you, Lilly, and I did not feel the tiniest speck of attachment.
    “That’s why it was so easy for me to do the things that I have done to you. That was why it was easy for me to starve you. To keep you in the dark. To teach you that the only person you are allowed to give yourself sexually to is me.”
    “But slowly, insidiously, things changed. You clawed your way into my heart. I admired your strength, your courage. As I watched you through the cameras, I found myself more and more drawn to you.”
    “That is why I so regret what I did. But that is also why I had to try.”
    “What you did?”
    “Shock you, before the time was up. Electrocute you. Break the rules I set. Because I was afraid of the pull you were exerting on me. I was afraid of becoming victim to an . . . obsession.”
    His lips curl in a crude snarl. “I could not respect myself if I fell victim to that. And so, I had to sever the connection. I tried to break the hold you were exerting on me. I tried to reestablish the boundaries that I had set and maintained for many years.
    “But I was helpless against them. I was helpless against you . Why do you think I forewent the TGB progression, as I set it out, by bringing you to Portland, by bringing you here? It was a way for me to try to make amends. I broke my own rules, once, so why should I leave you as the only one still bound by them? That would not be fair.”
    Distaste fills my mouth. “So then, that’s what all this is?” I sweep my arms around to take in the room. “This is just you evening the score? This is just you trying to relieve your guilty conscience?”
    “Yes. That’s what it was.” Jeremy steps towards me. Finally, mercifully, I don’t back away. I face him head on, channeling all the strength I know I possess. “All the way up to the yacht. Hell, even the wine on the beach, at the start, was me trying to make amends. To quiet the cognitive dissonance in my mind.”
    He pauses, choosing his words carefully. “But all of that changed the day you almost died. The