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I want to stay embedded inside her Never leave this small apartment, this bed

But I’m lost

I withdraw frorab a clean washcloth out of my small cabinet, run it under the ater of the sink, and then squeeze out the excess I bring it to Katelyn, who has rolled over onto her back A lovely pink flush covers her body, and her nipples, though no longer rigidly hard, stand out against her areolas She looks like an artist’s watercolor So beautiful

I gently clean her

“That feels nice”

I regard her This is the first time I’ve truly looked at her naked I stand before her the saht, she opens her eyes

I follow her gaze as it meanders up and down my body She seems to pay close attention toother than the tattoo

“You were shot,” she says

“Yes”

“Who shot you?”

I don’t like to think about it I deserved to be shot I was trying to take a woainst her will Not unlike Katelyn had been taken

I didn’t commit the horrors that the men who visited Katelyn on the island did, but I coirlfriend I kept her captive, told her she couldn’t leave, locked her in When I had way too much to drink, I even sometimes struck her

All of these reasons…

All of these reasons are why I do not deserve Katelyn now

The only way I o back and face what I’ve done and make amends as best I can

And if I go back…

I may lose my life

But I have to do it Katelyn could make me happy, but she has to knoho I am Perhaps I could have dealt with this—perhaps I could have truly become Luke Johnson—if I never met Katelyn

But I did

And she, along with the trip to visit Anthony DeCarlo, ht

I was not born to be every man and no man I was born to be me

Lucifer Charles Ashton III

Named for the devil I became

Street name—Lucifer Raven Sometimes called simply The Raven

Son of multimillionaire producer Lucifer Charles Ashton Junior and his wife, al Ashton

The woave up on myself