The pounding in my ears increases.It takes a second for me to realise it’s my heart hammering away.The knots in my guts make my belly clench so hard, it’s a miracle I don’t heave.
“Okay, I’m sorry.Please.Don’t do this.I’ll do whatever you want…give you what you want.”
“It’s too late for that, you fucking shit.Do you know how long I waited for him?Do you?”
I don’t, but I daren’t shake my head.“I’m sorry.Don’t.”
“Fourteen years.Fourteen bloody years of being shuttled about, treated like lost property, but then he came, and he chose me.I was everything he wanted.He said that, and I know it was true.And he and Lydia took me home.He gave me his name, when she never even got that.”
I always assumed Lydia kept her maiden name for practical reasons.
“He loved me.Loved me more than he ever loved her.”
“I’m sure he still does love you.”
So, she’s adopted.Things start making marginally more sense.It’s likely that she’s suffered through a ton of shit.Then again, plenty of kids wind up in foster care and plenty of others pray for that possibility, most of them don’t go fruit loop and pull knives on people.
“I’m sure he still cares about you deeply, and once things settle down between your folks he’ll let you know that.”
“No,” she screams, blasting minty fresh breath into my face and already watering eyes.“He doesn’t want me now.I was saving myself for him.I knew Lydia couldn’t give him what he needed, but I could, and I was going to, but then you wrecked it with your perfect body, and your smiley, bright white teeth, and your hair, and your eyes, and suits, and all your rainbow-coloured shit.You and Bask, you did things to him.Brainwashed him.He’s not right now.He doesn’t see me.He doesn’t want what I’ve got, even though I know I could make him so happy.He’s stopped giving me the signs.”
She’s nuts.She’s absolutely goddamn cracked.
“I didn’t make him queer, Mallory.”I didn’t make Whit anything.He knew exactly what he wanted, what he liked, and he went all out to get it.”
“You turned him,” she screams into my face.
I cling onto my breath, desperate to hold it inside and not let it out and risk provoking her further, but we’re already past that.
“I’m going to cut you.I’m going to make sure you can’t do it to anyone else.They won’t want you if you’re not pretty.”
I focus hard on the sensation of the mattress beneath me, of the overt freshness of her breath, anything but the slicing agony that’s causing both ear and toothache.
Another cut sears pain through my jaw.
“When I’m done you won’t be able to fuck anyone ever again, and even if you could, no one will want to look at you.”
It’s my chest she scores a line across this time, but I don’t think about that, or where her attention is heading.
Instead, I lick at my dry lips and repeat myself.“I didn’t make him gay.”
There’s blood beading in the wounds she’s opened.
“Duh!”she taps her head with the heel of her hand, which at least gets the knife away from my body for a second.“Do you think I’m an idiot?I know exactly what you did, I heard him describing it all to Lydia, every sordid little detail.It was disgusting.You’re sick.I can’t believe all the twisted things you made him want to do.”
For some reason, her words make me think of Adam and his insistence that I had a screwed up mind.I still can’t slot all the pieces of this particular puzzle together, but a definite pattern is starting to emerge.One in which Adam is as much the victim as I am, but right now my priority isn’t so much making sense of this nonsense as getting out of here, before she moves from taunting me with that piece of razor sharp steel and actually starts filleting me.
So far all she’s inflicted are scratches.They sting, but none of them are deep.
“Did you read my letters, Dylan?You know what’s coming, right?I’m going to take it from you.Then you won’t be able to fuck anyone anymore.”
She raises her head, and I make a split second decision.My forehead smashes into her nose, and there’s a sickening crunch, followed by a gush of steaming liquid and a too loud howl of rage.I jerk sideways, tipping her over onto her back, then struggle onto my knees, hands still tied to the headboard.She’s used cable ties, and the damn things won’t come off.
“Not so fast.”She’s up like a jackrabbit, and on my back, her blood spilling into the neckline of my open shirt.This time the knife is at my throat.
There’s a creak to the side of us, then Mallory’s whole body tenses.
“Let him go.”
