Let them come. Let them all fucking come. Aleksei, the cops, whoever.
None of them will come between us ever again.
35
ELIANA
fond /fänd/: noun
1: the caramelized bits stuck to the pan—the foundation of flavor.
2: what remains after everything burns; the irreducible thing between you that won't scrape off.
I’m shivering in the passenger seat. Bastian’s blood-soaked jacket is wrapped around my shoulders. Beneath it, the tattered paper gown clings to my damp, sweaty skin. Every time I try to breathe, I feel like my nostrils are being assaulted. The metallic spice of blood mixes with Bastian’s wintergreen scent, horror melting into comfort with no clear line between the two.
My hands won’t stop quivering. I press them against my thighs, then dig my fingernails into the meat of my legs, then sit on them, but the tremors keep coming no matter what I do.
Bastian’s breathing is harsh beside me, tightly controlled in that way that means he’s not controlling anything at all. The airbetween us is a living thing. Swollen. Festering. Pregnant with everything we’re not saying.
I open my mouth three separate times, but each time, I close it right back up. I have no clue about where to start with this.
Should I say I’m sorry? Should he? Should I be grateful that he showed up, or angry that he broke his word?
The last time I saw Bastian kill someone, I ran. This time, I couldn’t. I was pinned to the floor, half-naked, watching through sightless eyes as the sounds told me everything I needed to know.
The wet thud of fist meeting flesh.
The crack of bone giving way.
The choking noises that got quieter and quieter until they stopped altogether.
I didn’t see it, but Iheardit. Every single second of it.
And the worst part—the part that makes me want to crawl out of my own skin—is that as all that happened, I felt onlyrelief. A man was dying at Bastian’s hands once again, but at least it meant that man would never touch me.
Does that make me a bad person? What kind of mother-to-be listens to a man being beaten to death and thinks,Thank God, thank God, thank God?
The car feels like it’s shrinking. The walls are closing in, the air thickening, the smell of blood and wintergreen and terror is choking, choking, choking me.
“Stop the car,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
“Bastian,” I try again, “stop the fucking car. Now.”
The brakes engage so sharply that I collapse forward. I barely manage to catch myself against the dashboard with one hand while the other clamps protectively over my belly.
Tires squeal against asphalt. The car comes to a halt.
I don’t wait for him to say anything. My fingers scramble blindly for the door handle—where thefuckis it—and finally connect with cool metal. I yank, shove, and go tumbling out onto concrete that scrapes my bare knees.
Fresh air greets me. It’s hot and sticky, but I gulp it down in desperate, heaving breaths, like drinking from a garden hose. As I do, I crawl forward on the sidewalk until my palm finds the rough edge of a chainlink fence. I drag myself to a seat with my back against the steel post.
Bastian’s door opens. His footsteps crunch across gravel until he’s standing over me, his shadow blotting out the sun.
“You killed him, right?” I ask.
He doesn’t bother sugar-coating it. “Yes. I did.” He kneels in front of me and adds, “And I’d do it again, if I had to.”
