“You don’t get to claim me,” she said softly. “You don’t get to say who I am. You don’t get to decide if I live or die.”
Her next breath shivered out of her, but her voice didn’t break:
“You’re not a god.”
She tilted her chin up.
“And you’re notmymonster.”
Her words punched deep. My jaw clenched. I grabbed her, tossed her over my shoulder, and smacked her ass hard.
“You will see a monster,” I said. “You will wish you never opened that pretty mouth of yours.”
I carried her from the rocks through the shallow water to the shore.
XX. DOLL
Atsomepointlastnight, I passed out, and I still don’t know if it was from the bruises covering me or from the way he held me so tight that the pain finally became unbearable. But I am awake now, my arms pulled above my head, chained again, back in the basement and surrounded by all the dolls he killed before me.
I hate myself for hurting him. I knew better than anyone that words do damage, and I said them anyway. A part of me believes I deserve this, that everything happening to me is something I brought on myself. That I have no right to decide who was right or who was wrong. All I know is that talking to Rio made me late coming back to him. It was never because I chose someone over him. I simply forgot the time. And time with me was the only thing he had. I ruined that. I see it now.
Some choices we make are not choices at all. They are mistakes we do not notice until it is too late.
I made a mistake.
And I guess this is now his mistake, too.
I said once that the heart wants what it wants, and mine wanted him. No matter how bad it got, no matter how hard it became to breathe around him, I still wanted him. People say we choose broken people because we want to fix them, because we can’t fix ourselves. But I never tried to fix him. I wanted to heal him. Somewhere in all of it, he healed me, too, even if he broke me afterwards.
He came back. His hair is combed back now, although streaks of black paint still stain his face from the dye. He wore black leather gloves, but his chest was still bare, and below that, he had nothing on but tight black leather pants.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said as he pulled the thread tight between his fingers and bit the end clean with his teeth.
“Poor little Doll,” he chuckled. “All chained up like a puppet.”
“Please,” I whispered. I locked my eyes with his. “Don’t do this.”
“Why?” He tilted his head as he stepped closer.
“Because it will make me hate you.” A tear slipped down my cheek.
He pressed two fingers to his temples, tilting his head to the side.
“But little Dolly, don’t you want to love me?”
The mockery in his voice cut deeper than the chains. Then he pulled a thin needle from beneath his tongue and held it up, feeding the thread through the eye slowly.
I nodded, whimpering, already knowing what he planned. I had seen it on the dolls lying below me.
“Don’t do this,” I whispered again, barely breathing.
“I am sorry,” I cried. “I am sorry I didn’t come back in time, please,” I begged, trembling so hard the chains rattled. “I am sorry.”
“Sorry,sorry,sorry,“ he laughed. “I want you to shut the fuck up.” He stepped closer and grabbed my face, the leather of his glove pressing into my cheeks until my lips pushed forward in a forced pout.
“Just like that,” he said with a smile, bringing the needle toward my mouth.
I whimpered, shaking, the chains clattering in the air. The needle pierced the skin of my upper lip, then sank into thelower, stitching them together as I let out a muffled scream. He pulled the thread up again, then down again, twelve slow passes through my flesh until my lips were sealed shut, leaving me silent and shaking in front of him.
