“For us, he said. To show our undying love. And, that night, I’d never seen him so amped. Pupils like black holes. I don’t think he’d slept all week. I heard this buzzing in the bathroom, like a deranged doorbell or something. I slammed my way in, looking for my things as I packed everything up, furious, and there he was, sitting on the toilet seat, etching my initials inside a heart. In black, right on his own forearm. Like something you’d see scratched into a tree.”
She paused, recalled Joey’s words as he’d shown her the bloody, red mess he’d made of himself. “Proof of my undying love,” he’d said. That was when she’d started shaking.
“It flipped a switch in me. One second I’m packing to leave him, and the next, I’m freaking out. Really freaked. But also still pissed and ready to… I don’t know…”
What would she have done that night if he hadn’t caught her and… Who could say? She might have cooled off and left. It wasn’t worth thinking about what could have been.
“I was beyond reasonable. Screaming, scared. Just out of control. Before, I’d wanted to cut up his clothes, his precious Armani suits, you know, to hurt him. But by then I realized how far gone he was and… He disappeared into the spare room. I tried to turn, but he came back and he had a…” She choked on the words, the image—no, on thefeelingsit all brought up. Fear, absolute terror. And surprise. That prickling skin that signaled her fight-or-flight instinct kicking in.
The rush of adrenaline had made her feel strong that night.
What a joke.
“He had a gun. I’d never seen it before. He just…walked into the bathroom and put it hard against my head. The front. Right here. Like this.” She put her finger to her head, no longer feeling Ivan’s reactions against her, completely lost to the memories she’d worked to suppress these past few months: the cold sink against her cheek, the tiles under her shins as she sank to her knees.
“‘I’ll shoot your fucking brains out, you stupid bitch.’ That’s what he said to me.” She gulped past the lump in her throat. “I believed him.”
Ivan’s thick arm tightened, and she had to shrug it off. Too much, too tight, too warm. She sat up a bit, to breathe, and turned her face away, relieved that they were doing this outside where there was air. Cool and cleansing and a little painful in her throat.
“There’s this moment…” Uma paused, not sure she could tell the rest of this. But she swallowed and made herself keep going. “When you have to decide whether you want to live or die. And I wanted tolive, damn it. I’m not the type of person who just gives up…but after a while, I changed my mind. It wasn’t the pain, so much. I’d stopped feeling how bad it hurt. It was the other stuff. There was this regret, like,oh fuck, what have I done? It was so permanent…that feeling that there’s no going back now or…orever. But the worst thing? Worse than anything else in my entire life? I was so fuckinghelpless. Trapped there, like a…a…bug pinned down. A butterfly in one of those frames. I couldn’t move. He held me, and I was forced to…to take whatever he gave me. He wanted to mark me for life, to make me his, and fighting him just made it worse. I had totake it.”
The buzzing of the machine, that dark, chemical smell, and Joey, yelling obscenities when he couldn’t figure out how to change out a bent needle. Other things too, like the way he’d watched her face instead of his hand, not caring what he wrote on her skin, just eating up her hurt, getting off on it.
Ivan’s voice rumbled out from the darkness, sharper than ever. “I’ll kill him, Uma.”
She shook her head.
“Where is he?”
“No, Ivan. You can’t.”
“I can.”
“I know youcan. But I don’twantyou to. Please.” His breathing churned beside her, and Uma wondered what this kind of story did to this kind of man.
“Tell me who he is.”
“No way.”
22
He’d fucking rip the guy to pieces. She might not think she wanted him to, but it didn’t matter. Men like this Joey guy didn’t deserve the air they breathed. He’d hunt him down and tear him apart like the—
“I’ve lost you, haven’t I?”
“No.”
“Liar. You’re thinking about all the ways you’re going to hurt him.” Uma sat up farther and leaned over him, her head blocking out the stars, which he couldn’t even see anymore anyway—not through the cloud of rage.
She put her small hand in his hair and pulled, bringing everything sharply back into focus. “You, Ivan, will not do anything to Joey. Iwill notforgive you if you do.”
The burn at the roots of his hair felt good. It shocked him back to earth and forced him to listen. Forced the rage to bank again.
“Kiss me, then.”
“Not until you promise.”
“Just fuckin’ kiss me.”
