My mouth opens, my shriek ready, but nothing expels from my throat over the hand that grips it.
My voice.
My breath.
Major smiles, his face partially obscured from the steam that blooms around us. Water pounds over his head as he shoves me backward. He closes his hand tighter around my neck, cinching every fragment of breathable space from my oesophagus.
“I thought it would be hard, entering Drake’s space to take you. But maybe I don’t need to take you after all. Because he’s got you, so you’re…not fucking mine anymore, are you, Cha Cha?”
I scrabble at his hands, trying to remember what Drake told me to do, but I’m not sure we ever covered being choked in a shower cubicle. Sure, he showed me how to throw a punch and how to knee someone in the balls—to his detriment several times—but never to free myself from someone nearly twice my height, with an arm’s reach that means that even if I do kick him, I’m unlikely to strike anything useful.
I try anyway, and Major laughs. “Cute, sweetie. Almost as cute as the tantrums you used to throw. Remember those? All the times you ruined dressing rooms and I’d clean them up for you. All the times you used to sit and cry and I’d wait til you were done then pick you up and take you home. Fuck you when we got there. Leave you covered in filth because no one else was there to see.” His voice bounces off the walls, echoing back at us. The fragments of our pasts haunt me.
“Drake,” I cry, only it comes out as a splintered whisper at best. At worst, he’ll never hear me. Us. Not over the running water.
Drake, where are you?
Probably cooking in the kitchen. I thought he was watching for me, but the man seemed intent on feeding me up. And here…he thinks he’s untouchable. I thought so too. With Drake…
I’m safe.
Tears fill my eyes and tumble over, the salty drops washed into my mouth, diluted by the constant stream of water cascading over both of us.
Major’s fingers flex on my throat. “Little slut, shacking up with every security guard you hire. What’s that been now, Cha Cha. Four, five? How many will there be after Drake?”
“No one,” I managed to croak.
Major glares at me. “Damn right there won’t be anyone. No me, not another single man will touch this body. Fuck, for the year I put into guarding you, all you ever did was fucking mopearound, sing and throw fucking tantrums and cry. You do that for Drake, too? He put up with you?”
Clarity slams me at the same time that major cuts my air off entirely. Two answers I can’t give him that my ex bodyguard doesn't want, but I do.
First, that I haven’t had a tantrum in the entire time that I’ve been with Drake. With him, I don't need to. Nothing about him leaves me bereft of emotion, unloved.
Second, I have my answer. Drake doesn’t put up with me. We work quietly side by side, sharing space together. He’s let me into his home, his life. He’s shown me a part of him and shared stories that I doubt he’s told anyone else for a long time, if ever. I treasure those moments, and now I know.
In the minute before I die.
“I love him.”
My confession makes no sound. I have no idea if Major understands me or not. I don’t care. The heat in the bathroom intensifies. I swing weakly at him, clawing his un-covered arm. Major snarls, arching over me. One twist of the hand clenched around my throat, and he'll snap my neck.
I force my eyes open, intent on focusing on the man before me until the moment I can’t any more. The man I once thought I might love who turned out to be little more than a pretty facade, filled with trophy photos and brag comments shared to his friends across the industry.
“You are nothing next to Drake,” I wheezed, smiling into Major’s shocked face. Red suffuses his features, rage and hatred written in the lines of his face.
Once I thought you were beautiful.
Once I wished you were mine.
The hand on my neck draws me forward, then shifts me back. My head thunks the shower wall twice before he’s done.
Who’s having the tantrum now, Major?
My eyes close after that, and I let my body slide down the wall. He seems to be happy. My head splits with the sort of pain that heralds a migraine, and gravity is ten times heavier than it should be. My body shakes, and the water is cold.
“Drake finally ran out of hot water, huh?”
But I don’t know if the words come out of my mouth, if I imagine them, or if the water is hot or cold anymore.
