“I wish I had killed you that night,” I finally say, feeling a weight lift off my chest as my words are free in the world, becoming part of the ugliness in the universe, proving he was right about me all along.
Some twisted part of me is like him.
“There she is,” he says, his index finger pressing into my pulse point, quivering, testing. “There’s the kindred spirit I saw in that fucking mirror.”
A tear burns as it falls from my eye. “You’ve made me this. For two years, I’ve been under your thumb. I didn’t know who you were. I still don’t, yet I had to mind what I did.”
“You still got them killed.”
“I didn’t know you were killing them until recently.”
He knits his brows in disbelief. He, of all people, knows how introverted I am.
I go to work and home, unless Allison talks me into going on a date that she already set up before telling me about it.
“Last night,” he starts, and it makes me feral.
I’m sick of talking about how he fucking tricked me for his own sick game.
“I don’t care about last night. It won’t happen again.” My voice is cold, colder than he expected, because he finally straightens out of my space.
“Oh, it won’t?”
“No. It won’t.” I try to keep the idea of him drugging me and taking what he wants out of my head, because he could do it easier now; I don’t want to give him any ideas.
I also can’t starve myself to keep myself safe; I’ll die sooner than I can escape or be found.
I flinch as he crouches before me in a flash, not knowing if he’s going to hit me. Instead, he hefts me over his shoulder, lifting me easily as he turns back for the driveway I just crossed.
Fighting him is futile, but I still try my damnedest. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I beat his back and flail my legs wildly.
If he falls, we both go down. I don’t honestly care, though.
“Put me down!”
He growls, flipping me from his shoulder to the ground. “Knock it off!”
Dropping to his knees over me as I’m catching my breath, he grips my jaw in his hand. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“What am I supposed to do? Lie down and let you have your way with me? I already did that.”
Rage flickers in his dark eyes, enlivening them for a split second. Standing, he storms up the driveway, leaving me lying in the clay, heaving through sobs of tears that wrack my body.
Part of me wonders if he’s going to get whatever he uses to kill to come back and chop me to bits. I decide that I don’t care.
I close my eyes and lie there in the middle of the driveway, crying, resigned to my fate, until I hear the calling card of night around me.
Cicadas call, and the wind gets colder as I open my eyes and watch the stars above. Without the city to pollute the sky, it’s so beautiful.
I could get up and go back to the cabin. I should get up, find Bear, and ensure he’s alright. But I don’t want to move.
And even if I don’t want to admit it to him, it has everything to do with last night.
With how my body felt like it knew him, carnally. Like our souls knew one another.
It felt as though it was beyond some drugged half-ass connection, too.
Shaking my head at myself, I get off the ground and dust myself off as I hear an engine roaring.
