“I thought youlikedme.”
“Go to your room, Nadine.” He reclined again, draping his arm over the back of the settee and stretching his long legs out to the cushions she’d vacated. “And if you have any sense, lock your doors.”
“Fuck you!” she cried. “You monster! You sickfuck!”
Sobbing, she fumbled with the door, before letting it slam closed behind her despite his warning. She took the steps blindly, two at a time, each step reminding her of her weakness and how foolish she’d been to get involved with a man like that.
A man who could lie through his teeth with a smile.
When she stumbled over thatfuckingfloor again, she let herself drop to her knees. “What thefuckdo I keep tripping on?” she asked aloud, her voice raw with emotion.
It was hard to see in the dark but she could feel. And when her fingers caught on the raised edges of a board that had come partially free of its nails, her bruised heart leaped.
She pried up the board and grabbed for her phone, where it was still resting on the nightstand. She activated the flashlight and shone it down into the shadowy recess she had uncovered.
There, in those cobwebbed depths, she could see the missing book that had been taken from its glass case. The book with its cover of Paris green and glittering gilt edges that Noelle had likely given herself a rash from while trying to hide it.Probably by keeping it under her pillow.
It was the green book with the damaged spine, shimmering in a blur of her own tears.
She had found it.
C H A P T E R
F O U R T E E N
? the green book ?
Nadine wanted to read the green book right away but she was drained and exhausted, aching in places she hadn’t known it was possible to be sore in. Her heart felt as if it had crumbled to dust, too desiccated to form the tears she desperately yearned to cry. She didn’t have the energy to process what she had found.
And truthfully, she had been building the book up all this time as the answer to all her problems. She needed to hold onto that dim hope for just a little while longer, just in case it disappointed her, the way everything else did. She couldn’t take any more heartbreak tonight.
Still sniffling, she crawled into her bed, pulling the sheets over her head so she could curl up into a small ball against the cold. But worse than the cold was the sickness glowing in her heart like a burning ember; if she yielded to it, it would unleash all manner of poisons into her blood, letting her feel the full potency of Cal’s betrayal and her own painful naivete, tears or no.
(Soon, you’ll fly just for me)
When she woke up again, the sky was slate-gray and there was a wreathing of mist around the trees. She felt sticky and disgusting, so she grabbed some clothes and ran a bath, which was when she discovered the power was still out: the water was ice-cold.
Nadine shivered as she washed. The soapy, freezing water raised goosebumps, tightening the flesh around her breasts and making her aware of the places where Cal had left her tender.
(The person who leaves the mark owns the kill, Nadine)
Why had he done it? Had it all been a sick game for him?
She was having trouble reconciling the man who had taken her out and held her when she cried with the man who hadmadeher cry. The man who had—
(I want to make you soar, Nadine)
—hurther.
When she had touched those marks on the back of his neck, she had felt her heart stop.This is Cal, had been her first panicked thought.He’s the good one.
But he wasn’t, was he? He’d told her that he was dangerous. That she should stay away from him. When he’d crawled over her on the sofa, he had repeated the same words to her that he had said to her in the mine. She just hadn’t realized until it was too late.
He even promised you candlelight and sweet words.
She couldn’t get the way he looked at her afterwards out of her head. No remorse. Just a kind of jaded apathy. Like now that he’d gotten what he wanted, nothing else mattered.
You still have your phone. You can order yourself some pills, if Mr. Pro-Life won’t take you.
