“You’re right.” He holds his hand up, stopping me. “I am afraid.” He looks away again, then scans my body, his tongue licking across his lips. “You want the fucking truth, you can have it.” The sense of relief that flows through me is instant, making my body sag a little in triumph. He takes a step forward and solidifies his weakened frame, taking my strength with the action. “You deserve it.” Visions of happiness and longing erupt in my mind, ones filled with his beach and this strong man who I adore for my own reasons. Not that the rest of the world could even comprehend why. I’m not really sure I do most of the time. He’s mine, though. My oddity. My quirk of nature. I smile at him, wanting nothing more than to hear what it is that stops us being completely bonded. We should be companions for life, he just needs to let me walk beside him and hold his hand. Show him he’s loved. Endure him. “I’m afraid of killing you, Alana.”
My mind stops, flummoxed at the words as my momentum falters, all thought of my own sense of comfort slipping away with the dress I’ve nearly abandoned. He sighs and blows out a breath as his eyes return to mine. “Just like I did with Eloise.”
Chapter 11
Alana
M y mouth moves around feelings I can’t assimilate into functioning thought, let alone words, as I stare at him. Eloise?
Who the hell is Eloise? And why is he talking about killing her?
“What?” I blurt out, my hands clutching at what’s left covering me. It’s a dream. Or he’s making it up. It must be because this isn’t happening here. This isn’t real. It can’t be.
Not one part of him backs away from me or the statement that’s left him. He means it. I frown in reply, my mind exploding with frantic questions again. He can’t mean it, though. He can’t. It’s not possible. I shake my head at the thought, my eyes searching his for a retraction of the words. Perhaps he’s just trying to scare me away again. He must be. That must be what’s happening here. He doesn’t give one, though. No retraction. No withdrawal. Not even a look of sorrow attached to him. Nothing about him says this is a lie or fabrication to scare me. It makes me take a small step back from him and frown further, the realisation finally finding some bedding in the pit of my stomach. Oh, god. It’s the truth, isn’t it? He means it. He’s done that to someone.
It makes me gasp eventually, the held breath puffing out of me and fogging the few steps left between us, as another foot away from him happens. He’s killed someone. A woman. Eloise.
“Alana...”
He doesn’t finish whatever he was about to say as I keep moving backwards, my hand hovering in front of me as a warning. I want to run, run this hall as fast as I can, but I can’t take my eyes off him. Why can’t I do that? I need to run. He’s killed someone. And I’m here in this house with him, alone. No one knows I’m here. He could do it to me. All those hours with him. All the bonds, the handcuffs, the rope. Oh god, he could have killed me already. I could be dead now.
I snatch a glance behind me and look around the hall, trying to remember where the door to freedom is. Where the fuck is it?
“Alana…”
“No.” The word snaps out of my mouth, its deliverance fuelled by the chaotic response my mind’s trying to fight its way through. It’s a rally of words and intents I can’t process as I scan the doors, no matter how I try to order them. They’re just there, rattling around and making me scream inside, but the scream won’t come out. It won’t leave me.
Both hands come up as I swing back to face him and see him take a small step forward, one hand stretching towards me. “Don’t you fucking dare. You stay away from me.” He halts instantly, for the first time showing some emotion on his face as his hand lowers again. It’s not sorrow, though. It’s not a beg for forgiveness or a show of contrition about the act he’s admitted. Its anger, shown by his scowl descending, probably because of my language. It makes me pick up a vase, ready to defend myself should I need to, my heels beginning to trip over themselves as I go.
I turn into the next room, hoping it’s the right one, but the moment I’m in it I realise it isn’t. It’s an office. I’ve spun and looked at the doorway within seconds, only to see him there, blocking me, his body filling the frame like it always does.
“Move,” I snap, the vase still in front of me as if ready to attack.
“No,” he says calmly, now smiling as if I’m amusing. Nothing about any of this is funny. Not one fucking thing.
“Get out of my fucking way. I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” he cuts in, crossing his legs and leaning on the frame, still smiling. “Kill me?” I scan the room quickly, looking for an object to make that happen should the need arise, because this fucking vase isn’t going to cut it. “Sit down, Alana. You want it all. Here it is.”
“Fuck off.”
It’s out of my mouth before I have any chance of controlling it as I stand here, vase in hand. Sit down? I’m not sitting down and discussing this as if it’s acceptable. It’s not. None of it is. I thought we were getting somewhere, getting closer. Thought I was pushing him into loving me, making him admit it. And now? Now we’re going to have a conversation about him killing someone? That’s not going to happen. I’m leaving is what I’m doing, and he’s going to let me so I can process whatever the hell this is. There’s nothing here for me now. Nothing to discuss. Nothing to talk about. Nothing to deliberate. There’s no excuse for this. None. I’m done.
“Get out of my way so I can leave.” I’m leaving. I am.
“Sit down, or I’ll make you.”
I pull in a long, slow breath, trying to calm myself and find some order. I can’t beat him physically. I’m not even going to try. He’s going to let me leave because I’m asking to. That’s what he’s always said to me. I only have to ask. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to calm down, settle myself, and then I’m going to leave so I can think, and form an opinion on my own without his interference.
“No, Blaine.” I look at the vase in my hands, for some reason now seeing it’s absurdity in the middle of this, and move to the desk to put it down. The sight of the desk makes me smile for some reason, its leather top intricately carved into the wood, papers neatly piled and organised. “Is this your father’s desk?” Why the hell did I ask that? I don’t care. I don’t.
“Mother’s.” His voice softens a touch when he says it, straight to that damned level that makes me do anything for him. It’s disconcerting, making me feel flustered again within my thoughts of leaving.
“I suppose she’d be happy about you holding me here against my will, would she?”
There’s no response to that as I turn back to face him again, still keeping my breath coming in and out slowly. I’m in control of this, not him. I have to be before he makes killing someone sound okay or forces me to listen to things I don’t want to hear. Because that’s what he’s going to do, isn’t it? He’s going to tell me about this Eloise and make me listen to the thing that keeps him distanced from me. And for once, as I look at his brown eyes, the ones still pulling me into them regardless of the conversation that’s not going to happen, I don’t want to hear his answer. I don’t want it tainting the thing I thought I was becoming, or the person who was helping me become it. The words he delivers now will change us, destroying the heart of what I thought I was beginning to understand. I would rather walk out of here and remember the man I thought I knew rather than even try to comprehend the one he’s about to tell me of. He’s right, he can’t give me what I want from him. He never could, could he?
“I want you to move so I can leave, Blaine. I’m asking you to let me go.” It shakes out of me, my heart breaking in two as I say it because I know it’ll work when he tells me, won’t it? I’ll fall into his hands again, finding some resonance in my mind that makes this tolerable. “Please.” It isn’t tolerable. It’s wrong. There isn’t any circumstance that makes killing someone alright, especially not within the grounds of this community that bases itself on trust.
&n
bsp; He frowns and stares back, not one inch of him moving from the frame he’s still filling, but he has to move. If nothing else he has to, to show me that my opinion is worth something in all of this, because if it’s not then this was never anything more than fucking anyway. If there’s any chance of me understanding this, forming a solution in my mind about how I feel, then he has to prove the whole theory of this. For once, he has to let me be me, without his mind altering my course. I can leave whenever I want, make my own choice. That’s how this works. That’s what he’s shown me through all this, what he’s taught me.
I raise a brow, challenging him and waiting for him to do the right thing. Nothing changes as he pulls in his own breaths and then sighs them out. Nothing but the two of us locked in an internal battle that he can’t win unless he lets me have my choice. It’s the only way.
Eventually, he backs out of the doorway, giving me the space I need to get past him. What should have been a confirmation of respect annihilates my heart completely as I watch his feet step away. It feels like he’s giving me my freedom with one hand and yet stripping me in two with the other. I hover, my feet refusing to follow my own thoughts, and then force them to move through the gap he’s created by leaning on the opposite wall. I’m going. I have to. And the fact that I shiver as I move past him has to mean nothing for now. I have to make it mean so little that I can think rationally without him. Life is not just about Blaine and his needs, nor his wants. It’s also not just about this fucking love that won’t let go of me. But something inside screams at me as I try not to look back, the hallway suddenly feeling like a tunnel I can’t escape from. It wrenches and pulls internally, challenging everything I thought I would do in this situation. Nothing is logical inside me. It makes me need to look at him again, for some reason desperate to see even the slightest contrition from him. I shake my head, furious with myself for giving the emotion credence as I keep travelling and looking into rooms.
I grab my coat and bag from the one we drank in, then turn and start moving again because I am going. Without him. I’m going home where I can think, perhaps even sleep, on my own. Wake up on my own. Find my own routine without him dictating the ebb and flow of it anymore. I can do that. I can. I don’t need this shit in my life.
“Alana?” I close my eyes to the sound of him, finally finding the right doorway to freedom and opening it to get out into the night air again. Home. Safety. Away from him and his killing hands.
My steps feel like the longest ones I’ve ever taken as I trail the paths around to the front of the house then traipse down the drive. They’re heavier with each clipped footfall that tears me away from him, trying to make me wait, or stop, turn around and go back inside to listen to his reasons. It feels visceral as I tug the main gates, fighting the impetus trying to lever me back to him. It’s a fucking instinct I can’t deal with at the moment. A predisposition that has no right to live within me given he’s admitted to murder. I won’t turn around, no matter how much I need to. I am my own person, with my own thoughts. He does not rule me.
I stand outside the gate looking down the road, wondering how the hell I’m going to get anywhere at all, then make my feet keep moving down the hill we originally came up, bypassing the car we arrived in. Stupid maybe, but I need to do this on my own, find my own way. I feel like he’s led me so far down his fucking rabbit hole I can’t remember my way out of it. I can’t even see the light at the end of his tunnel all of a sudden. It’s blacker here than it is when I’m with him. I feel as alone as I’ve ever been, somehow reducing me to a pile of bones and ash, burnt from the knowledge he’s given me. It’s ruined this. Broken it, and me along with it.
I tuck my arms around myself to ward off the cold and keep going as houses blur around me, their white picket fences signalling happy units of love. Fuck all of it. Happiness doesn’t live around here. Murderers do. Sadists who kill with their errant hands, debasing and humiliating before doing it. I snarl at my own inability to let the thought of those hands go, still remembering the tenderness they could show after his acts of need. Monster—that’s what Oliver called him. I screwed my nose up at him, not knowing what he meant. This is what he means, irrespective of the man I’ve come to love. Did they all know in that audience? Were they waiting and hoping the monster would appear, ready to do its worst on my skin?
The thought embarrasses me, making me tighten my arms again to protect myself. And yet, it doesn’t make any sense to me as I think about it, wandering aimlessly in hope of help. I can still see his smile tonight as we danced, still feel his heartbeat in my ear as I laid my head on his chest, wishing for more answers than he’d give. He was there with me. Alive. We were breathing as one unit. Falling further in love. Well, I thought we were. Maybe we weren’t. Maybe he was just pushing me further into his decadence, ready to kill the next victim available. At least I’ve got the reason for his distance now, for the separation he continues with. And I suppose, much as it might confuse me to think about it, with a truth like that hiding in the background, he couldn’t ever be close, could he? He was trying to keep me away.
Keep me safe.
“I’m an asshole.”
He’s damn right he is. A murdering one.
So why can’t I truly believe it?
I don’t know where I’m walking to as the ground keeps travelling underneath my feet. Downhill is all I know. At some point I took my shoes off, choosing to feel the pavement beneath my soles rather than keep up the pretence of elegance. It grounds me against the tarmac, giving some sense to the haze I’m walking through. It feels like hours pass by as I trudge on, hoping for a route to follow, almost as if a fog has descended at some point and made each road indiscernible from the next. Not that I know where I am anyway. I’m lost in reality. Lost on the streets, lost in my mind. Visions and images assaulting me. Hands softly sweeping across my skin one minute and then causing pain the next. And the pressured moments are clouded with screams now, too, but they’re not my screams. They’re not my howls of passion. I don’t own them anymore. They belong to someone else’s voice. Someone else’s tears. Someone else’s fears.
I stop at a junction, looking left and right into more haze, barely caring which direction I take. Home is all I want—my home, my sanctuary—and I can’t find it. It’s out there somewhere and I can’t get to it. The thought makes my eyes tear up, my nose sniffing the effect back before they erupt and leave me less able to make decisions than I already am. But, try as I might, I can’t make them stop. They won’t stop coming. I swipe at my eyes, trying to make them clear, but the tears just come with more force, their power coming from my guts as they race through me. It all aches so much, leaving a forsaken hole inside my heart that can’t be fixed. It’s his fault. He did this to me. And he’ll keep doing it to me, won’t he? This pain will keep travelling the inside of me, tearing at my heart, opening it and making it weep for something reality can’t give it. He is that monster he professed to be. The man I know doesn’t exist. Perhaps he never did and I made it up in my head, hoping for a fucking dream to save me.
My knees buckle under the strain of the thought, their weight seeming to crumble with visions of my apartment again. It’s no fucking home to me. His house has felt more like a home than mine could ever be. His routes, his directions. The ease of everyday without having to think about the whys. It’s all been so easy to conform to—so tranquil, regardless of the strikes to my skin. My knees hit the tarmac, the skin on them cutting. I barely register the feeling as I hug myself tighter and try to see through the tears. Oh god, why? Why? I can’t do this. I’m alone again. Lost. I couldn’t manage before him. It was a mess. And it will be again. I can’t do it now I’ve seen straight with him guiding me. I can’t go back to that. I want his home, and his arms, and his voice calming me down. I need it.
Tears splat the ground beneath me, the wetness seeping into the drab grey, blackening the surface and reminding me of oceans I’ve almost drowned in. I just want that view back agai
n. I do. I want its crash and its turmoil swirling, the same turmoil that leaves me with a sense of wading deeper in, losing myself within its pull to get to the stars he offers. I can cope with that, did cope with it, but losing myself out here in the dark when I’m alone, no stars to shine down on me? I can’t.
My fingers run circles in my own tears on the dirty street floor, searching for his reflection in them to help me see sense. I nearly reached those stars. It was becoming seamless, a flow of energy between us, deepening us into something filled with honesty and intent. Commitment. Perhaps I actually did reach them, made him ascend with me to the actuality I pushed for. I asked, didn’t I? I asked and he told me. He proved the reality of why he is who he is, showed me his reasoning for his behaviour. Showed me the truth.
A man suddenly flops down beside me, the heavy thud of him making me jump and topple to the side as his hand hits my leg. I gasp out, scared at what he might do and trying to scrabble away from his advance.
“Fuck me,” I cry out, my feet scrambling over the ground, legs staggering me away to the safety of a lamppost as I glare at the prone body.
“Thankfully not this time.” It’s Blaine’s voice. It makes me jump, too, instantly looking into the shadows behind me.
“What’s that? Have you killed him, too?”
“No, saved you. It appears to have become my job lately,” he says, walking into the light and kicking at the lifeless looking guy’s hand. A knife tumbles out of it, highlighted by the glare above us, its metal glinting. I swipe my fingers over my eyes, trying to focus on the thing and realising what nearly happened. “He was going to attack me?”
The End Page 17
