Page 46 of Bound to a Killer

Her brother. His sister.

Not girlfriend and boyfriend.

I feel foolish for caring, for still clinging to that last shred of clarity. It shouldn’t matter, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.

God, I’m pathetic.

Look at you, the voice in my head sneers.You foolish, pitiful girl.

He’s friends with a guy who’s drugged you. Brought you back to him. He discarded you at his feet like a pig for slaughter. You’re nothing to him but a problem to contain. Tied. Powerless. Under his control.

Don’t you get it already?

He doesn’t care about you. You’re just a task to check off. A nuisance.

Shame flushes hot in my cheeks, a flash of humiliation catching in my throat as I’m reminded of the way I flung myself at him, desperate to fix what can’t be repaired. Still refusing to face the brutal truth I know deep down.

Nothing can change who he is.

A murderer.

An abductor.

Myabductor.

There are hard lines when it comes to something like this, and I can’t risk blurring them over a few manipulative kind acts. That man he killed in cold blood wasn’t for my sake. It was to cover his own back, to cover all of their backs.

I want to hate him. To believe they’re all just evil, but I can’t. I’m brought out of my head as she moves from the corner, her gaze shifting elsewhere. I follow them, landing on that dreaded spot on the floor where the unpleasant stench of decay emanates from, horribly masked by the equally nauseating sharpness of the bleach.

She wrinkles her nose, pausing on the edge of the crimson ring staining the hardwood. The tip of her Doc Martens swipes at it carefully.

Does she know why I’m here? Would she help me if she did?

A flicker of hope rises in my chest before I have the chance to squander it. I’ll never know unless I try. Nobody else is around. Just her and me.

My impulse nudges my mouth open, but the words lodge in my throat from fear of being shot down. After all, she’s part of them. Part of him. But she’s also a girl, which means we have something unique that can bind us together. I can try to tug on those strings. And maybe, just maybe, I can unravel them enough to push us forward.

“It happened yesterday.” I break the silence.

Her gaze slides to me, wary but curious.

Swallowing my trepidation, I scramble to piece together how much I want to say. I may never get another chance to be alone with her again.

“When some guy forced his way in,” I say, pushing past the knot forming in my stomach. “If it wasn’t for your brother, it would’ve been too late for me.”

A tense silence settles over the room, thick as a glob of wet cement settling over my ears, sealing out everything but the thrum of panic in my chest. I fight not to smother it. Not to shove it down and seal it behind the familiar wall of silence, but to let it break, even if it costs me. She has to understand.

For a moment, it feels like I’m back in that dark place again. My cheeks sting, my stomach coiling as dread settles over me.

The room tilts again. I can’t breathe.

Heavy grief burrows into my chest like the sharp end of a hook, reeling me from the depths of despair, like a fish flailing for air as it’s yanked through the ocean’s surface, away fromsafety. Away from the false sense of security I forged deep in those shadowy waves.

I thought I was stronger than this. That I could handle myself.

But the base of my throat constricts further as everything inside me splits apart, the angry waters crashing behind me in violent waves, exposing the memory I fought to drown again. I lurch back, gasping. My vision’s warped with flashes of his weight over me as he pinned me down. Forceful. Violent. Determined.

There was nothing I could do. My throat locks, the scream trapped beneath the burn climbing up my chest.