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FIND A REASON FORher to live.
Fuck.
My lips pursed together and teeth ground back and forth as I gently cleaned Abby’s raw, bleeding wrists. I was meticulous with the wounds like I was every morning after she’d passed out from a night of ranting and raving.
I applied the salve and light bandages and started to get up when her voice stopped me.
“Don’t.”
My gaze shot to her. She was awake and looking at me. What the fuck? She never woke this early in the morning. It was why I looked after her wounds at this time. After so many months, I knew Abby’s schedule like fuckin’ clockwork.
She woke between ten and eleven, ate—if she could keep it down—then paced, showered, and sat in the corner of the room while I sat on the back porch.
Then she slept for a few more hours before nightfall. That’s when I put the chains back on her. Psycho woman rose at eight or nine.
She reached out and her fingers curled around my wrist. They were childlike, delicate, and gentle, yet I had the scars to prove how damaging they could be.
Her eyes were red-rimmed with black circles beneath and I knew she was in pain. Fuck, I saw it in her eyes. I wanted to pull her into my arms and take it away. I’d do anything to take it away and make it my own.
“Fuck, Abbs, don’t look at me like that.”
She half-smiled then reached up and rested her palm on my cheek. I nearly fell off the edge of the bed onto my ass with the sweet gesture. She hadn’t been this mellow in months, and her touch… it was as if the Abby I once knew was back.
“What’s the date?” she asked.
I frowned at the peculiar question. “What?” Why would she care about the date?
“The date?”
“October third. Why?”
She nodded, turning her head to stare at the ceiling. “It’s time, Damien,” she whispered. “I can’t do this anymore. I should’ve never… I thought I could survive this, but I can’t.”
My gut twisted as I stared at her, unable to believe what she was saying. After all this fuckin’ time, she was giving up. But it was there in her eyes, the resolution, and the finality of what she was asking.
She wanted me to kill her.
“No!” I shouted. “Fuck, no.” I shot to my feet and paced the length of the floor. “No. Do you fuckin’ hear me, Abbs? Absolutely not.” I kept my head down, unable to look at her again and see that look, the one resigning herself to death. “Are you mad? Do you know how long we’ve been here? Do you have any clue what you’ve survived? And now suddenly you wake up all sane and calm and decide, ‘Yeah, Damien, you can kill me now.’ Jesus, Abbs, you don’t get that choice, and you sure as hell don’t have any right to ask me to do that.”
“Damien,” she whispered.
I approached the wall and slammed my fist into it. Then with my arms shoulder width apart, I rested my palms on the wall, leaning in to it and closing my eyes, rage whirling.
“Damien.”
She wanted me to kill her. She wanted to fuckin’ die.
“Damien. Please.”
I turned and looked over at the bed. She was sitting up, duvet tucked up around her, red hair tangled and strewn in every direction.
“Will you talk to me? For a little while. You know, before I become a bitch again.” Abby half-smiled and, despite the tightness in my chest alleviating when I saw the smile, I wasn’t sure if I trusted it. Her thirst for blood was strong and her body’s instinct was to get it any way she could.
‘Give her a reason to live.’
I had to give her a shred of hope to overpower the poison that was streaming religiously through her veins. One flicker of hope. That was all I needed. All she needed to keep fighting.
I walked to the bed and sat, but it was awkward with my back half turned, so I moved up to the headboard and leaned against it and stretched my legs out, crossing my ankles. It was a vulnerable position, but it was early morning and she’d be pretty weak after the all-night ranting of bloodthirsty Abby.
