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Will rolled onto his back. Angie's hair was tangled around her face. Her makeup was smeared. She was breathing as hard as he was.
"Jesus Christ," she mumbled. "Jesus Christ." She tried to reach out and touch his face, but he slapped her hand away.
They lay there like that, both panting on the floor, for what seemed like hours. Will tried to feel remorse, or anger, but all he felt was exhaustion. He was so sick of this, so sick of the way Angie drove him to extremes. He thought again about what Sara had said: Learn from your mistakes.
Angie Polaski was looking like the biggest mistake Will had ever made in his miserable life.
"Christ." She was still breathing hard. She rolled over on her side, slid her hand up under his shirt. Her hands were hot, sweaty against his skin. Angie said, "Whoever she is, tell her I said thanks."
He stared up at the ceiling, not trusting himself to look at her.
"I've been screwing you for twenty-three years, baby, and you've never fucked me like that before." Her fingers found the ridge at the bottom of his rib, the place where the skin puckered from a cigarette burn. "What's her name?"
Will still didn't answer.
Angie whispered, "Tell me her name."
Will's throat hurt when he tried to swallow. "Nobody."
She gave a deep, knowing laugh. "Is she a nurse or a cop?" She laughed again. "Hooker?"
Will didn't say anything. He tried to block Sara out of his mind, didn't want her in his thoughts right now because he knew what was coming. Will had scored one point, so Angie had to score ten.
He flinched as Angie found a sensitive nerve on his damaged skin.
She asked, "Is she normal?"
Normal. They had used that word in the children's home to describe people not like them—people with families, people with lives, people whose parents didn't beat them or pimp them out or treat them like trash.
Angie kept tracing the tip of her finger around the burn. "She know about your problem?"
Will tried to swallow again. His throat scratched. He felt sick.
"She know you're stupid?"
He felt trapped under her finger, the way it was pressing into the round scar where the burning cigarette had melted his flesh. Just when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, she stopped, putting her mouth close to his ear, sliding her fingers up the sleeve of his shirt. She found the long scar running up his arm where the razor had opened his flesh.
"I remember the blood," she said. "The way your hand shook, the way the razor blade opened up your skin. Do you remember that?"
He closed his eyes, tears leaking out. Of course he remembered. If he thought about it hard enough, he could still feel the tip of the sharp metal scraping across his bone because he had known that he should send the razor deep—deep enough to open the vein, deep enough to make sure it was done right.
"Remember how I held you?" she asked, and he could feel her arms around him even though she wasn't holding him now. The way she had wrapped her whole body around him like a blanket. "There was so much blood."
It had dripped down her own arms, onto her legs, her feet.
She had held on to him so tight that he couldn't breathe, and he had loved her so much, because he knew she understood why he was doing it, why he had to stop the madness that was going on around him. Every scar on his body, every burn, every break—Angie knew about it the same way she knew everything about herself. Every secret Will had, Angie held somewhere deep inside her. She held on to it with her life.
She was his life.
He gulped, his mouth still spitless. "How long?"
She rested her hand on his stomach. She knew she had him back, knew it was just a matter of snapping her fingers. "How long what, baby?"
"How long do you want me to love you?"
She didn't answer him immediately, and he was about to ask the question again when she said, "Isn't that a country music song?"
He turned to look at her, searching her eyes for some sign of kindness that he had never seen before. "Just tell me how long so I can count the days, so I know when this is finally going to be over."
Angie traced her hand down the side of his face.
"Five years? Ten years?" His throat was closing, like someone had fed him glass. "Just tell me, Angie. How long until I can stop loving you?"
She leaned in, put her mouth to his ear again. "Never."
She pushed herself up from the floor, smoothing down her skirt, finding her shoes and underwear. Will lay there as she opened the door, then left without bothering to look back. He didn't blame her. Angie never looked back. She knew what was behind her, just like she always knew what was ahead.
Will didn't get up when he heard her shoes on the porch stairs or her car starting up in the driveway. He didn't get up when he heard Betty scratching at the dog door, which he'd forgotten to open for her. Will did not move for anything. He lay on the floor all night, until the sun coming in through the windows told him it was time to go back to work.
DAY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY
PAULINE WAS HUNGRY, BUT SHE COULD HANDLE THAT. SHE understood the pains in her stomach and lower intestines, the way the spasms reverberated through her gut as they grasped for any type of nourishment. She knew it well, and she could handle it. The thirst was different, though. There was no way around the thirst. She had never gone without water for this long before. She was desperate, willing to do anything. She'd even peed on the floor and tried to drink it, but it just made her thirst even wilder so that she'd ended up sitting on her knees, baying like a wolf.
No more. She couldn't be in that dark place for long. She couldn't let it get to her again, envelope her so that all she wanted to do was curl into a ball and pine for Felix.
Felix. He was the only reason to get out of here, to fight, to stop the fuckers from taking Pauline away from her baby boy.
She lay on her side, arms pinned to her waist, feet sticking straight out, and lifted her upper body, straining her neck so that she could line herself up right. She held herself like that, muscles tight, sweating, the blindfold rubbing her skin, as she took aim. The chains around her wrists rattled from exertion, and before she could stop herself, she reared back her head and pounded it into the wall.
Pain streaked through her neck. She saw stars—literal stars— swimming through her vision. She fell onto her back, panting, trying not to hyperventilate, willing herself not to pass out.
"What are you doing?" the other woman asked.
The bitch had been lying on her back like a corpse for the last twelve hours, unresponsive, uncaring, and now she was asking questions?
"Shut up," Pauline snarled. She didn't have time for this shit. She rolled over onto her side again, lining up her body to the wall, moving down a few more inches. She held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and pounded her head into the wall again.
"Fuck!" she screamed, her head exploding with pain. She fell onto her back again. There was blood on her forehead, sliding underneath the blindfold, getting into her eyes. She couldn't blink it away, couldn't wipe it. She felt like a spider was crawling across her eyelids, seeping into her eyeballs.
"No," Pauline said, and she found herself wrapped in a full-on hallucination, spiders crawling across her face, digging into her skin, laying eggs in her eyes. "No!"
