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I’d pressed a hand to my aching chest and rolled to the side, just wanting to get away from his crazed stare, but he had flipped me back. His hand had been up, this time in a fist, but instead of releasing it on me, he relaxed the fist and flexed his hand a few times, then dropped it to his side.
“You have no idea how lucky you are that I love you, Harlow.”
I had nodded, knowing
at the time that even if I could speak, I would most likely say the wrong thing.
“I want my breakfast ready when I get out of the shower. Surely you can’t screw that up, too.” With that, he’d moved away from me and let me climb off the bed.
START KEURIG. SET the plate on the table. Grab silverware and mug; go back to the table. Don’t spill his coffee.
“Now you don’t look at me?” Collin asked in a dark tone, but there was no mistaking the humor in it.
After I set the mug and fork down, I turned to look up at him. A very small part of me was happy that there was some light in his blue eyes; the rest of me just hated him. Hated that he could be the way he was—hated that he could switch from Collin to the monster so quickly, and then back again like it was nothing at all.
His eyes drifted to the kitchen table, then back to me. “Eat it,” he said simply.
I glanced at the food, just to confirm that there wasn’t something else there that I might have missed. “I don’t—you know I don’t like eggs.”
“Eat it.”
“I’m not hungry, Collin.”
“Eat it!” he snapped.
I jerked at the boom of his voice and hurried over to the table. After scooting everything over to my place, I went to sit in my chair, but Collin just moved the food back to where it had been. He held out his chair, and after watching him warily for a moment, I sat in it.
“Now eat it.”
I was shaking so hard, I wasn’t sure I could. Most meals I could hardly stomach, and that was when I was eating something I enjoyed. I held back a grimace and reached for the fork, but Collin’s hand beat me to it.
He slammed the prongs onto one of the eggs to pick it up whole, and with his other hand, he squeezed my jaw so that my mouth popped open.
“Ah do eh!” I forced out, knowing he understood what I was trying to say, but he didn’t stop.
I pushed toward his chest, trying to escape from his grasp, but he just gripped tighter and stood behind the chair so it wouldn’t move. Collin shoved the entire egg into my mouth, flung the fork onto the plate, then used both hands to shut my mouth. And just like I’d found myself this morning, he was soon covering my mouth and pinching my nose so I couldn’t breathe.
“Swallow it,” he demanded. When all I did was scream against his hand and scratch at his arm, he took a step back, kicked the chair out from under me, and then followed me onto the floor. “Swallow it, Harlow!” Tipping my head back, he kept everything blocked off so not only was I still unable to breathe, but I was now choking on the food. “Chew!”
I thrashed against him, but it was only making things worse for me. Forcing myself to calm, I focused on trying to chew and swallow, even though those actions felt impossible when my body was screaming for air—screaming to get away from his hands. My eyes widened and I slapped furiously against the floor when I’d finally choked the egg down, and when Collin released me the first breath I took sounded like an inverted scream. But the scream didn’t last long. Collin reached onto the table and shoved the next egg into my mouth before I could get a full breath in.
“Which one did you poison? This is really how you planned to kill me? You thought I wouldn’t know?” he yelled while I continued to choke, but that egg I’d been somewhat prepared for.
Once the second egg was gone, Collin sat there with me on the floor until my breathing sounded somewhat normal, but his eyes never left my face.
“You’re insane,” I rasped. Saying those words out loud for the first time felt so good, like a sweet release. I wanted to say them over and over, but I let myself be content with once. “What poison?”
His dark blond eyebrows pinched together in confusion. Any other day, I would have been thrilled that he didn’t look angry after what I’d just said to him, but after today, after what I’d endured on Monday, after the kind of monster he was turning into now . . . I no longer cared.
“Why aren’t you dying? I watched you,” he said angrily, and pointed up to the counter. “I watched you pour something into the salt shaker before you sprinkled it onto the eggs. And then you refused to look at me even though I know you knew I was there. You couldn’t have been more obvious than a child who’d gotten caught with her hand in the cookie jar!”
My face fell and my heart pounded in my chest. I had rolled onto my side at some point after he’d released me and was curled into a ball now. I had to swallow back the forced food that was trying to make its reappearance now that I knew what all that had been for. I’d just been choked and nearly suffocated because I’d been trying to keep myself busy while waiting for his eggs to cook. “Salt,” I whispered as heavy tears fell onto the hardwood. “I was refilling the salt shaker with salt.”
There was a pause, then Collin sighed and reached out for me. Before he could touch me, my stomach lurched again, and I scrambled up and took off for the guest bathroom to get rid of the eggs.
Collin was standing near the front door when I finally emerged from the hallway with an apologetic look on his face. “You don’t have to make dinner tonight. My parents’ anniversary party is this evening.”
“I know.”
