My wrist burned.
I looked down. The bite mark. The bruise Anders had left on my inner arm. It looked purple and angry against my pale skin.
It wasn't a claim. It was a receipt.
He had tagged me. He had marked the asset so the salvage crew would know which body to drag out of the wreckage.
My stomach heaved. A violent, spasmodic contraction that had nothing to do with withdrawal and everything to do with betrayal. I leaned over the toilet and wretched, spitting bile and acid into the water.
They had used my body against me. They had used my loneliness as a weapon.
Simon.The way he looked at me in the mirror.You're the main character.
Yes. The main character in a tragedy. The sacrifice.
Daniel.The way he hummed against my throat.I'm filling the silence.
He filled it so he could sell the recording rights.
My heart was beating so fast it hurt. A fluttery, erratic rhythm that made my vision spot with black. The panic attack was a living thing, a parasite tightening its coils around my lungs.
Bzzzzzzzt.
A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the high window.
A drone. It was hovering right outside the vent. Trying to peek in. Trying to get the money shot of the naked, broken author cowering on her bathroom floor.
I let out a sound that wasn't human. It was the sound of a trapped animal realizing the cage has no door.
I grabbed the first thing my hand touched. A heavy glass jar of bath salts sitting on the tub ledge.
I threw it.
It smashed against the frosted window, shattering the glass of the jar and cracking the pane. Bath salts exploded like crystal shrapnel, raining down on the tile floor, mixing with the pieces of my sanity.
"Come and get me!" I screamed at the buzzing shadow. "Come and finish it! I'm right here!"
I crawled into the bathtub, curling into a fetal ball on the cold porcelain. I pulled the shower curtain down, ripping the rings from the rod, burying myself in the plastic folds.
I waited for the drones to break the glass. I waited for the van to drive through the wall.
But mostly, I waited for the door to open and for Anders, Simon, and Daniel to walk in, cameras rolling, to tell me that the performance was over and they had everything they needed.
I squeezed my eyes shut and wished, with everything I had left, that I had drowned on that stage ten years ago. At least then, I wouldn't have known what it felt like to be loved before I was destroyed.
TWENTY-FIVE
Daniel
The speedometer digits were a glowing red blur, climbing past numbers that a heavy SUV had no business touching on a wet coastal road.
90. 95.
"Anders," I warned, my hand gripping the overhead handle until the plastic groaned in protest. "The curve."
"I see it," Anders snapped. He didn't brake. He downshifted, the engine screaming a high-pitched mechanical wail as he wrenched the wheel.
The back tires broke traction. The heavy vehicle drifted, sliding sideways toward the metal guardrail that separated us from a three-hundred-foot drop into the grey Pacific. For a second, gravity suspended us, holding us over the void. Then the tires bit into the asphalt, jerking us back into the lane with a violence that rattled my teeth.
