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“I see everything you’ve been forced to do.” She crouches in front of me, placing her hands on my knees, and for a second, I catch a glimpse of the Mel that I know. “I carry your pain with me.” Turning her head, she scowls at a picture of me on the kitchen floor, tears running down my cheeks as Wilder thrusts into my mouth. From an outsider’s perspective, I suppose it might look like I’m being forced.
She turns back to me and says, “I understand that you were only doing what you felt you had to. You thought you needed their protection, but you can see now that you don’t, right? There isn’t anyone after you.”
I don’t, though somehow I don’t think telling her that will go over well, so instead I give a shaky jerk of my head.
She smiles, and it’s so reminiscent of the old Mel that it’s jarring. “I don’t want to hurt you; you understand that, don’t you?”
I pick up on her subtle phrasing. Not,I won’t hurt you.But,I don’t want to.Two very different meanings, particularly when in a precarious and potentially violent situation such as this.
Despite how dry my throat is, I manage to croak, “You k-killed Richard.”
She frowns. “He got in the way with his stupid proposal. He couldn’t just be happy with what he had with you. Oh no, he needed more.” Her face is lined with disgust. “I knew you’d say yes because you felt you should.”
“So you killed him?” Hysteria tinges my words, making my voice come out an octave higher than usual.
She waves a languid hand. “You didn’t even like him that much.”
Maybe I wasn’t in love with him, nevertheless, he was still a friend. Someone I enjoyed spending time with and who I confided in. Someone I cared enough about that I was terrified of the hurt I’d cause by ending our relationship.
Somehow, I doubt Mel will understand that. Is she even capable of that level of empathy? Her actions would suggest no. Which means her infatuation with me is just that: an obsession. Contrary to what she would have me believe—as perhaps she herself believes—it is not some toxic, twisted kind of love.
I get the impression I’m walking over broken glass. One misstep, and I’ll slice open my foot. Once that occurs, it’s near impossible to regain your sure footing, and you end up limping along while pleading with a higher power to spare you another cut.
Mel will shut down the moment she gets even the slightest hint that I'm against her or that I disagree with whatever the fuck this is. She’ll flick faster than a switch from the soothing, comforting friend in front of me and become the Mel that could kill a man we’ve both known for years.
Even as she runs a hand over my leg in what I assume is meant to be a reassuring gesture, Mel has abruptly transformed from the distant version who dismissed Richard's death to my familiar friend.
“I saw what you were putting yourself through, and I knew I had to find a way to get to you.”
Except this isn’t all adding up. Finding some deeply buried courage, I dare to ask, “What about that note you sent to the house? You sounded pretty angry when you wrote that.”
Her lips purse before her expression smoothes out. “I was. You have no idea how difficult it was for me to watch you withthem. How the weird one used you; the way the surly one looked at you.” My thigh is being squeezed by her hand as she talks, and it's challenging for me to keep my discomfort to myself as her nails bite cruelly into my skin.
With another discomfiting flick of the switch, her hand relaxes and her anger dissipates. Rolling her eyes theatrically, she sneers, “However, then I saw you with the one with a hero complex, and I understood everything you were doing was because you were trying to keep yourself safe. You were submitting to their whims in exchange for their protection.”
Nope, it still doesn't make sense. Then again, crazies aren’t known for their rational thinking. If they did, then the FBI wouldn’t have a whole division devoted to understanding the inner psyche of psychopaths.
She huffs out a sigh, the first crack in her composed demeanor that’s directed at me. Like it’s my fault that I can’t understand her logic. I guess it’s my bad I’m not fluent in crazy, but oddly enough, Halston didn’t offer that course.
“I can tell you still don’t understand, but you will.” She peers down at her watch before flicking her gaze to something behind me. The act alone implies we’re on a time limit, only what happens when that time runs out?Please let that be when one of the guys will bash through the door and rescue me!
“I knew you were special from the first moment I laid eyes on you.” Her voice turns wistful, her gaze unfocused as she recalls the first day we met, when we were assigned as roommates. “I knew there and then that you were going to be mine one day. I simply had to bide my time.
“So, I sat on the sidelines, patiently waiting for you to open your eyes to what was standing right in front of you. For you to realize that I was your center. It wasmeyou came crying to,meyou shared your good news with,mewho comforted you. I might not have had all of you, but knowing that one day I’d be your whole world, I was content to wait.”
Her voice has turned soft as she reflects on the past, the lines on her face smoothing out. It’s a past that I now view in a very different light. All those nights we spent on the couch, watching movies and eating ice cream while laughing or crying, I now see through a completely different lens. It’s like every memory of us is coated in a sticky, oily film, tarnishing everything it touches and souring any comfort I drew from them.
“I knew I was done being your little sidekick when Richard told me he was going to propose. I had already told you that it was almost time for us.”
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be our beginning,” I murmur, not even realizing I’ve said the words aloud until I catch Mel’s wide grin.
“You remember!”
Impossible not to when it creeped the fuck out of me, but whatever.
The smile disappears from her face swiftly, and her demeanor changes. “Of course, I hadn’t anticipated some would-be hero to be waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in as soon as Richard was out of the picture.”
She leaps to her feet and begins pacing, clearly quite pissed off by Kai’s interference.
