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“What did I tell you about hurting what is mine?” he asks, changing tactics.
“I. Am. Not. Yours!” I push the edge of the blade into the tender spot at the center of my collarbones, feeling that familiar sharp pain of skin breaking, the warmth of blood streaking flesh.
“Madelena!” Santos leaps toward me, and he’s so fucking fast that I scream when his hand closes around my wrist and his weight forces me backward. I trip on something behind me and we go tumbling down. He mutters a curse, wraps one arm around my middle, and releases my wrist to cup the back of my head just before it bounces off the coffee table. He curses again as he flips us before we hit the floor hard, the sound of the crash of his head against hardwood deafening—all while he keeps a tight arm around my middle, so I bounce off him, his body a firm cushion. Air wooshes from our lungs and warmth pools between us.
I try to push off him, thinking he’s going to attack but his arm around me keeps me pinned to him. But there’s something else. His expression is off. He’s blinking hard like he’s trying to process something.
“Tell me why, Goddamn you!” I scream, finally sitting up as his arm slips from my back.
And that’s when I realize what I’ve done. When he doesn’t move, and I look down at us, I realize what the warmth is. The wet warmth.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” I clasp my free hand over my mouth, my gaze locked on the other which is still holding the letter opener. The letter opener that is lodged in his side. “Santos?”
“Madelena… It’s not…” It’s barely a whisper. “Give me…”
The door opens, startling me. I look up to watch Val enter. He’s typing something out on his phone. We’re behind the couch so he doesn’t see me right away, and he definitely doesn’t see Santos. But when he does spot me, he stops, cocks his head to the side. He walks closer and when he sees Santos on the floor, his phone slips from his hand and clatters to the hardwood.
“Santos!” He’s on his knees in an instant.
Without thinking, I pull the letter opener out, feeling the strange almost squish as I do, and fall backward before scrambling to my feet. Val reaches for his phone, and I watch him close his hand over Santos’s bleeding side. He dials, trying to wake Santos as whoever he calls picks up.
“Get up here,” he commands. “We need a doctor!”
I look down at Santos.
Oh, God. Santos. He’s perfectly still, though. There’s too much blood and his face has lost all color.
“What did you do?” Val screams at me, and before I can think I’m running. I’m running out of that room and out of the apartment. The elevator dings and I charge past it to the stairwell and down the stairs, stumbling all the way, falling down full flights before I catch myself, that bloody letter opener in my hand as I sob because I don’t think he’s going to make it.
God.
I think I killed him.
When I reach the ground floor, I use the emergency exit to get out of the building. An alarm sounds, but I don’t care. I can’t.
Rain stings like shards of glass. I hunch over and hurl up dinner. The taste is bitter in my mouth as I run. I run and run, and maybe it’s subconscious where my feet are taking me. Maybe it’s where I was meant to die all along. Maybe all my mom did all those years ago was condemn me to living a life that wasn’t meant to be lived.
I stabbed him. Did I kill him? He asked me to trust him, asked me to give him a chance to explain, and I stabbed him. I didn’t give him a chance.
My feet carry me to the lighthouse entrance, my hair blowing wild in the wind. I’m freezing. Only when I am inside do I realize how cold I am. In here, the wind stops hissing. The waves stop crashing against the killer rocks.
Killer.
Am I a killer?
I clutch my stomach, sick again as I make my way up the winding stairs to that small room. I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was so cold. It’s always so cold here, but that day, there was snow on the ground and a new storm was brewing. Mom’s hair was a wild halo around her face. She was so beautiful with all those dark waves and her pale face, with her strange eyes that I realize now had that sheen to them in her manic periods… when she was off her meds.
She’d been crying. She’d cried so much her face was pink and puffy. She kept petting my hair so hard it hurt. I remember when she let go of my hand. When she stopped trying to pull me free from the railing I clung to because I didn’t want her to take me. I knew what would happen if she did. She stuffed the note into my pocket then, and held my face and asked me to forgive her.
Is that what it is? Is it the words forgive me? Is that why I belonged to Santos from the first moment he spoke them to me? Because my mother had said the same two words to me. They were the last thing she said before she killed herself.
I remember crying, reaching out for her, because even at five I knew what she was going to do. I knew. But she didn’t look back after that. Once the door closed, it was only seconds before it was over.
I didn’t see her fall. I didn’t hear her body hit the ground. If she screamed, it was swallowed up by the ocean waves constantly crashing against the rocks. But I knew when she was gone. A stillness settled over the place like nothing I’d ever felt before. The stillness of death. The finality of it.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I drop to a seat, unable to go on. It’s dark. The only light is from a lamp that burns at the window. My stomach churns, my head throbs, and I swear I can taste his blood. Setting the letter opener down on the ground beside me, I rub my face. Salty tears burn my eyes, leaving streaks along my cheeks. It takes me a full minute before I look up, look around. I listen for that stillness. That same silence. I press the heels of my hands into my face to stop the tears, but they just keep coming. I press them to the space over my heart to stop the pain but that, too, just keeps hurting.
What happens now? What happens now that Santos is gone?
