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He grasps my bound hands and pushes me to walk back to the stateroom.
“You can’t hide, and you can’t hide me forever,” I bite out.
“Don’t you worry about the logistics. I’ve got everything in the bag, Amalia.” I’m back on the bed, and he plucks out two new passports from a compartment. “See?” He displays his.
Robert Hart?
“You can call me Rob.” He giggles, seeing my pursed lips. “But don’t call me that when we fuck.”
Then Aidan takes out his sailing knife, prompting me to push myself away from him. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” He cuts the rope around my hands instead.
I draw my hands forward, rubbing my wrists.
“I’m sorry,” he says, looking at the lacerations the rope has left behind. “I had to tie you. But now you definitely can’t go anywhere from here. You jump, you’ll die.”
“Do you think you’ll be happy with me? I won’t love you, Aidan, and I’ll make sure your life with me is miserable.”
“I can make you faceless again. This time you’ll never be another Amber-Rose. Or I can drug you until you can’t remember who you are, tweak your brain so you become a Stepford wife.” He trembles as he utters the words in a rush—yet he smiles, as if his ideas excite him. “You’ll have no chance to make me miserable. You will please me for the rest of your life.”
I can only watch his joy. But as long as I’m breathing, I’ll try anything to escape this monster.
“That’s for later, though,” he says. “For now, I won’t do anything to you, because you have to survive this journey.” Then he squeezes my chin, baring his teeth as if still trying to exert his dominance. “But if you start doing stupid things, I’m not gonna be kind to you.”
Now is definitely not the time to do stupid things. My captor is right—I will have to survive this journey. Once I get to dry land, or close to dry land, I might be able to make a move. At least I’ll have to try.
“Why me, Aidan?” I ask softly, trying to evoke his emotions from our first meeting. I know they’re still in him.Don’t fight fire with fire—at the moment I have to act submissive and buy time.
“You don’t believe in soul mates?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I didn’t—until you came along.”
I give him an understanding gaze, trying to get through to him.
“I didn’t know who I was when you found me. I was on that path, pushing my bicycle as if life had already given up on me. I just kept going without knowing where I would end up. I was prepared to die. Every time I passed a bridge, I thought about jumping. But then you came along.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. He said at the time that he’d just found out his dad had abused his sister for years, and in the end she committed suicide. Aidan grew up a bitter, envious brother, believing his sister was the princess in the family. Everyone said yes to her, and they said no to him all the time. He held that grudge for a long time, and he still does—he hates it when someone says no to him. But the revelation of his dad’s abuse hit him hard.
“What happened to your sister wasn’t your fault, Aidan.” Empathy and sympathy rushes back to me, exactly what drew me to him at the time.
“She tried to reach out to me.” His voice softens. “And I cursed her like she was a whore from Koreatown.”
“We all make mistakes. Some guilt will last a lifetime, but you can’t let it imprison you.”
He looks at me, a different Aidan, his expression as if we’d just met. “Why? You have the understanding of a saint. I had never known anyone like you before.Ever. Where is your understanding now, Amalia? You chucked me away like I was garbage.”
“Maybe we are soul mates, and I shouldn’t have left you. But didn’t you realize you were hurting me?”
“I did. I was sorry. How many times did I say I was sorry?” His face scrunches in pain.
“Maybe I was too hasty saying no to your proposal. I still had feelings for you then, I must admit. And maybe I still do.”
Aidan approaches me, caressing my cheek, down to my neck, and ending at the top of my breasts. He takes a deep breath of my cleavage, sucking whatever he can out of my pores. “God, I missed you so much. You still smell as sweet as I remember, like a fresh bloom.” He breathes in one more time, eyes half-hooded. “And so arousing.”
“You know, after all these years, I still wonder where we went wrong,” I say, trying to distract him from his lust. “We started as soul mates and ended as lost souls.”
Aidan looks into me, as if agreeing. “Let’s not wonder where we went wrong. Can we look forward to what’s ahead of us?”
