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I could convince myself that I would survive this.
I could lie and say I was fine—
I turned my head and stared at Joel’s grey curtains as Ethan jerked and came. His repulsive body rippled and released in mine, filling the condom. My mind had fractured. Before I was light and bright and brave. Now, I had boxes. Neat and tidy boxes where all my goodness had fled and hidden. All my hopes had scurried and died. All my faith in people crushed into dust.
He rutted into me a final time, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
I’d gone quiet. Still. Shut down.
My instincts had switched into self-preservation, and I blocked it out. I pretended it never happened. I stared at those damn curtains and lied to myself that this was a nightmare, and when I woke up...it wouldn’t be real.
Withdrawing, Ethan sat on his knees between my spread and bound legs. With a grunt, he yanked the condom off.
Tears leaked from my eyes.
A strange new part of me—a sharp and savage, meek and mauled part—flushed with gratitude that he’d worn protection. The thinnest piece of latex had kept me clean, kept me safe.
I hyper-focused on that condom.
It made everything seem a little less...worse.
Shaking my head, I dragged myself back to the starlit sea.
Aslan clung to the railing at the front, his back to me, his face toward the darkness. He trusted me to take him wherever I wanted. He hadn’t come to ask where we were going. He hadn’t tried to take me home. He didn’t speak of police or hospitals or parents.
He trusted me.
He gave me everything he was, and as he stood beneath the moon with Ethan’s blood painting him, I accepted every last shred of the soul he’d given.
He’d turned into a beast for me.
He’d mutilated and tortured for me.
He’d turned to me with quaking fear, terrified that his violence would make me run.
I would never run.
How could I ever run from a man who would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep me safe?
He wore blood for me.
He snapped bones for me.
With his heartless savagery, he proved, once and for all, that he was mine, and I was his, and all of this...meant nothing.
Only he made sense.
Only him.
Covered in blood.
Cast in moonlight.
Prepared to fight the devil himself to protect me.
Tears rolled silently down my cheeks.
The headache that’d grown worse the more the drugs wore off pounded in my skull.
Aslan.
My soulmate.
Without him, I wouldn’t be standing here.
Without his dedication and devotion, I might not have the power to go on.
But the way he watched me.
The way he cried when he saw my bruises.
The way he fought for me and killed for me and bound himself to me...I evolved beneath the cloak of his everlasting care.
He would help me.
He would heal me.
He would take it all away—
I cried out as the belt unravelled from my wrists and the pillowcases fell away from my ankles.
“See?” Ethan tapped my cheek. “Told you I wouldn’t hurt you.” Looming over me, he smiled as if we’d shared a consensual evening. “You were so good, baby. I’ll put in a good word for you with your bestie, okay? Perhaps we can all double date.”
I didn’t shake.
I didn’t cry.
I just wanted to run.
Rubbing at the wounds on my wrists, I swung my legs over the bed, smoothed down my dress—my hated, awful dress. A dress that no longer looked like a pretty sunset but like evil suffocating light. I wanted it off me. I wanted his sweat off me. I wanted his kisses and touch and defilement off me.
My nostrils flared as he ruffled my tangle-thrashed hair.
“Obviously, we don’t need to have the chat not to tell anyone, huh? I mean...we had a good time. I let you go. You’re free.”
Marching to the door, he zipped up his jeans and rethreaded his belt through the loops. “See ya ’round, baby girl.”
My hands trembled as I pulled on the accelerator, slowing our cruise.
Stars twinkled a little brighter as silhouettes of palm trees and the golden glitter of sand welcomed me home.
Low Isles.
A place where I’d dreamed of as a child, wishing it could become my home. I had visions of sleeping on the beach, living off coconuts, and swimming with Sapphire and her pod every day.
I begrudged having a bed. Having a table and food and family.
A part of me felt so solitary when I was young. As if I was being called back to somewhere I used to belong but no longer did. Of course, it was nothing more than a wild imagination. I’d always lived in stories when I was young. Always fantasised about living underwater and having a pet turtle. Of running away and being stranded on an atoll where I turned into a fish and never breathed air again.
I needed those wishes to be real tonight.
