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By my hands.
Yes, Ericson was a sadistic rapist and possible murderer himself, but that doesn’t exonerate me of my actions.
I’m not running.
I plan to turn myself in and face my consequences like a woman.
But not before I getmyrevenge.
Before I confess to any crime, I have to find Alex. He did this to me. He turned me into this weak and disgusting…whatever I’ve become. And he’s going to undo it. He’s going to reverse the damage he’s done to my brain, uncross the wires that got crossed, or whatever the fucking hell he has to do to bring me back.
I won’t make it even one day in prison like this. I’ll break. I’ll decay. I’ll wither into a carcass just like this house.
The old Blakely could handle prison. She was tough and indifferent, nothing would affect her. She could defend herself against prisoners and not get duped by sentiment.
I need her in order to survive.
With an angry huff, I tug the hoodie over my head and start in the direction I came. I’ve seen enough. Alex isn’t here. He abandoned his project, then burned the whole maniacal experiment to the ground.
And now he’s out there.
Ultimately, what boils my blood—even if I can’t admit it aloud—is that he abandoned me.
He forced me to feel all these things...things I can’t even explain…so much so that the sheer overwhelm exhausts me daily.
Then he just left me alone to deal with it all.
My pulse thuds heavily in my ears as I pass the open basement door. Memories of Alex—his masculine scent, his pale-blue eyes, his messy dark hair, those dimples when he smiled his boyish smile—become too much, and I slam the door closed with a resoundingbang.
He ruined my well-constructed life, yes, but he also ruined other things, too.
Like sex.
Sex was always simple. Uncomplicated. Find a person I’m attracted to and satisfy the need. It was never any deeper than that. Never any messy feelings to muddle through. I had sex the way I lived my life: pleasure-focused. Driven by my desires.
Then one night under a waterfall with Alex changed everything.
An ache blooms in my chest, like a bruise that won’t heal, the fiery pain becoming a familiar companion. Thoughts of that night assault me. Of Alex as he touched me in a way no other man had, of how I couldfeelhis need for me, feel his emotions, feel an intense connection to him.
He told me he loved me.
“He’s the enemy,” I say under my breath, a reminder that I can’t lose sight of what he did. He tortured me for almost a month. He altered the chemistry of my brain, for fuck’s sake.
And yet, on the nights when it’s the hardest to sleep, when the sickness pits out my stomach and I curl into myself and I can’t decipher the difference between anger and heartache, I reach for his shirt. The one I keep tucked on the side of the bed, the one I grabbed when I raced out of the burning cabin.
The one that still carries his scent of sandalwood and aquatic cologne and some indefinable masculine fragrance that belonged only to Alex.
I wear his shirt and, on some subconscious level, the comfort that closeness brings is enough to chase back the darkness.
The acrid smell of fire coats my throat, making it raw. I swallow hard. As I find my way back onto the path, I notice a shiny glint up ahead near the gate. The sun catches on the gleaming object, and as I get closer, a shiver rocks me.
I kneel down and swipe the dirt away with a shaky hand to uncover the pewter cover of Alex’s pocket watch.
My heart knocks violently against my rib cage as I unearth the watch. The glass face is missing, the glass shattered and left discarded in the dirt. The gears are crushed and the hands no longer tick.
A strange eeriness settles over me at the silence, the world suddenly too quiet, too still.
Alex destroyed his timepiece right before he smashed every clock in his twisted dark room and set fire to his cabin.
