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My silence continued. She slammed the brakes, the car squealed to a sliding stop and slammed me into the door. She hid us under a bridge. The visibility was next to nothing around her because the fog was incredibly thick, making it look like snow.
“C’mon,” she wiped again at her cheeks and grabbed the center of the cuffs to pull me out her door.
I allowed her, this time not dragging my feet but walking with her. If she was going to return me to the police now, it would look badly on us both, but then who the fuck was she?
“Who are you?” I decided to ask.
She rolled her eyes, pulling me faster down a set of stairs, a cheery red boat coming into view. The side of the boat read, “My princess.”
She shuffled around inside a lockbox hidden under the boat seat and popped off the top with the lock combination that she’d entered without hesitation. Inside, she grabbed a boat key and started the ignition. Firing it up and not looking back, she drove the boat far from the cop car.
“Take off your clothes,” she demanded.
Usually, I’d smirk at her, make her work for it, maybe tease her. But right now, I truly didn’t know who the fuck I was looking at.
“I said take them off,” she yelled, popping a knife from her belt, bringing the blade down on my chest, and slicing the orange jumpsuit. She nicked my skin.
Blood welled, and I accepted the burn, letting the torment of her betrayal seep away with the pain. She stared at me, tossing the ruined blob of orange overboard, and took the vessel in a different direction toward the bay.
“You won’t talk to me, but you want me to hurt you?” she said with an exasperated sigh, watching as my body shivered.
I turned my head from her, moving my arms to my side, bashing the metal cuffs on a hook on the top of the outer edge of the boat, but they didn’t break. Putting the machine into auto-pilot, she charged at me. Her icy rage made me feel cold.
“What the fuck Lucius?” she screamed at me, striking me across the face. Her pointy nails scraped across my cheek.
I hissed, my anger growing and catching her icy stare with my fiery one.
“You hurt me enough, Ella,” I screamed back at her.
She froze, genuine confusion taking over her face. “What are you talking about?” Her words were a whisper—a wary, fragile tone.
“You tell me, porthos,” I spat, not buying her rouse.
She shook her head, those tears forming again in her blue-gray eyes.
“No,” she said, that tone still fragile but more firm. “What are you talking about, Lucius?”
I studied her again and watched her eyes, fierce, angry, hurt, and confused. There were no lies in them. There was nothing but true sadness and confusion.
“I don’t understand,” I said, my thoughts racing.
She took a lighter from her pocket, flicking it, trying to hide the wind from extinguishing its light.
“I know you feel betrayed.” She brought the lighter toward my hands. “I know I left when you needed me.”
The lighter burned the chains, the heat searing my wrists for a minute before something came down hard on the center and cracked it wide. The two handcuffs were now separated. I could strangle her, kill her, and toss her to the watery depths. Looking at her neck and feeling my fingers twitch, she walked up to me.
Picking up my hands and placing them around her neck in the exact spot I was just eyeing, she said, “If you need to kill me because I hurt you…because I betrayed your trust and wasn’t there when you needed me, fine. But Lucius, know this…”
I stared into her eyes.
Nothing but truth shone in their depths as she whispered, “I love you.”
Lucius blinked, his grip not tightening or loosening.
Simply frozen.
“I love you,” I repeated, ready to live with my shame of betrayal or die without him.
