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Because Marco is a lie.
The thought just makes everything go dark. My body goes lifeless and I slip back into the water.
“Hey, no!” Marco’s arms are around me before I go under, and he lifts me so I’m sitting up in the bathtub.
My head flops back on the porcelain edge of the bathtub, and I stare without seeing at the stupid tilted wooden beams of the ceiling that had seemed so rustic and romantic yesterday. It had felt as if we had been the only two people in the world, hiding here, in our own private fairytale.
Now it’s a nightmare.
“Open your eyes, Olivia, I need to keep you awake until you’re warmed up,” Marco shouts, rubbing my arms furiously. “Olivia! Please, please. Livy.”
He’s crying as he says my name, but my eyes drift closed, and it’s too hard to open them. I’m too cold and too tired and too sad. I can’t.
“I need you to open your eyes,” he begs again.
What he needs is to get far away from me, but I’m shaking too badly and the darkness around me is too thick, and I can’t tell him to get lost. Like I should.
/Marco/
[audio transcript]
I tried to lose her.
I tried to lose her so many times.
I wanted her to run away. I wanted her to get mad at me, to pick a fight with me. But she didn’t. She just sat there, shivering, barely alive, unable to move.
So I did.
two
I climb out of the bathtub and everything hurts, every bone, every muscle in my body. Marco helps me stay upright, his arm hovering around my shoulders, but I push him away. Darkness keeps flickering at the back of my eyelids, and Marco quickly moves to grab me before I fall. The feel of his arm around me burns my skin, and not in a good way. He’s this stranger suddenly, this…person hired by the palace. By my dad.
He’s not my friend, I need to keep reminding myself that. He’s not. He’s staff. And I also need to start thinking of him as I think of all of the palace staff: people who need to be respected, listened to, but kept at a distance. The palace is their job, it’s not part of their personal life. They are paid to take care of things, of us. They are paid tocare.
He.Heis paid to care.
And then, they are paid to leave, and go home, to their real lives.
Marco slips an arm around my waist as I walk to the bed, and he helps me get into dry clothes, because I can’t feel my fingers. Like at all. He turns me over, so I can expel the rest of the water I have inhaled—he’s really good at this first aid stuff. Too bad I can’t stand his touch.
I keep trying to push him away, but my arms won’t work. But finally, once I’m warm enough and dry enough and breathing enough, I have enough strength to shove him away from me. His hands are on my back, and I duck away from him, nearly falling flat on my face as I try to stand on my own. He yelps and reaches for me, but I push his hands away.
He freezes.
Finally, he gets it. His lips go thin with realization, and he visibly draws himself up. And, somehow, inwards. Away from me. He too looks pale, his lips blue, his clothes plastered all over his chest and pecs. He hasn’t taken one second to take care of himself, and let us not forget here, he died today, before I pulled him out of that water. He was dead. Almost completely.
“I do all this for you,” he says in a whisper, as if he can’t believe this is happening, “I run away with you, risking my job, my life, my… I risked my neck, and is this all you have to say? Pushing me away? That’s it? I don’t even get a thank you? I took you to the lake, to the movie set, I took you out to eat, I spent all this money…”
Wait a second.
‘I don’t even get a thank you?’
Who is this guy? Are these words really coming out of his mouth? The mouth I was kissing minutes ago, the mouth I was…
“I’m sure I can give the money you spent back to you, relax,” I say, but I’m shaking. I never thought he would say such things to me. Not him. His blue eyes are hard with hatred.
Cold. Made of steel. I don’t recognize those eyes.
