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No shit, hombre.
‘I don’t want to watch anymore,’ I said. ‘Please, why are you doing this?’
‘Wait,’ Dornan breathed. I did what I was told, and I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long before a third person entered my highly magnified field of view.
No.
‘Stop,’ I pleaded, but Dornan pressed the binoculars closer to my eyes, the pressure on my eye sockets enough to make my eyes water.
I drew back from the binoculars violently as I caught a glimpse of her face.
Holy. Fuck.
It was my sister. She was crying and screaming as she saw what she thought was my dead body, and I watched in horror as she leaned over and vomited next to the rotting corpse. Seeing her distraught reaction made me snap.
I began to struggle with every bit of strength I had, elbows flying. I pitched my head forward, which Dornan obviously wasn’t expecting, and snapped it back, crying out in pain as the back of my head slammed against his face. I heard a sickening crunch and wondered if I’d broken his nose.
‘Stop,’ he said firmly, as something warm and wet dropped onto my shoulder. I had made his nose bleed. But I didn’t care. I continued to struggle, even as he wrapped one hand around my face, pinching my nose shut and sealing off my mouth at the same time with his death grip.
I immediately tried to get a breath in and failed, sucking at the airless vacuum Dornan had created.
‘Calm down,’ Dornan murmured in my ear, his blood continuing to trickle onto my shoulder. But I was possessed by grief, in the most ironic way. I had grieved my family, and now they would grieve me, and none of us had actually died.
Dornan’s mouth was warm at my ear, his words sounding further and further away as I struggled for breath.
‘Listen, baby,’ he whispered in that smoke and gravel voice. ‘They will mourn you. They will grieve you. And they will stop trying to get you back.’
I fought for air, but none came. The world started to spin, the only constant and clear thing in my universe the haunting voice in my ear.
‘You’re free, now,’ he murmured. ‘They will let you go.’
I reached my hands out desperately, wanting to touch my loved ones, even though I knew they stood hundreds of metres away. They couldn’t believe this farce, surely? It wasn’t me. Her arms were shorter than mine, her skin was lighter. I was alive! I was right here.
The sun pounded overhead, blinding me with its ferocity, and I continued to reach out, until my arms grew too heavy. They fell to my sides as I drooped in Dornan’s unrelenting embrace, and the world burst from yellow to black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MARIANA
Dornan must have carried me the entire way back down the trail and hefted me into the back seat. I awoke to my head hitting the window behind me.
I tried to back up as he crawled on top of me, his fingers like vices on each of my thighs.
I screamed, and he slapped me across the face so hard I tasted blood. Rage poured off me in waves, and if I clenched my jaw any harder I was going to shatter every tooth in my mouth.
Well, fuck. I couldn’t beat him and he was too strong for me to even try. The struggle left my limbs as I let myself melt into the car seat below me, wanting to die. I’d just witnessed my family unearth my corpse, or what they thought was my corpse, so why press on? Why hope that life would ever be any different?
‘If it makes any difference,’ Dornan said quietly, ‘I am very sorry that this happened to you, Ana.’
I sobbed, then, because there was nothing else for me to do. I opened my mouth and sucked in deep lungfuls of air, my head whirling, as my body shook with my despair.
‘I don’t want your pity,’ I spat, my eyes flooding with more tears.
And then, softer, ‘You took away their last hope. Why did you do that?’
He gazed down at me, and he was terrifying. He caressed the side of my face with a dominance that said he wasn’t ever going to let me go.
