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He stopped.
He set the ring down on the table and picked up something else without a word. Then smiled as he showed me the needle before he slipped it into my arm.
“Wh-what? No...” The air around me became foggy.
There was still pain, but I was floating in it now. I wasn’t sure that I had a body, though Nathan was able to touch it. He got rid of the handcuffs. But I still couldn’t move, trapped in this interior world looking out.
I watched everything through a pane of clouded glass. I was observing a film of the last moments in my life. Was this the way it always felt near the end?
I think I made sounds of pain when he moved me. Maybe I did. Maybe I only made them in my mind.
When I’d looked at the room before, I hadn’t seen the dress hanging on the wall. It was slinky and black. The kind of dress that I might have worn had I stayed with Nathan and been a part of the West dynasty. The kind of dress that cost a year’s salary.
Pain seared my legs—I had legs?—when he pulled on tights. I wasn’t anything more than a doll for him to dress. Sheer black tights that brought friction against new burns. New scars.
Next were shiny black high heels. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn high heels.
Nathan lifted me onto my feet, and I flopped against his body, unable to hold myself upright. Even more than the blazing lines of pain, I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t want to feel this. He got the dress over my head and let it flutter to the floor.
It fit perfectly.
He brushed my hair and dusted my face with makeup. The finishing touch was the still-hot engagement ring. It no longer glowed, but it still burned when he shoved it onto my finger—his own hand protected with a glove—along with a wedding ring. It added to the cloud of suffering I was already floating in.
Nathan leaned over me and smiled. It was the kind of smile that he used to give me when we were in love and I’d thought he was my whole world. He cupped my cheek. “See, Evelyn? I would have taken care of you. But I keep my promises. Even if you don’t deserve them.”
Distant horror clanged through me. He’d said that before, but here in this floating world I couldn’t quite reach that memory. What had he promised me? What was he doing?
Sitting me up, he leaned me against the end of the bed and pressed a pen into my hand. Dragged my fingers across a piece of paper.
Oh my God. It was a marriage license, and now he had my fingerprints on it and the pen. This was what he’d always wanted. And now he had it. Could this be legal? Didn’t I have to have a say in that?
I blinked. It was Nathan. He’d found a way. Or bought a way.
“Perfect,” he said.
He took Lena first, carrying her unconscious body out of the room.
I tried to move while he was gone. Every ounce of my will went into forcing motion into my body, but nothing responded. I was powerless in my own skin. My mind cleared a little, and the panic began to rise. I was running out of time, and now he was taking me somewhere else. How would Lucas find me? How would anyone find me?
They had to find me, right? I didn’t realize that I’d been holding on to that hope. But now that it was slipping away, I was unravelling.
Nathan strode back into the room and looked around. He doused the fire and tossed the poker that he’d used into the ashes.
Then he came for me, and I was blindfolded. Now there was truly nothing but pain as he lifted me and carried me. Laid me down next to Lena—her breathing was even in my ear. At least she was breathing. That was good.
Movement made me dizzy. I was in a car. Where were we going? I grasped at the straws of my memory. They were almost there. What had he promised me?
I lost all sense of time in the darkness, so I couldn’t say how long we drove. But I felt the stop, and when he ripped the blindfold off my eyes, the first blush of dawn light was painting the sky. And I knew the view. We were in the park in Garnet Bend. The beautiful one where Lucas had first kissed me, and he’d asked me if this might be my place. Even then I’d known that he meant with him.
A place with flowers.
Oh, fuck.
Nathan’s voice rang out of memory, and I couldn’t believe that, even drifting in a drugged sea, that I’d ever forgotten those words.
I promise, Evelyn. I will bury you somewhere beautiful. In a field of flowers. Even if you don’t fucking deserve it.
He was going to bury me, and there wasn’t time. Lucas would never find me here. He wouldn’t know where to look. I couldn’t stop the tears that flowed, grief along with icy terror pouring over me like a waterfall.
