“What’s the girl to you?” Hugo’s voice repeats in my head.
Maybe she’s my match.
My gaze drops to her chest where the V-neck sweater leaves her flesh bared. She’s wearing black and her hair’s down. I touch the softly curling strand that rests on her breast, then tuck it behind her ear. Her breathing changes, comes shorter, then stops altogether. She stands perfectly still and I feel her watching me even as my gaze hovers over her lips, the curve of her collarbone, the smoothness of her skin. I touch the necklace she’s wearing. She’s had it on since the first night. It’s a fine gold chain with a small cross hanging from it. I take the cross in my hand.
“Jesus won’t save you, you know,” I say, not looking at her, studying the cross instead. Ginny had one like it. Trapped beneath the rope, the cross had embedded itself into her skin when she’d hanged herself. I remember feeling the divot in her skin after I’d cut her down, torn the noose from her neck.
I remember feeling how her neck had broken. How her head lolled to the side when I laid it on my lap. I hoped it had happened fast, at least. Hope she hadn’t suffered.
No, that’s bullshit. She’d suffered long enough to do that.
I close my eyes, my head is bowed so Cilla can’t see my face. I don’t realize I’m squeezing until I feel the chain break, until I hear her gasp. I don’t look up. Instead, I close my fist over the little figure of Jesus on his cross and steel myself, forcing those images away, burying those memories deep in my gut. Willing myself to not see the chair she’d used lying on its side, not see her shoe on the floor beneath her, in a puddle of piss dotted with red. Not to see the blood on the insides of her thighs, the ripped sheets of skin.
I step back, turn away from Cilla, my hands on my face, my eyes, rubbing away the pictures that haunt me every day, every night.
“Dinner's at eight. Be dressed and at the table.” I force the words out, my voice sounding strange, haunted.
On the verge of a break.
I walk out of her room without turning back, head to my master suite at the end of the hall. Inside, I strip off my clothes, change into running gear, head back downstairs and out the back door. From there, I run. I run hard, not caring that the ground is still soaked after too many days of rain, not caring that darkness has descended and that the woods will be pitch black. Not caring about anything at all but the exertion, the exhaustion of muscle, the pain which is the only thing that can force away those images.
It was like that in prison too. That’s when I got so big. I lifted weights. I ran. I fought. Fuck, I raged. Pain is my Prozac. It’s the only thing that keeps the demons at bay. Without it, rage will take over. And it will level everything, leave a wasteland behind.
It will decimate me.
Cilla steps out of her bedroom at 7:59PM. It’s the same moment I exit mine. She stops dead when she sees me, presses her back into her closed door. I’m not sure if she’s aware her hand is touching her neck, the place where her necklace once was.
I smile. I almost want to say it’s to reassure her. Let her know I’m not going to hurt her. But the look I get makes me think I look like I’m baring my teeth in warning. I literally just ripped her necklace from her throat. I scare the shit out of her. It’s what I want, right? It’s what I told Helen earlier. So why do I feel like a shit?
“You look nice,” I say awkwardly when I reach her.
She’s wearing a knee-length black dress, this one with long sleeves. Her hair’s pulled up into a tight bun and her bangs pinned back.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice cautious, eyes never leaving mine like she’s searching, trying to figure out which version of me this is.
“Shall we?” I gesture to the stairs. She looks down and nods, turns to walk ahead of me. The dress plunges low and I suck in a breath at the sight of her naked back, the curve of her spine.
She shudders, hugs her arms around herself. She stops, I almost collide into her when she turns. “I should get a sweater.”
I shake my head, touch the flat of my hand to her lower back. A little shock sparks at the contact of flesh to flesh. I turn her. “I like you like this,” I say, feeling like a Neanderthal.
Her eyes search mine and I wonder what she sees. A monster, perhaps. A beast she fears. That thought equally draws and repels me. Silently, she nods, turns and we go down the stairs and into the dining room.