I’m also still wearing my dress from the night of the party, the dress itself and a good deal of my hands, arms, chest, and neck streaked with blood.Max’sblood, I realize with a shock of memory, and I fling myself out of the bed, rushing headlong for the door at the left of the room and praying it leads to a bathroom.
It does. I find myself kneeling in front of the toilet, vomiting up bile as I look down at my red-streaked skin, the blood flaking off. Whoever left me in this room had just set me atop the bed rather than under the covers, and it’s obvious why.
When I’ve puked up everything that will come out of my stomach, tears leaking down my face as I flush and lean heavily against the porcelain bowl, I look at the shower. I want, with equal parts, both to get clean and–in a more unsettling, macabre way–to keep the last traces of Max that I have with me.
The sight of the blood took me back to those last moments, and I feel beyond a shadow of a doubt that Max is gone. I’ve seen a dying man before, and there was nothing there that made me think Max would survive.
Especially not with his murderer standing just on the other side. I have no doubt that the grey-haired man would have shot Max again rather than let him get help. I’d seen the intent in the man’s face when he’d shoved the gun into Max’s belly.
I look down at the dress pooling around my legs and sigh. It doesn’t matter–I don’t have anything clean to change into after a shower anyway. The thought of whoever is keeping me here walking in on me while I’m in it is horrifying.
Instead, I pry myself off the bathroom floor, pausing to turn on the sink faucet and scoop cold water into my mouth briefly, rinsing and spitting before heading back into the bedroom. I crawl back onto the bed, sitting against the pillows, feeling the knot of dread in my stomach wind tighter and tighter.
I feel a little dizzy, a little lightheaded, and tired–to be expected after being unconscious and drugged for hours or days. I don’t know which, yet. It is, unfortunately, not a feeling that I’m unfamiliar with. I remember the same sensations from when I was dragged off of the plane in New York, having woken up a few times from the drugs between when I’d been picked up off the streets, when we boarded the plane, and when we landed.
The back of my head is sore, my throat still feels raw and sensitive from screaming and vomiting, and a headache pounds at my temples. But overall, physically, I feel better than expected for someone who’s been kidnapped.
Emotionally, I feel like a fucking wreck.
The last thing he ever said to you was goodbye, after showing you the ring he was going to give to another woman.
“Stupid…bullheaded…man!” I grit out through my teeth, pounding my fists ineffectually against the bed on either side of me. “Why wouldn’t you just listen to me?”
He’d wanted so badly to protect me. He’d been willing to marry someone else, to take up the family name he wanted nothing to do with, to enter into that world fully and make alliances and deals, all in the name of keeping me safe. He’d been willing to do so much, up to and including putting his life on the line–and all I’d wanted was for us to face it together.
Whoever my father is, whatever strange and powerful family is out there with their blood running through my veins, I don’t care. I’m not afraid of them. I should be–I know that–but what could they do to me that hasn’t already been done? I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, sold, violated, beaten, threatened, and grabbed off the street. The only thing left would be to torture or kill me, and at this point, death feels almost like a mercy.
I could have lived in a world without Max, where he still existed. I could have, somehow, accepted that we would have to live our own lives in time, that he was committed to something so much bigger than what he and I were to each other.
But I don’t think I can live in a world where Max isn’t, at all.
I don’twantto.
I also don’t think I’m brave enough to end it myself.
At some point, as I wait for the inevitable footsteps that will tell me that someone’s coming to inform me of what the fuck is going on, I doze off. My dreams are full of Max, of his hands touching me, his lips on mine, feeling myself surrounded by the safe warmth of him again.
It’s a jumble of images, of sensation andfeelingmore than anything. The memories of the first time we kissed, the way his breath hitched, the way his hands landed on my hips, the way he pulled me close, the cold bathroom counter beneath me as he’d set me atop it and kissed me deeper. I feel it all again, rushing through my memory, every touch and kiss and sigh of longing, in my bed and his bed and the study and the library, all the places we gave in to what we needed so badly.
I find myself wishing, even in the dream, that there had been even one time when it hadn’t been usgiving in. Where we hadn’t fought every step of the way until we couldn’t stand it any longer. That even just once, it had just been us together, joyfully, without the need to try to hold ourselves back.
Even in the dream, the grief of never having that now finds its way in.
The part of the dream that lingers the most is the first time, Max kissing his way down my body, his hands skimming over me like I was something to be cherished, savored, andworshiped. I’d never known what it felt like to be touched like that before Max and had never believed that I’d find it. He’d given me something that I know I’ll never find again, and I try to keep myself there, anchored in the dream, anchored beneathMaxas his body presses against mine, inside of me, his mouth finding mine all over again–
I feel him jerk suddenly, as if with pleasure, but then he rears back, a look of astonished shock on his face. I look down, following his gaze, only to see blood blossoming over the hard, smooth flesh of his stomach.
The blood drips down onto my bare belly, droplets first, and then a flood. I clutch Max’s face in my hands as the blood pours over me, too much for one human body, a tidal wave of it, until everything–me, the bed, the blankets and sheets, the floor below us–is awash in a sea of blood.
He cries out my name, calling for me, begging me to make it stop, but I can’t. No matter how hard I press my hand over the wound, the blood keeps gushing, and I can hear a pounding in my head over and over–
I jerk awake suddenly, and the hard, firm sound comes again. It’s a knock on the door, surprisingly polite for a kidnapper; not a sound in my head at all. I look around wildly, half-expecting to see the flood of red, but the only blood is what still streaks my dress and skin.
“Come in,” I call out weakly, still reeling from the dream and the strangeness of my captor bothering to knock. I can feel myself trembling all over. I clench my hands into fists to try to stop them from shaking, pushing myself upright against the pillows as I tuck my legs underneath myself. I feel like I’m falling to pieces, but whoever comes through that door, I don’t want them to see that.
I want tolookstrong, resilient, even if I don’t feel it in the slightest.
The door creaks open slowly. It takes me a second to register who’s standing there, looking fresh, stylish, and handsome in his black jeans and a t-shirt that clings to his muscled stomach and arms, his dark hair swept back, looking so much like Max for the blink of an eye that it makes my heart twist painfully in my chest.