Only I don’t sleep.
Rachel does. She drops off the moment her pretty head hits the pillow, while I’m still tucking her into our makeshift bed on the floor. I wait to count her breaths; at twenty, I creep back to the laptop and pull it sideways so the screen is private. It bathes me in a halo of glowing white.
There are seventeen unsent emails to Aeron Lore in my drafts folder. Back when I was still at high school, I used his blood money to fund a private investigator; that guy found jack shit for the most part, but he spotted that Rachel’s family had been paid money by Aeron’s mother and he also got me Aeron’s personal email. God, I long to fling something into his inbox—an olive branch dipped in tar, a cry for help, a shrieking clump of jazz hands. My name is Leontine and I am stuffed with your secrets. Are you afraid?
Tonight, I crack open a new draft and attach the video file.
I shouldn’t send it.
I shouldn’t.
Hello Aeron. Looky here: your creation, wearing mine.
The cursor hovers over the little x at the top right corner of the browser, my finger ready to press the mouse pad and just kill it. Kill it dead. Except it refuses to fall.
Would you like to take a tour of my body, Mr. Lore? Would you like to watch me sweat and writhe while you plot the trajectory of your fabled blade…?
Maybe it’s suddenly colder in the apartment, I don’t know, but it feels like my blood drops a few degrees at that thought. I picture Rach’s scars, the badly-healed puckers and dips in her flesh, until something nauseous twists my belly. Fear, yes, but another sensation besides.
Envy. I envy her once intimate relationship with him, despite the unfathomable stretch of pain that lingers ever after. If only I had access to his thoughts like that, I could do so much more.
Your email has been saved as a draft.
I deserve to drown.
CHAPTER TEN
Leo
Regret (noun): an alcoholic beverage, often binged on, never purged.
The first time he comes, I wake with my legs apart.
I’ve been warm for days in the dry heat of the island; it’s so unnerving to be cooler. But here I am, stripped, rough fabric against my back on the pallet, and my hands are pulled above me, cuffed to a ring on the wall. He lies between my legs, breathing over my bare skin and tracing the faint scars that criss-cross my inner thighs. Though it’s dark in here, I see awe creep across his brow.
“Aeron?” I whisper, unsure.
His gaze rolls up to meet mine, and it’s not Aeron at all. Perhaps once, he was like him, but then the unkind years crawled in. This is the second Aeron, the faded echo. He smells hot and sour, like death, and I know now that I’ve gone beyond fear; I exist in the other place now, the crimson war of shock.
He has a voice like a preacher, full of force and calm at the same time. “I didn’t expect this. I don’t know why.”
I try to writhe back, to put my knee in his face, but he pins my legs in two swift moves and leaves me yelping beneath the crush of him. When I slow, he brings one hand down to prod at the open lips of my *.
“He hasn’t cut you here,” he says thoughtfully.
“N—no.”
“But he wants to.”
“He doesn’t.”
“Of course he wants to.” He drags his cool palm down my thigh. Gets up. Stares down. “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” I lie, though despair cuts my voice to vague slivers, and of course, he understands. I can’t bring myself to say the name I gave him out loud.
“Well.” He cocks his head, appraising me as if I’m up for auction. “You can call me Abel.”
“Nice to meet you, Abel.” I pull my legs together. Try not to think about how my arms ache like they’ve been tied up in this position for hours, which means they probably have. “A pleasure.”