Page 49 of Save Us
When I open my eyes again, she’s already gone, and I feel…empty. Lost. Eventually, I climb back into bed and pull Rosie close to me, all the while trying to even out my breathing, so I don’t wake her.
Beth
I’ve decided that this mausoleum of a house is even worse than the one in New York. Having been here for the last four days, knowing that my real family is barely an hour away, and that my daughter, Xander, and the ocean is within reach, I almost feel like I can’t bear it. It is so torturous, I’m even lower than I was on the other side of the country. I think I have muttered all of five words since being here, not that anyone notices the porcelain doll who is propped in the corner of the room. I am here for my husband’s pleasure. Nothing more.
After his attack against me in New York, Oliver has fallen into his usual pattern of delivering ridiculously elaborate bunches of flowers. The entire house looks like a wedding reception. However, all they do is remind me of what he did. Each delicate petal only embodies his guilt for raping me in anger. Every time he presents a new bunch, I smile sweetly, all the while thinking how little they mean to me. Oliver’s ability to buy them is akin to the average person buying a loaf of bread from the supermarket. There’s no real effort in acquiring them, and they hardly make up for his brutality.
I still listen though, take everything in and try to consider how it will affect me, and whether I need to make my final peace with the world. So far, I have learned that there have been more stories written by Xander’s paper, but they obviously aren’t quite as controversial. Apart from his cutting words and constantly changing moods, he doesn’t get anywhere near as angry with me.
Dinners have been strained affairs with just the two of us. He is constantly staring at me while I try to look anywhere else other than at him. We keep mostly silent, but his glare often disarms me, and though I’m thankful he has kept his hands to himself, I’m not under any illusion that they won’t be coming for me again soon. I’ve given up trying to work out what he’s thinking. If I were to hazard a guess from his eyes alone, it’s often something between lust, obsession, and bitterness. Oliver knows that even after five years of being tied to him, I don’t love him. Not even close. In fact, after his last few attacks, I can’t even say I hate him anymore. I nothing him.
After Oliver forces me into emotionless sex, like he does pretty much most nights under the guise of trying to conceive, tonight I fall asleep quickly. A blessing, for I always look forward to the warm shadow of darkness. Just as it clears into a dream, I see Xander sat before one of Bodhi’s wild bonfires where he’s showing Rosie how to toast marshmallows on the end of a long stick. It’s the first time I’ve dreamed of her as a little girl, and it’s…everything!
She looks like me in my childhood photos, all blond hair and pearly white teeth on show as she giggles with her nose scrunched up. He’s laughing with her, real, heartfelt chuckles while he tries to get her to hold the stick even marginally close to the flames. I stand a little way away, greedily watching and enjoying the scene for all it has to offer. I smile and tell myself that this picture before me is worth it, all of it.
“Daddy, who’s that lady over there?” Rosie asks Xander with an English accent. I find it is strange for she would surely be an American child through and through. I shake the confusion away and look back to see that she’s pointing right at me, and now with Xander staring at me too. A small smile graces his lips with his floppy black hair hanging over his moss-green eyes. He then turns around to offer her an even bigger smile than the one he was giving me.
“That’s Mommy, silly,” he finally replies, making her gasp in shock.
“She is?” she asks with a huge smile on her face. “Why is she crying?”
Her words prompt me to reach up and feel my cheeks, which are wet and hot to touch, but it just makes me laugh, knowing that these are tears of happiness. Tears that reassure me that I made the right decision five years ago.
“She’s just happy to see us, baby,” he says to her, “but here, watch this.”
He hands his stick with the melting marshmallow on the end, to her little outstretched fingers, before standing up and walking over to me. As he saunters over, he pulls a sexy smirk across his handsome features that renders me speechless.
“Beth?”
“Yes,” I whisper so quietly, I don’t even know if he heard me. However, I can’t quite breathe, so anything else would have been impossible.
He continues forward and grabs me as soon as I am within reach. We look at one another for a few long moments, indulging in one another’s intense gaze before he theatrically throws me back, and kisses me like a Hollywood actress. I yelp, then grin against his lips. All the while, I listen to the delicious sound of Rosie giggling in the background.
“Is this real?” I ask him.
“No,” he replies softly, when a sudden bang abruptly wakes me from my fairy tale.
Chapter 20
Beth
The sound of angry shouting and gunshots have me sitting bolt upright in bed, and with a thin coating of perspiration all over my rigid body. Beside me, Oliver sits up before leaping out of bed and reaching for his pants, which he had cast over one of the small armchairs. My heart is pounding when I hear another gunshot, followed by a blood curdling scream coming from downstairs. Oliver looks over to me before pacing over to grab a gun from his bedside table, which he then slides into the waistband of his pants. He looks at me again with a clenched jaw before pacing over to the bedroom door. Once there, he cautiously places his ear up against the wood. I gasp when someone runs across the marble flooring downstairs, with a distinctive click, clack, sound of shoes upon a hard surface. My hands clutch tightly to the bed sheet when I whisper his name out into the black space between us, but he simply places a finger to his lips to silence me.
“Who’s afraid of the big, bad, wolf? The big, bad, wolf? The, big, bad, wolf?” someone, a male voice, sings with a theatrical laugh at the end. Whoever it is sounds like he is climbing up the stairs, one determined footstep at a time. I begin to tremble when Oliver takes out his gun and places it up to rest upon his lips.
“Oh, Lawrence?” the same someone sing songs.
“Boss? Took out the guards outside, where to now?” another man yells from downstairs, prompting whoever it was that was just singing, to begin laughing again.
“There is no one else,” he replies with glee in his voice, “just the Mr and Mrs!”
“Get into the bathroom and lock it!” Oliver whisper shouts angrily to me. I immediately do as he says because I’m terrified and that sounds like a good option. However, the curious side of me cannot help leaving the door open a crack so I can keep an eye on how this is going to pan out.
“What do you want?” Oliver shouts through the door. “You’re messing with the wrong man if you’re looking for money!”
“Oh, I disagree,” the man calls back with so much confidence, it makes him sound all the more terrifying. “I think I’ve found exactly the right man, and he’s hiding just behind this door.” Something, a blunt instrument, knocks on the door three times in a drawn out and dramatic fashion. “Oh, little pig, little pig, please let me in!”
I soon hear the click of Oliver pulling the safety off from his gun, followed by another click when he pulls the trigger.