Page 43 of Redemption

I did that.

I snuffed out her spark, her trust and her light.

Regret churns in my chest, aches more than the bullet wound ever did. I know she hesitated to give herself to me, but I know a part of her felt something, something that was good, and pure.

I ripped that to pieces, and now she won’t even leave her fucking house.

Salvatore thinks I’ll kill her. I’ll let him believe that.

I won’t kill her. I’ll save her.

When she’s ready, when she comes back out, I’ll set my plan in motion. I don’t think she’ll like it one bit. She’ll kick and scream and hate me. That’s the price I’ll pay for what I did to this little woman.

Thirteen

Kerry

The bruises are greenish-yellow, the worst of the swelling has abated, and finally I can cover them up. I’m due at work in forty minutes. I stare at my hollow eyes, trying to find Kerry in them, but she’s not there. All I see is black eyes full of hate, all I feel is rough fingers around my throat.

Patting foundation on my skin, I force him out of my head. Time has not been my friend. Two weeks have made the bruises begin to fade. On my skin. Inside, I’m as raw as the moment I left that dark harbor. I’m there, on repeat, and still I find it so hard to remember. It’s as if our moments together fade every time I try to remember them. I grasp for them and they flee, farther and farther into the recesses of my mind. I should know these things. I’ve studied this for years. Suppression mechanisms. It’s not the same to read about them as have them happening to you.

I grasp for my sanity. Sanity lies in memories because memories are what makes us who we are. They slip through my fingers like smoke, a mirage, dissipating into thin air, every morning bringing me further away from who I was, closer to the unknown.

I try to hate him.

Christian.

But I can’t grasp him either.

It’s an empty shell that sets her foot at the center that first morning. I play my role.

Routine kicks in when I’m with the kids. I play my part. I fight for my life. I can’t out Christian Russo, because that would point Salvatore to me. It would kill me. Literally. Chloe looks at me with big, worried eyes. She’s come by every evening since that first night, except for the last few days, after I told her she needed to think of her own safety. She’s cooked for me, sat with me. She hasn’t poked, she’s just been there.

I covermy bruises with long sleeves and lots of makeup. As the weeks pass, they fade and disappear. My frozen core doesn’t thaw. I’m locked in the moments when I knew I was going to die by his hands.

My studies go to shit. I can’t pretend to learn when I can’t even read one sentence to its end. Instead of facing the inevitable meeting with the dean, I quit.

In the end I don’t know why I fight to live. Alone in my house every night, I pace, my chest tight, my stomach in knots.

Sometimes I wish for a knock on the door. I imagine Christian coming to finish what he started.

But he doesn’t, and that’s where he has left me. His appearance in my life planted a dark vortex in me and it grows, and it festers. Oh, it will kill me. Just not now. I’ll be forced to live with it until I either end it myself, or I finally come to the end that has been planned for me since the dawn of time.

I sit alone at night, on the hardwood floor in front of the huge windows. The bridge glitters in the distance. I sit with a cup of tea, empty inside, and pour hurt on blank pages. I write for hours. I write to remember. I write to forget. I write so I can close the book one day, tuck it away and let my pain go.

One day. One day that feels very far away.

My period is late.I don’t think much about it. Extreme stress can screw with your hormones.

I don’t bleed the next month either.

With a pounding heart, I buy a little harmless-looking, pen-like white object in my local pharmacy and do what it says. I stare at it the whole night, hour after hour, unable to fathom the result, my mind blank regarding what this means.

The pen is steady as I write. I examine the feelings in my heart, the flutter in my belly, and I know it’s the right thing to do. The right thing in a world with so many wrongs.

Yeah, there’ll be questions, but since nobody except Chloe really knows anything dangerous, it won’t be that difficult. A night out, a drunken one-night stand with a cute guy. It’s what I’ll tell them. My parents will frown. My friends will act up, but accept it. No one needs to know the truth. No one can know about Christian.

And Chloe… I’ll pass that bridge when I get there. I’ll figure something out.