Lovegame(104)

Chapter 30


My phone is buzzing insistently from its spot on my nightstand and I reach out a hand to slap at it. I’m so tired, so, so tired, and all I want to do is lie here and sleep for a thousand years. Maybe longer if I can get away with it.

I’m smart enough to know that it’s part exhaustion, part depression. I’m still half-asleep, but already my mother’s words are chasing themselves around in my head, circling over and over and over again.

I spilled my guts to Ian last night, told him things I’d never told anyone. And he’d let me, had held me and looked shocked and angry and horrified when all along, he’d known. All along he’d been getting close to me because he wanted my story for his book.

His book.

God, just the thought makes me nauseous. Makes my head spin and my stomach cramp and my whole body feel like it’s on ice.

How could I have been so stupid?

More, how could I have made such a rookie mistake?

It’s not like I didn’t know who he was, not like I didn’t know that he wanted my story. I was just too much of an idiot to know which story he was after…

My phone buzzes again, the sound grating on my raw nerves. My head is already pounding—a combination of lack of sleep and betrayal, I’m sure—and I can’t handle any more. I’ve already dealt with Ian’s betrayal today, and the fact that the Red Ribbon Strangler is my old bodyguard. Expecting me to deal with whoever’s on the other end of that line is one thing too many when it’s all I can do to keep the nausea at bay.

The phone buzzes yet again and I grit my teeth to keep from screaming, largely because I’m afraid once I start I’ll never stop. I’ll keep screaming and screaming and screaming until they come and take me away to some hospital for movie stars and rich people, an insane asylum disguised as a place for plastic surgery and rehab. Considering where my mother ended up all those years ago, I’m intimately familiar with such establishments.

I am not her. I am not going to end up in one of them.

And so I keep my jaw locked against the screaming and the nausea and the betrayal so fresh that it burns like acid. I shove it all down as deep as I can get it, pretending as I do that it doesn’t make me sick. That it doesn’t make my stomach churn and my mouth taste like vomit.

The phone buzzes again—it’s vibrating this time, as whoever has been calling suddenly switches to texts. I moan, start to roll over to get away from the sound. But my body is heavy, lethargic. I can barely get it to move. In the end, I settle for grabbing a pillow and dragging it over my head to block out the noise—and the light.

Except the pillow is wet. Sticky. Salty. I shove it away with a gasp, struggling to open my eyes against the overwhelming lethargy that continues to pull me down, pull me under.

My face is wet from the pillow and I bring my hand to my cheek, try to rub the stuff away. I finally manage to get my eyes open and I glance down at my fingers, trying to see what’s on them.

I’m so out of it that what I’m seeing doesn’t compute for several long seconds. When it does—when I register that my hand is stained with something red and thick—my adrenaline finally kicks in. I stagger out of bed, staring in horror at the pillow I’d just pulled over my head. At the crisp white sheets and blankets that I’d been under.

They’re doused in blood, covered with the thick, viscous liquid. And so am I, my gown heavy with the stuff. My arms and legs streaked red with it.

I stumble backward, desperate to get away, but I get my foot tangled in the comforter that’s on the floor and go down hard—right in a puddle of blood. That’s when I start to scream, loud, high-pitched shrieks that can probably be heard in Mexico.

Over and over and over again I scream, my mind racing. My body working of its own volition, crab-walking backward away from the bed. From the blood.

But I’m dragging it with me, can see the smears of it left in my wake—wet and red and terrifying.

There’s a tiny part of my brain that’s still working, that’s telling me to breathe. To calm down. To think. It’s almost impossible to hear it over my strangled cries and the frantic beating of my heart. But I try to listen anyway, try to stop screaming long enough to take a deep breath as the room swims around me.

It’s not blood, I tell myself again and again. It’s not blood. It’s not blood. It’s not blood.

It can’t be.

But it’s in my nose now, in my mouth. Salty, coppery, thick and I know—I know—that it’s exactly what I’m afraid it is.

Oh my God. Oh. My. God. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

I don’t stop shuffling backward until my hand brushes against something sharp. The sudden prick of pain cuts through the hysteria and I lift my hand into my lap and stare at the new, jagged cut running across my palm. It’s bleeding now, my own blood mingling with the rest of the mess. Bright red mingling with dark.

I glance around wildly, trying to figure out what cut me. Trying to figure out where I am.

The last thing I remember is my mother helping me to bed. That’s it. There’s nothing after that. Nothing to account for what’s happening now. Nothing to account for all of this.

I can’t stop screaming any more than I can stop the blood pouring from my hand.

There’s a small part of me that knows I should get to the bathroom, that knows I should wrap a towel around my cut. But I can’t move. I can’t think. I can’t do anything but sit here and scream.