it.
Its coldness burned against his flesh. She raised herself on tiptoe, bringing her head close to his. The instability made her teeter on her toes and Josh steadied her, putting his hands around her waist. Taking that as her signal, she kissed Josh, her tongue seeking entry to his
mouth.
Sickened by the intrusion, Josh’s face contorted in disgust. He twisted his head to break the kiss. He tasted the sharp bite of alcohol from her in his mouth and its odor filled his nostrils. She’d been drinking, and more than one beer. It wasn’t a good sign.
Bell leaned into him, applying more pressure. Her heat marked an outline against Josh’s body. Although slight, her weight seemed heavy on him and resistance was difficult. Finally, he broke the cloying embrace with a powerful shove that almost made him topple.
The force propelled Bell backward. She lost her hold on Josh and her balance. In an attempt to save herself, she let go of the bottle of beer. The bottle slammed into one of the overhead cabinets before striking the vinyl flooring without breaking. The spilt contents fizzed on the floor. Bell crashed into the cupboards and grabbed onto them to save herself from falling.
Josh dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and looked at it, half expecting to see blood.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
“You still don’t get it, do you?”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
“I love you. I want you back. Why do you think I’ve been doing this?” Bell answered her own question.
“Because I want you free from all things so you have only me left.”
Bell’s motives shocked and abhorred him. She was
crazy. She had to be to think destroying him would drive them together. It was a madness he never thought possible in Bell. Did she expect him to thank her, flattered by the lengths she had gone to? Josh shook his head.
“Do you honestly think I would come back to you? I broke up with you because I made a choice. I chose my family. And even though you’ve taken that away from me, I still wouldn’t come back to you.”
Josh stopped. He had expected a tirade of verbal
abuse fueled by disappointment and rejection, but there was silence. There was nothing further to be said.
Bell had stopped looking at him. Her gaze was aimed over his shoulder. A blank look took over her face, as if she didn’t understand what she saw. Josh turned his head to the point of interest.
A flash of colors was all he saw. At the speed it was moving, Josh didn’t get enough time to focus on the object, only its blur, before it hit him. He felt it, though. It smashed across his head, numbing him with its force. Josh fell forward, out cold before he hit the ground.
Josh came to. He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious.
An intense ache emanated from the back of
his head. It rippled outward from its epicenter like waves in a millpond. He raised a hand to the ache, but the briefest movement drove knives through his skull.
He found a lump the size of an egg on the back of his head and the pain forced his eyes closed. He left the bump alone, but became aware of his sore cheek,
which must have broken his fall.
Bell looked very concerned with her head cocked to one side, her face so sad, so disappointed. For the first time since her return, she looked human, possessing a weak as well as a strong side. She looked like a nervous child waiting her turn to go into the doctor’s office for her shots. She spoke, but the words came out as an inaudible murmur.
He saw the knife. Not the whole knife, just the handle, its blade embedded in her chest below her left
breast. He noticed the blood. Too much blood. It
stained the white teddy; the harsh crimson made more vivid by the pale silk. The material clung tightly to her punctured body. The blood, still oozing from the
wound, ran down her onto the floor and formed a pool around her legs. His slow-witted brain hadn’t registered that she was sitting. Before the blow she had been standing, but now she was slumped untidily against the cupboards. He tried not to entertain thoughts of who had done this to Bell, but failed. He had to get out, but he couldn’t stop staring at the blood.
Slowly, the pool expanded across the floor in Josh’s direction. He recoiled on hands and knees from the creeping mass like it was scalding lava. Josh had seen deep cuts before and there’d been blood, but he had never seen a cut so deep or with as much blood as this.
Doctors dealt with these sights every day, but he couldn’t cope. Josh slunk further away from the injured woman.
Bell raised her right arm with her hand outstretched and beckoned to him. Blood trickled between her pale lips. “Josh.”
Josh stopped moving. He stared at the pool, the light reflected on its smooth surface. He got to his feet. His head swam. He wasn’t sure if the blow or the bloody sight caused it. He came as close as he could without stepping in the mess. Still, it wasn’t close enough for Bell. She called to him. He had no choice. He walked in her blood and crouched at her side.
Bell looked at him with sad eyes. The color of her rich Asian skin had drained to a jaundiced yellow. “I love you, Josh,” she whispered.
“I know you do.” Josh honestly believed she did and though he didn’t return that love, this wasn’t the time to be brutally honest with her. She was dying and he wasn’t going to give her cause to curse his name with her dying breath, even after all she’d done to him. He had possessed feelings for her once.
Josh’s eyes flicked between her face and the wooden knife handle poking out from her chest, disconcerted by its movement. The handle shifted back and forth with the weak breaths she took. He found it hard to concentrate on Bell with the knife moving in time with her breathing, as if the blade were part of her body.
Should he remove the knife or leave it? Josh didn’t know what was best, but watching Bell die wasn’t the answer.
“I’ll get help,” he said.
He went to get up, but Bell snapped a grip on his arm with a strength that terrified him. He looked at her bloody hand on his wrist. He sneered as the fluid squeezed out either side of her palm and between her fingers. Her bloodstained handprint on his forearm was his first physical contact with the stabbing. Up until then, he’d been a witness to the wound, but the
blood on his arm made him part of it, tainted him by its contact.
“No. I want you to stay. I want you to be near me,”
Bell said.
Josh hesitated. He nodded to her and shifted from a crouch to kneel beside her, so he was better positioned to comfort her. As his knees dipped into the blood, he felt its lukewarm heat soaking through the fabric of his jeans. He clasped a hand over hers and squeezed out a thin smile.
He wanted to tell her everything was going to be
okay, the doctors would sort her out, but the lies didn’t come. Instead, he watched Bell die, the blood slipping from her punctured body taking her life with its flow.
“Josh,” she called. She didn’t look at him, but directly ahead into the dark of the living room.
“Yes, Bell?” Josh couldn’t take his eyes off her, not out of lust, which he once held for her, but out of a bizarre compulsion to see this woman die.
“I’m so sorry, Josh.”
“It’s a bit late to be sorry. We’ve done what we have done and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”
“I’m sorry about what I did.”
