‘It's okay, baby.’ His voice is muffled.
‘It's not okay.’
Then something casts back the darkness.
A nightlight, in the shape of a star, spills soft yellow light out from under the bed. That’s what he’d been reaching for. He pulls himself back up on the bed, but still pins me under him.
‘I bought you this. For when you stay at mine.’
The gesture is too sweet. I don’t know whether to hug him for the light or slap him for lying.
‘Let me go,’ I say. I grab at the headboard with my free hand, trying to gain leverage against him. ‘You lied to me. I trusted you.’
‘I didn’t mean for that to happen. I don’t want to hurt you. I never mean to hurt you. You got to know that, Amy.’
That’s what his mouth says, but his eyes are still full of that crazed, consuming lust I remember so well. The kind that can’t be dissuaded with begging or tears.
‘Really? All the times you hurt me, but only now you care?’
He licks the tears from my cheeks, makes a pleased sound. The scared part of me wants to fight him, to go on resisting, but the needy part of me wants to disappear into him.
Two souls twisted into one bad fate.
When Shepherd releases my arms, I rise on my elbows and try to get out from under him. That quickly, he grabs me again.
‘I didn’t mean for a lot of them to happen. A lot of things I wish I hadn't done to you. Lot of other things I want to do again. I told you I can’t stay away from you. How I can’t control myself. It's been a long time, Amy.’
‘It hasn't been that long.’
I choke down my tears. He’s watching me in a predatory way, his gaze on my neck. He leans forward and licks at the salty sweat I can feel trickling down to my shoulder.
‘Let me tell you,’ he says between licks. ‘The last sixteen days and a half have been really fucking long.’
‘Didn’t you call your friend?’ I say it in the heat of the moment. I’m hurt and confused, and my words come out like tumbling gravel. I don’t know why I say it. I didn’t mean to say it.
‘Didn’t you hear me? I told you, Amy, every other girl in the world means fuck all to me. I only want you,’ he rasps.
He stops licking me and eases back to look into my eyes. For a moment his eyes soften and he says, ‘I promise this time, it'll be better. I'll be better. I was a bastard for lying, okay. I lied because it was the only way I could pull those broken strings of yours and force you to fix yourself right —’
‘Shepherd, you broke my heart when I was fourteen, okay. I thought I would die. I actually wanted to die so that it would go away . . .’
My shallow breaths hurt in my chest. Years of pain, years of feeling like I did something wrong, that I wasn’t good enough, and never knowing the reason why he buried me six feet under without him dropping a single tear for me.
‘Amy, I don’t know what I can say to make what I did right. There is nothing I can say.’
Pain throbs in my heart, tugging me back to the past, back to a time where Shepherd left me to rot alone in Greystone.
‘Everybody in this town settles like dust,’ I murmur. ‘You got out of this town. But I was like everyone else. I was never going to go anywhere. I didn’t get to leave. I’m — I’m stuck.’
‘Baby, look at me. Look at me,’ he rasps. ‘I never moved on or got out. You know why?’
I rattle my head. Something broken.
‘Because I couldn’t leave you behind. I kept coming back, watching you in the shadows when you weren’t looking. The anonymous donations to your sister — that was me. I never left you, Amy. Not completely. There are bits of me in the dust.’
He’s still holding me down, his confession breaking me.
‘Why’d you think it’s your fault Elizabeth got brain damage?’
A single tear drops down my face. He strokes it with his thumb. ‘I . . . She told me to keep quiet. If I just . . .’ I look into his eyes, a black pool of concern. ‘There is a hell inside my head that I cannot escape. I hate myself, Shepherd. I really hate myself from the bottom of my heart.’
‘Amy, baby, you need to quit hating yourself. Don’t let the past drag you to Hell. Try and move on.’
‘If I move on, if I fix the hurt, then it’ll mean I’ve forgotten. The pain is a daily reminder it happened. It tore my world apart and I have no idea what to do with the pieces. I know the old Elizabeth is gone but I can’t believe it. Does that make any sense?’
He nods, stroking my hand with his thumb.
‘They say when you have a limb amputated you can still feel it,’ I continue. ‘Even though it’s not there you can’t . . . shake the sensation that it is. And the worst thing is that it . . . it itches. It itches and it burns and it hurts and . . . you can’t do a thing about it.’
I pause. ‘It’s your brain apparently. It’s wired to think that your arm or your leg is still there, and it can’t accept that it isn’t. It’s like the world doesn’t make sense without it. There’s no way out . . . I don’t
