“I didn’t want to believe it when Ivy told me.” He shook his head, nose flaring, eyes growing wilder and wilder. “She said she saw you two together. She said Theo was fucking you, but I told her it wasn’t possible.” He laughed at that. “I said, not Aspen. Not my sweet girlfriend who barely fucks me, let alone anyone else. Guess the joke’s on me, huh?”
I didn’t have strength to respond, not even to remind him that he was cheating on me, too. He wasn’t innocent. He wasn’t a victim. I wished with everything I had in me that I could reach the knife, that I could drive it into his foot and run away, that I could escape this monster once and for all.
But I couldn’t do anything but lie there.
Joel shook his head the longer I went without responding, and then, he reared back and kicked me hard in the stomach. “I should have never brought you on this boat, you ungrateful bitch,” he seethed.
I think I groaned. I think I doubled over in pain, but my head was so fuzzy, my vision darkening, that I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
“Better yet, I should have kicked your boring, prude ass to the curb years ago. God knows I could have had any girl I wanted at CU.” He paused. “But there’s just something about you, Aspen Dawn,” he added with a smirk, tilting his head as he watched me writhe on the floor. “Seems Theo has fallen under your spell, too.”
Then, he leaned down close enough for me to see the veins popping out in his forehead.
“But here’s my promise, baby,” he whispered, not giving a single care to the fire spreading more and more, the black smoke thickening around us.
I wanted to cough.
I needed to cough, but nothing came.
“If I can’t have you? No one can.”
Joel tilted his head one way and then the other, watching me, waiting for a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he stood straight again, and like a slow-motion nightmare, he pointed the gun directly at my head.
And I knew now what it was.
That feeling I’d had that first day on the boat, when the sun was high and warm on my neck in Barcelona — the way my stomach had somersaulted like we were in a deep sea storm even though we were still tied up at the dock.
It was a warning.
I didn’t see it then, didn’t recognize it as anything more than nerves and maybe a little sorrow swimming in my gut.
But now, with the blood pooling around my head, soaking into the teak and my hair all the same, I understood.
It was a warning.
The universe knew long before I did the way this all would end, and it cautioned me the only way it knew how.
But I ignored it.
Now, as the blackness invaded my vision, the splitting ache at the crown of my head going numb, I caught one last glimpse of the man responsible for it all and I wondered how I never saw it coming.
How did I never see what he was capable of, when pushed, when threatened?
How did I ever let him hold me, kiss me, have me in every way there is to be had?
How did I fall for the lie those eyes told, for the heart within that chest, for a man so evil?
They say love is blind, and in most cases, I imagine that means you look past the faults of those you love — how they leave the cap off the toothpaste or throw their dirty clothes on the floor — or perhaps past your own inhibition telling you that maybe you could do better, that maybe you deserve more.
In this case, it meant death.
Through the fiery haze, the smoke and the flames, the broken crystal and the last fragments of my heart — I saw the smirk of victory on his face.
I tried to ask him why, but it came out as a cough instead, the blood around my mouth bubbling with the effort.
And then, everything went dark.
Everything came in flashes and sounds.
Crackling.
A flash of Joel flying backward.
Gunshot.
A flash of arms and legs on the ground, of smoke swirling, of fire.
A voice.
Theo’s worried eyes flicking between mine, his hands on my face, his words indiscernible.
Stay with me.
Was that what he said?
Sirens.
The night sky. Stars. Flashing lights. Smoke.
It all went black then, but for what felt like only a blink before I heard the faint sound of beeping.
It was soft at first, then louder, and louder, until it felt so loud I thought my head might split. I willed my eyes to open, but they wouldn’t for the longest time. My lids were too heavy. My response time was too slow.
When I finally cracked one eye open, a young woman stood above me, calling out something to someone. The words sounded like distorted music, a blurring of sounds and syllables.
“Theo,” I tried to say, but my throat was dry, raw, unable to make a sound.
The woman shined a flashlight into each of my eyes, and then she offered me a smile.
Rest, she said in a thick accent.
And I did.
With permission from that stranger, I slipped into a deep, almost coma-like sleep for what felt like years. I was haunted by fever dreams, but they came in the same flashes as before, disappearing just as soon as they came to fruition.
I came to with that same low beeping, only it was more tolerable this time. My eyes opened a little easier, too, and I blinked several times, taking in my surroundings.
I was in a hospital.
That much was easy to discern from the bed I was in, the tubes hooked up to various parts of my body, the thin
