Page 41 of Bidding War

I’m not in my right mind, and I know it, but I have to do something, or I’ll hurt myself. I know that, too.

So, I force myself to walk more carefully to the bathroom, avoiding doorframes with my elbows and stepping the particular way I do if I’m sloppy drunk. Minding each footstep like it could be my last. Once I reach my bathroom, I turn on the shower and wait until it heats up to test the temperature instead of just climbing in blindly like normal. Don’t want to burn myself, and this old building’s hot water is the hottest I’ve ever had anywhere I’ve been.

But when I look in the mirror and start to undress, I freeze up.

His hand is on my throat. Purple already. I don’t normally bruise up this fast, but his grip…

Can’t think about it. I turn my head away from the mirror. I don’t want to see Neil’s hand on me. Don’t want to think about that ever again. I know I’ll have to. Tonight … it won’t just go away because I want it to. But right now, I don’t want to think about him. Or his hand. Or the way he pressed himself against me through our clothes. The sick, dirty feeling creeps over me again, and I turn to retch into the toilet just in time to miss vomiting all over my counter.

The one good thing about a small bathroom, I guess. Everything is within easy reach.

I rinse my mouth out and contemplate taking my clothes off. But it feels ungrateful to take them off. They protected me. Suppose I hadn’t had my clothes on … if … if anything had gone differently tonight, I’d be dead right now. I know it in my gut. He wouldn’t have left me alive.

I retch again at the thought, then climb into the shower, fully clothed. It feels good. Safe. Protected. But soon, it feels like wet clothes, and slowly, I take them off. Scarf first?—

Oh, my fuck. This is Neil’s scarf.

I fling it out of the shower as fast as possible and burst into tears. He had given me that scarf tonight, and I thought that was the sweetest thing. I am a fucking fool, and nearly a dead one, all because some guy told me exactly what I wanted to hear.

With startling lucidity, it hits me. Anderson has never told me what I wanted to hear. He has always been straight with me, even when I didn’t want him to be. That is how I know I can trust him. He might come from the worst kind of father, but he is honest with me. And he has the world’s best timing. God, if he hadn’t shown up tonight …

Why did he show up tonight? I never did get the chance to ask him. Was it just good timing? Did he happen to walk by and see—no. I’m not that naïve. He was watching me. He had to be. And if I ask him, he will tell me. He won’t lie. He’s Anderson West. There are gruesome things he’s capable of, but lying to me is not one of them.

And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t even care that he was following me.

Our breakup has sucked. I physically hurt when I am not with him. Call it codependency, but I don’t fucking care. I love that man. I am so grateful that he was here tonight that the method of his arrival doesn’t even ping my bad guy radar. My bad guy radar got a hard reset tonight.

My clothes are soaked through, so I pry them off of me to attempt to get clean. That sounds nice and good and like something I haven’t had in a long time. I scrub my hair and my body a few times before getting out. Doesn’t feel like enough to be clean again, though. But if I keep going, I’ll destroy my skin. Even with all the humidity in the air from the rain and wet snows we’ve had this year, it’ll dry out fast from indoor heating.

Rubbing lotion on my skin feels odd, so I give up after a forearm. I don’t want long, lingering strokes on me. Not even from my own hand. Instead, I dress in my softest pajamas, wring out my wet laundry into the tub, and toss it into the laundry bin before padding out to the kitchen.

Once I get there, I realize I was in the shower for over an hour. When was the last time that happened? I have no idea.

I’m a little more stable on my feet now, so I worry less about falling or bumping into things. I’d love some cheese, but using a knife seems like a bad idea at the moment. More stable, yes, but I might be prone to clumsiness with my still-shaking hands. Instead, I make a cup of tea and some dry toast to settle my upset stomach.

Nibbling at the edges, my mind wanders like it’s being nibbled, too. I have a bad case of the ifs. If I hadn’t gone out with Neil, none of this would be happening. If I hadn’t kissed him, he wouldn’t have felt entitled to me. If I hadn’t flirted with him in the first place, Anderson wouldn’t have committed murder.

Of course, it wasn’t murder. It was self-defense. But would anyone believe that? He’s my ex. He saw me with another man after he stalked me home. I know exactly how a prosecutor would pose the facts to a jury. The dry, hard, facts of the case do not add up to Anderson’s freedom.

Dry and hard. Like my toast. Blech.

I dump it into the trash and reach for my emergency chocolate I keep in the back of the cabinet. It’s a bag of chocolate chips, perfect for having just a little or a lot. Tonight, I might eat the whole bag. No, not tonight. This morning. Fuck me, when did it get so late?

Pouring a glass of wine to accompany my chocolate chip bowl, I take another deep breath. The scent of syrah is calming for some reason. Maybe it’s knowing about the impending warm buzz that does it. I dunno. All I know is I have wine and chocolate and Netflix, and I’m going to use all of this to phase out for a while.

I settle onto the couch with my junk food and click on the TV. Scrolling delays my drinking and snacking, so I pick something at random and let it flash before my eyes while I mindlessly consume. It’s better this way. I’m better this way. Senseless. Empty. Hollow. My only goal is a temporary vegetative state. I don’t want to feel anything anymore.

From the moment Neil got forceful with me, all I have felt is terror. And I am exhausted from hours of that. I set my wine glass down next to my chocolate chip bowl and wriggle into the couch cushions until I’m lying down. Sleep might not come, but right now, it sounds like a welcome break from the terror. After five minutes with my eyes closed and a mental battle with the memory of Neil, I know sleep is not going to be my friend tonight.

23

ANDERSON

“You love her,” Moss gruffly declares as the docks come into view.

I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing in his book. If I say yes, she can be used against me. If I say no, then I’ll look like a lunatic for killing Green Sweater. I refuse to call him Neil, even in my head. Not to dehumanize him and, therefore, justify what I did. What I did needs no justification.

It’s that a man who does what he did is no man. He wasn’t human. He was a monster in a human suit. No actual human can do what he did to June, and he was so bold about it that I’m sure it wasn’t his first time. To attack her in a shared hallway, in full view of the street through the glass doors … that was no man. That was a beast.

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