Page 59 of I Need You to Read This
I was surprised that I still felt some strength in my hand when he put the knife in it, curling my fingers around the hilt. I stayed quiet, my eyes closed. He couldn’t be here when I died, he had to make sure of it. He leaned over me. I could feel his breath on my face. Could hear it. My eyes flew open, locking with his, and I drove the knife up at him. He screamed in pain, reeling back from me.
“Fuck. You stupid fucking—” He pressed a towel to his head, crying in agony, his neck craned backward. My eyes fluttered. He couldn’t let his blood mingle with mine on the floor. He grabbed the knife from my hand and ran it under the faucet, moaning the entire time. This time he put it out of my reach beyond the blood-soaked bathmat.
When I heard the door click shut, I forced my eyes open. I dragged myself from the shower to the bedroom. My phone was still in my bag. It took the remainder of my strength to reach it. The screen was slippery with blood as I dialed. So much blood in a body, it comes and comes.
“What is your emergency,” a voice said. But I couldn’t answer. I hung up before I had to try to explain, and dialed one more number. This time I could only gasp. “Sam,” I croaked weakly.
I could hear his voice coming from very far away. “Where are you?” But I could no longer speak.
FORTY-NINE
Lucy won’t look at Alex as they hoist her up from the ground, each of them taking one of her arms and pulling her roughly to stand.
“Walk,” Brian commands. Her feet flop uselessly at the ground, her legs rubbery.
Alex’s vision spins as she moves, the floor shifting and tilting wildly in her peripheral vision. There is something wrong with her head, she thinks with growing panic. They inch painfully down the hall toward the front of the house.
“In here,” Brian says, guiding them into the living room. They drop Alex onto a low sofa.
“Close the blinds,” Brian instructs Lucy. She scampers to all the windows, doing what he says and pulling the curtains across for good measure. Brian switches on a small table lamp. It lets off a yellowy glow. Alex blinks, taking in the built-in bookshelves heaving with hardcovers, the soot-stained mantel, and above it a large oil painting of a choppy ocean with seagulls swooping into the waves. She squints, trying to get a clearer view, and her head explodes in pain.
Alex moans slightly.
Brian stands above her looking down. His voice is calm. He is in control. “We have to get her out of here. Less messy. You pull my car around and open the trunk. We can probably drag her over that breakin the fence. You can follow me. We’ll find a place on the way back. Somewhere in the woods.”
“I’m going back with you?” Lucy asks quietly.
“Where the hell else would you go? You’re not going to fucking leave me to deal with this on my own.” The irritation in his voice makes Lucy flinch.
“I’ve got an apartment in the city. My roommate will wonder what happened to me…” Lucy trails off. “I thought after I did this for you, I might stay there. I could even keep my mailroom job. No one has to know.”
Brian’s face breaks into a mean grin. The scar stretches grotesquely across his cheek as he laughs at her. “Lulu, you idiot. You think you’re going to keep your job?No.You are not going to live out some city girl fantasy. You did this and you are going to take care of it now. You’re coming with me.”
Lucy’s chin clenches helplessly. She opens her mouth to speak, but there is the sound of something falling and breaking in the hallway behind them.
At once Brian is on top of Alex. He pulls her up from the sofa, his thick arm circling her neck as though she is somehow responsible. “What’s that?” He growls, his mouth close to her ear as Alex gasps for breath. “Lulu, go look.”
Lucy pales, looking back into the dark of the hall. “But I don’t have anything to defend myself with. I—”
“Find something. I kind of have my hands full with your mess right now,” he snaps at her. Lucy pulls a cast iron poker from next to the fireplace. She holds it out with one arm, pointing her phone with the other. Her fragile shoulders shake as she heads into the hallway. For what feels like an eternity there is no sound but Brian’s breathing, ragged and arhythmic.
“The back door is wide open,” Lucy’s faint voice calls back, frantic.
Brian’s grip on Alex’s neck tightens. “Who did you tell,” he hisses into Alex’s hair. She struggles, trying to pull away as she gasps for breath.
“Who’s there?” Lucy’s thin voice echoes from the hall.
For a moment Alex imagines Howard Demetri has shown up, just likehe said he would. She’d be happy to see him now, she realizes, imagining his long frame filling the doorway. Howard seems like the kind of person who could put an end to all of this. He’d have the police with him, of course; they’d listen to someone like Howard, wouldn’t they? Alex’s head is pulsing, woozy. But Howard isn’t coming, she reminds herself, replaying the conversation with Jonathan. It feels distant, a memory so vague now that she can’t quite decide if it actually happened. Her peripheral vision has a dark halo around it.
“I’m just meeting a friend here,” a voice says, too cheerful for the situation. Alex squints at the door, a mix of relief and terror filling her as a woman’s body fills the doorframe.
“Janice!” Alex croaks. “No. You can’t be here.”
“Shut up,” Brian shouts down at her as Janice steps into the room. She takes in Alex, covered in dried blood and trapped beneath the crush of Brian’s arm, and starts toward her. “Alex, my God, are you okay? What did you assholes do to her?”
“Who the fuck is this?” Brian says, jerking Alex back. She can hear the stress in his voice. He’s losing control. There’s nothing Brian hates more. And there is never a time when he is more dangerous. She realizes that he really didn’t have a plan for when he came here. Lucy must have told him and he just got in his car and drove, eager to stick his face in hers and tell her how much she’d fucked him up, to try to gaslight her again. But this time he doesn’t have some master plan to help him get away with her murder. This time it will have to be spur of the moment, which Alex knows is not his specialty.
“I called your office when Howard was arrested, and Jonathan told me you were here. Thought you might need some help, but looks like you brought some friends with you?” Janice glances at Lucy, then Brian. Alex watches her eyes land on the scar. Alex notices the slight shudder as Janice realizes she’s gotten herself into something very bad.
