Page 155 of Ecstasy
Time passes.
I don’t know how much, but soon, Eli’s struggles are more sluggish. Less violent. Soon, it’s easier to hold him under.
Soon, he stops moving altogether.
“Alex.” Zara says my name with a hint of desperation, but she doesn’t move toward me. She doesn’t look down at Eli.
I don’t speak. I just swallow down the lump in my throat as Eli stops thrashing beneath my hands.
“Alex,” she whispers again, “you don’t want to—”
“Did he do it?” I ask her quietly as Eli goes still beneath me. “Did he stick that fucking needle in your vein?”
She doesn’t answer me, but she doesn’t need to. I can read the answer on her fucking face.
That motherfucker.
I don’t let go of him.
I don’t let go, and as the sun fully rises and casts the world in a promising shade of orange, I still don’t let go.
I don’t let go until I know Eli is gone.
Until I know I’m safe.
Until I know Zara is safe, and Eli Addison will never fuck with her ever again.
50
Zara
“I spoke to his father.He said he…he said Eli always had problems. Since his mom…you know, tried to hurt him.” Alex swallows, laces his fingers through mine. “He was seeing a psychiatrist, but I guess he just stopped going.”
I close my eyes, feeling the tears pricking behind them. I hear Eli’s voice in my head:Your scars are beautiful, baby girl.
But other words spring to mind, too. Words that cut soul-deep. His confession. A girl’s life stolen too soon.
“Zara.”
I look up into Alex’s dark eyes, those faint glimmers of amber that mesmerized me before I even liked him at all.
Funny I thought he was such an asshole.
The people with the biggest hearts always have the thickest armor.
His head is leaned against the black seat of his Jeep, and I see his throat move as he swallows. “Zara. I’m sorry I let him get to you. I’m sorry I left. But we’re free now, you know? We’re free and I want to put this behind us. I want to make you the happiest fucking girl in the world—”
“That’s not your job.”
“Let it be my job.”
“Alex.” I swallow down the lump in my throat. It’s been three days. It’s been three days, and I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it. Three days, and none of us were charged. We told them what happened. About the needle and the heroin and the pool and the…
We told them about Rihanna too.
About Eli’s confession, that he pushed her in. Eli’s father didn’t bother trying to push a case against us because Eli is a fucking psychopath and turns out, more people knew it than we thought. Turns out too, that Cari, the girl he assaulted, remembers much more than she originally let on, not wanting to turn everything into a scene. I kind of hated her, imagining her let Alex take the fall for something she knew wasn’t his fault.
But she was terrified of Eli.
