Chapter 35
PENELOPE
Isit curled at the very end of the pew, bundled up in my gifted oversized coat as though I’m trying to fold myself smaller, make myself invisible.
I’ve always been good at it.
Hiding.
Well-practised since the youngest age.
I have always found it easy to blend, to pretend, to lure and to trick, to pave my way across the world erasing my footsteps before they appear. And even though I made my way to Italy four weeks ago, unfollowed, under a different name, to a new place, on this night, I find myself coming home.
The familiar church is warm, lit with candles and soft amber halos, full of people with rosy cheeks and friendly smiles, but my bones feel frozen, stiff, decaying.
Christmas hymns drift like smoke, too gentle for the storm inside my chest. I keep my head bowed, hands clasped tight, as if prayer could make me disappear.
And as everyone filters out, the Vicar stepping outside to shake hands and give Christmas wishes, I stay.
That’s how we end up alone together.
I feel him before I see him.
A shift in the air, a current I know all too well, the prickle of awareness that used to make me dizzy with longing but now makes my stomach knot with something too tangled to name.
I hear his careful bootsteps, slow and certain, the kind that never rush, never falter.
My breath stutters in my heaving chest, and even as our baby attacks me from the inside, as though he too, senses his father’s presence, I force myself not to look up.
But when he passes my row, strolling past me at a glacial pace, not turning in my direction at all, the world narrows to a pinprick.
Billy moves like a shadow in human form, tall, poised, carved from grief and fury and devotion. My heart hammers so hard it feels as though it’s going to punch free of my chest and launch itself up onto the altar in offering.
I grip the edge of the pew as he walks right past me.
Billy Blackwell.
My soulmate.
My Pair.
My monster.
The man I fled.
The man I love with a desperation that tastes like blood in my mouth and blades in my chest.
Panic floods through me so fast I almost retch. I thought I never wanted him to find me. I thought I wanted silence, freedom, anonymity. I’ve spent nights whispering to myself, convincing myself that running was the only way, that distance was my salvation.
But now that he’s here, breathing the same air, close enough I could reach out and brush my fingers against his coat, I realise just how hard I’ve been lying to myself with every fractured breath.
I wanted him to find me.
I’ve always wanted him to find me.
My love for him is a sickness, a fever, a bruise I keep pressing just to feel something real. I need him like a wound needs pressure, painfully, desperately, helplessly.
Just to survive.
I am lovesick.
And yet terror wraps around my ribs like barbed wire.
What is he going to do? How is he going to look at me? What will I tell him when he asks why I ran?
How can I tell him the truth, that I fled because of his father, because of the threat, because I was carrying his child and feared losing everything, without lighting the fuse to his rage? How can I speak the words without sending him spiralling into war?
Billy reaches the altar, placing his hands on its edge as though steadying himself. His shoulders rise and fall, slow, controlled, but I know the storm gathering beneath the surface.
I know him.
I love him.
Darkly, entirely, in a way that makes me feel both alive and dead.
Panic drums through my skull like a battering ram. My legs unbend, knees falling away from beneath my chin, feet touching the floor like a barely there caress.
Ready to run.
To flee.
But then he turns.
Not fully, just enough to leave. Just enough to walk back up the aisle. His coat shifts with the movement, boots soft against the stone, and I keep my head down, but something pulls his gaze sideways.
And I feel it before I see it.
His steps stop.
Silence cracks open like the mouth of hell, fire erupting up through the stone flooring, heat lashing my spine, dread coiling in my belly.
And when I finally lift my eyes, daring to look, he’s staring straight at me.
Those glacial blue eyes carve their way into my soul, scorching my heart, flaying my bones.
And before I can think.
Speak.
Move.
Billy’s on me, he tears me up by the elbow, dragging me along the row, down the aisle, past the altar, his free fist slamming into a door that he wrenches me through with brute force.
My spine connects with the wall so hard that it knocks the breath from my lungs, and he’s pinning me to it without touching me at all.
His breath hot fury slicing down the side of my neck, prickling my skin with an icy flaying of goosebumps as his breath slips beneath my scarf.
My heart attacks my sternum, hammering, hammering, hammering, and then it just goes still, as though my blood stops pumping, organs stop working, my entire body pausing, waiting for the world around it to catch up, and then as though its had its moment, it suddenly kickstarts again.
“Billy-”
“You don’t understand the things you do to me, Little Lamb.
” Billy’s voice is low simmering violence, his head hanging between us, eyes closed, his nostrils flare.
“The way you cut me up inside with your tiny little razorblades.” I’m caught in his web, my hands desperate to reach out to him, to soothe him, to slap him, to stab him.
“It’s as though I have swallowed an entire jar of the things.
” Billy moves his feet a little further apart, his shoulders stiffening as he stretches his back, his spine in a curve the way he still hangs his head.
“And yet,” he breathes the words so harshly I can taste them on my tongue. “I’m still not dead, Nells.”
His bright blue eyes come to mine, an oceanic wave tearing violently over my head, drowning me beneath rough frothy sea foam, grainy cold water seeping into my every orifice as I try to take breath.
“I wish I were some days,” he tells me, his lips almost brushing mine.
“If only so I could drag you with me.” My breath pants between us as he lifts a hand from the wall, his knuckles grazing my cheek, and it feels as though the single touch flares life through me.
“I’ve never thought about our deaths so much before, Penelope.
” I’m rapt, even with his ominous words, I don’t want to stop him, so desperate to keep hearing his voice.
“But I’ve planned them out so many different ways, I’m struggling to decide what to do with you now. ”
I want to say his name.
Touch his face.
Kiss his lips.
But I don’t say or do anything in the long moment of pause between us.
I don’t have to.
Because Billy’s hands are heaving me up onto the table at our sides, tearing at my clothes, shoving off my coat, pushing down the stretchy material of my leggings, and his fingers are inside of me.
Twisting and curling deep, rubbing relentlessly over that spot so far up inside of me I’m seeing stars.
“I want to carve you up into tiny little pieces,” he whispers in my ear, slamming his fingers into me harder and harder, the picture frame behind my head rattling against the wall. “Put every single one in separate glass jars and shelve them around our bedroom.”
Billy’s free hand rips my leggings the rest of the way down, his boot stepping on the crotch of them to wrench them down over my boots, binding my feet together.
He’s unbuckling his belt, our foreheads touching as he shoves down his jeans, palming himself just once before he replaces his fingers with his cock.
His hot hard length spears into me like a man possessed, brutal unforgiving thrusts send his hips crashing into mine with such force it feels like I’m just holding on, waiting to hear the bones go crack.
My fingers carve into his shoulders, beneath his coat, over his shirt, nails biting his skin through the thin cotton fabric.
“I want to cut out your heart.” Billy bites into my earlobe, teeth sinking into the flesh.
“Suck your blood from the artery.” He keeps pumping into me, his hands on my arse, his firm grip pulling my cheeks apart, wrenching me closer and closer into him.
“Then I’ll fuck the empty cavity in your chest, fill it with my cum.
” He’s still whispering, his breath a ghost down my neck.
“I’m going to pluck out every bone, polish each one with my spit.
” He draws back from me as he says it, our mouths still not coming together, like we’re both trying not to give in. “Before carving my name into them all.”
His hand lifts, fingers pinching my chin so hard it makes my jaw ache, but he’s squeezing my face, popping open my mouth and spitting on my tongue.
He’s staring at my mouth, his entire focus on my tongue as I roll his saliva around, lick it over my lips, the top then the bottom, before swallowing him down as his palm connects with the underside of my chin, forcing my mouth closed.
“I missed you, Billy,” I tell him, our lips touching as I feed him the words directly onto his tongue.
His eyes come to mine, shining and wide, and then our mouths are coming together in a savagery that screams anything but love. Our tongues battle for dominance, our hands grip and bite and tear, attacking each other’s flesh.
“I want to peel off your skin,” I whisper, panting for breath as one of his big hands gropes my swollen breast. “Crack open your ribcage,” his fingers tug on my nipple, squeezing the handful of flesh, until clear droplets bead on the tip.
“And crawl inside your heart.” Billy’s mouth closes wide over my breast, sucking on my nipple, his cheeks hollowing as he draws in as much of the flesh as he can.