Chapter 20
Annabelle
The tea has gone cold where I placed it when Aidan left.
I don’t know when that was. It’s dark now.
I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I can’t breathe.
All of the things that made me think I could carry on with life were all a lie, and now I’m trapped in a fancy apartment in the city, and no one knows I’m here.
Not a single soul knows. No one will care.
I curl up under the covers, and the self-loathing that I let Aidan take me after finding out what they did sets in. I press my face into the pillow and hate myself for every part of it.
For freezing when he told me, going so still I could hear my own pulse.
For listening, when I should have screamed, should have run, should have done anything but stand there and take it in.
For understanding, which was the worst part—the part that made me feel most sick—that I had followed the logic of it, that some part of me had nodded along, and the worst part is for wanting him—them—anyway. For wanting them more.
Tears soak into the cotton. I don’t sob. It is worse than that. It is silent. My chest aches with it, a deep raw ache that feels endless, like somebody has opened me up and left the wound uncovered.
I see their faces in my head even though I don’t want to. Men I barely know. Men who have taken over every corner of my life in a matter of days. Men who decide things for me. Men who threaten to kill strangers in cars.
My stomach turns.
I shove the covers off and bolt for the bathroom. I barely make it before I’m on my knees in front of the toilet, retching until my throat burns.
When it stops, I stay there on the cold floor tiles with my hair hanging in my face.
This is my life now.
“Annabelle.”
The soft voice makes me look up. Black shirt. It’s Ethan.
“What do you want, Ethan?”
He moves closer, holding out a bottle of water as he reaches past me to flush the toilet. “How do you know it’s me?”
“Black shirt,” I mumble as I take a small sip of water. “And your eyes.”
“What about them?”
“They don’t ravage me like Aidan’s do.”
Ethan kneels beside me. He doesn’t touch me, but his presence is heavy, a solid weight in the small space. He takes the water bottle from my shaking hand and sets it on the counter.
“He’s a blunt instrument,” Ethan says. “Aidan doesn’t know how to be subtle. I do.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My head thumps. “You’re both monsters.”
He reaches out and brushes a damp strand of hair from my forehead. His fingers are cool. “We’re what you need, Annabelle. You’re drowning. You’ve been drowning since your mother died, and we’re the only ones who aren’t going to let the current take you.”
“Go away, Ethan,” I say, my voice cracking.
“I’m not leaving you alone.” He stays where he is. “I’m never leaving you alone again.”
“Even if I want you to.”
“You don’t want me to.”
“Fuck off,” I grit out. “I don’t need you.”
But we both know it’s a lie. I can fight it and hate myself for it. I can throw up the food they made me and tell them all to go to hell. But none of it changes the fact that I have surrendered to them. I need them.
“I hate you,” I whisper, tears pooling in my eyes. “I hate all of you so much.”
He leans forward and cups the back of my head, pulling me against his chest. “Maybe. But you need us. You feel with us, Annabelle. You stop trying to survive because we do it for you. That’s why we are here. That’s why we aren’t leaving you alone anymore.”
“I don’t… don’t want you to survive for me.” My voice is muffled by his chest. It takes everything I have to push him away.
It feels like a loss.
“What do you feel now, Annabelle? Now that I’m not touching you?”
“Pain,” I choke out, my face crumpling. “Fear. Loss.” I reach out and drag him towards me by his shirt. His arms go around me. “Save me, Ethan, please.”
The sobs wrack my body as he holds me. Ethan lifts me off the bathroom floor.
I don’t resist. My legs are weak, and my head spins.
He carries me back to the bedroom. The air in the bedroom is cool against my tear-stained face.
He places me on the bed and lies behind me, pulling my back against his chest. His heart beats steady and slow.
Mine is a frantic mess. I find comfort here.
My body doesn’t know the difference between safe and wanted, between held and trapped.
It doesn’t care. It’s confusing and exhausting, and I just want him to hold me and make it all go away.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. His voice is smooth. It doesn’t have the rough edge that Aidan’s does. I can recognise it now. “We’ve got you, Annabelle. You don’t have to carry any of it anymore. You’re ours,” he says. His hand moves to my neck. He doesn’t squeeze. He just holds me there.
I don’t answer. The exhaustion finally wins. I sink into him, a prisoner who has stopped fighting the bars.
I still don’t sleep. I lie awake in his arms, my body drained, my mind a swirling mess. He doesn’t say anything for a while.
Neither do I.
There is nothing to say that won’t make me sound like a complete lunatic.
How did this happen? How did I find safety in the men who will ruin me?
Ethan’s thumb strokes the skin under my jaw. He tracks the rhythm of my pulse. He knows exactly how fast my blood pumps. He knows the fear remains.
“Stop thinking, Annabelle,” he says. His breath hits the back of my ear. “It’s fucking exhausting watching you spiral.”
“Then don’t watch,” I whisper.
“I don’t have a choice. Neither do you.”
He shifts his weight. The mattress dips. He is a wall behind me that I want to press into. My body feels less broken when he pins me down.
The door opens. A sliver of light from the hallway cuts through the room. A tall figure stands there. I don’t need to see his face to know it’s Aidan. He carries the tension of the house on his back. He enters without a sound.
“Is she asleep?” Aidan asks. His voice is a low vibration that makes my skin prickle.
“No,” Ethan says. “She’s busy hating herself and us.”
Aidan walks to the side of the bed. He looks down at me. The aggression in his posture makes my stomach flip. He doesn’t offer comfort. He offers a different kind of anchor.
“Good,” Aidan says. “I’d rather she hates us than forgets us.”
He sits on the edge of the mattress. The bed sinks further.
I am trapped between them. Two sides of the same dark coin.
One offers a quiet cage, the other a violent storm.
I close my eyes and let the weight of them anchor me to the mattress.
They are the only thing keeping me from drifting away into the nothingness my mother left behind.
“Go to sleep, Annabelle,” Aidan says. “We’ll still be here when you wake up. There’s nowhere else for you to go.”
“Don’t,” I mumble as Callan also joins us. “Don’t tell me I have nothing else but you.”
“It’s true,” Callan says, standing at the bottom of the bed, keeping his distance. “I doubt Margaret will come looking for you when you don’t arrive at work in the morning.”
“That’s not fair,” I whisper.
“Life isn’t fair,” he says.
“Why are you being so mean?” I sound pathetic, but I’m too wrung out to care much. Callan remains at the foot of the bed. He is a ghost in the dark. He doesn’t want to touch me, but he wants to own me.
“I’m not being mean,” Callan says. “I’m being honest. You have nothing left. You have no one who cares if you breathe.”
“Stop!”
Aidan reaches out and drags a hand through my hair. It isn’t a gentle gesture. He tugs just enough to make me wince. “You worked. You went home to an empty house. You cried until you passed out. That’s not a life, Annabelle. That’s a fucking slow death.”
Ethan’s arm tightens across my waist. He pulls me closer into the heat of his body.
“We’re giving you a reason to stay alive,” Ethan whispers.
The hypocrisy of it makes my blood boil. They took the choice away. They decided I was better off in this cage than one of my own making.
The fucking scary thing is, they’re right. My limbs feel heavy. I’m so tired of being alone. That’s the trap. They know I’m weak. They know I’m broken. And they like it that way.
“What do you plan to do with me?” The tremor in my voice is something I can’t stop.
“Save you,” Ethan says in my ear. “Save you from yourself.”
“And then what? Discard me when I can stand on my own two feet again?”
“You aren’t ever going to stand on your own again,” Aidan says.
I shiver at the finality in his tone. It isn’t a threat; it’s a fact. He speaks as if my future is already written in a ledger I’m not allowed to read.
Callan finally moves from the foot of the bed.
He doesn’t join the pile of bodies, but he moves to stare out of the window.
“We’ve watched you for a long time,” he says, his voice cutting through the shadows.
“We saw the way you looked at the bridge on your walk home. We saw the way you stopped buying groceries. You were already gone. We just brought the body back. Your mind will be next.”
“You’re sick,” I choke out.
“We’re thorough,” Ethan corrects. He presses a kiss to the nape of my neck, his lips lingering on the skin. “Now shut your eyes. If you don’t sleep, I’ll make Aidan fetch the sedative.”
I close my eyes because looking at them is too much. Being held by them is a relief I despise. The silence doesn’t feel lonely anymore. It feels crowded. It feels permanent. I drift into a grey, heavy sleep, pinned between the monsters who saved me from the dark by becoming it.