18. Annalise
Annalise
Summer
"Jackson..."
His name scrapes its way out of me like broken glass, every syllable catching on the raw edges of my throat. I shake my head, and the tears I've been holding back finally spill over, turning the room to a smear of gold and shadow. "Whoever you see... she isn't me."
He'd carried me straight back here after the courtyard—up the stairs, down the corridor, through the door I've already started to think of the way a prisoner thinks of a cell.
He set me on the edge of the bed almost gently, both hands at my waist, lowering me like something fragile that might come apart if he put it down too hard.
As if the same man who held a gun to my chest over dinner could also be trusted not to break me.
He doesn't answer right away.
He watches me, unreadable.
His eyes travel over my face with a patience that unsettles me more than any glare could—lingering on the curve of my cheek, the trembling line of my mouth, the strands of dark hair spilling loose over my shoulder.
He isn't looking at me the way a man looks at a woman he wants.
He's looking at me the way you'd study a photograph of someone you've lost, searching it for a face that isn't there.
A chill works its way down through me and settles somewhere in the marrow of my bones.
Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth lifts. Not into a smile, exactly. Into recognition.
"Oh, I know." The words are barely louder than a breath, and somehow they fill every corner of the room. "I know she isn't."
Relief sparks so suddenly it almost hurts—
and dies just as fast.
"But pretending..." His gaze never leaves mine.
"Pretending is easy." He lets the words settle over me like the first fall of snow, soft and cold and burying.
"And your father..." He tilts his head, thoughtful in a way that makes him more frightening, not less.
"...will fry in hell knowing that the only thing he ever truly loved became the woman he stole from me. "
Something inside me recoils. I close my eyes, because I can't look at him any longer, and because the thing waiting downstairs is still burned into the backs of my eyelids—and the second my mind is left to itself, it goes straight back there.
Polished silver. The dome. Blood. The impossible, immovable fact that my father is gone, and that what's left of him is sitting on a platter in a room I'll walk back into every time it goes quiet for the rest of my life.
His hand settles against my shoulder.
The warmth of it seeps straight through my clothes, and I hate that warmth, hate that any part of him registers as something human.
It rests there a moment before it slides—slow, unhurried—up the line of my throat, until his fingers curl loosely around the front of it.
He doesn't squeeze. He doesn't have to. The weight of his hand alone is enough to remind me how little it would cost him.
Enough to send my pulse slamming against his fingertips, frantic and traitorous.
A broken whimper slips out before I can swallow it back down.
"Stand," he says quietly.
I don't move.
His thumb shifts against my neck, almost lazy.
"Or I make you."
The pressure builds—just enough that instinct answers before I can. I force my legs beneath me and push myself upright, and they barely feel like mine… every muscle shaking with a fear that's gone bone-deep.
"Good girl."
The praise lands like something rotten on my tongue. Bile climbs the back of my throat as his voice grazes my ear, low and rough with a satisfaction that turns my stomach—as though my obedience is something he's earned, and not something he's frightened out of me.
Then he's behind me.
The heat of his body presses into my back, swallowing what little space was left between us.
Something hard digs in against me, and my stomach turns over so violently I nearly gag.
I don't know whether it's the cold outline of a gun or the shape of his arousal, and for one unhinged second I genuinely can't decide which one frightens me more.
No. That's a lie. I'd choose the gun.
His hand leaves my shoulder and slides into my hair, gathering the loose strands and drawing them slowly over the opposite shoulder, baring the side of my neck.
Every movement is deliberate. Almost reverent.
As though he's arranging something he's proud of rather than touching a living person who is shaking apart beneath his hands.
He lowers his head. His mouth finds the nape of my neck, and then his teeth close over my skin—not hard enough to break it, but slow, and certain, an intimacy so much worse than pain. Because that's what this is. Not hurt. Ownership.
A ragged sound tears out of me before I can stop it. His hand tightens at my throat, the pressure climbing just enough to remind me how much more there is he hasn't taken, and my lungs pull thin, each breath shallower than the last.
"That's it," he murmurs, and my skin crawls away from the words, “make some noise for me.”
His hand leaves my throat and begins its slow descent—down over my side, unhurried, until his fingers reach the waistband of my joggers. I feel it give beneath a measured tug, the fabric shifting loose against my hips.
"No—" Panic surges through me and my hand flies to his wrist, closing around it as though I could hold back the tide with my fingers. "Jackson... please."
He doesn't answer.
One decisive pull and the joggers drop to my knees, tangling around my legs, and then his hand is flat against my back and he's forcing me forward, down onto the mattress.
This is it.
My breath comes in ragged, uneven pulls, and then—because it's the only mercy left to me, the only door that still opens from the inside—I do the thing I swore I never would. I let go of my body and let my mind leave the room.
I go back to the dining room.
I go to the polished table and the silver dome and the thing lying beneath it, and I fix my eyes on my father's slack, gray face while somewhere very far away a man I refuse to be present for does what he brought me here to do.
I feel it the way you feel something through water—muffled, distant, happening to a body I've stepped out of.
My fingers knot in the bedding. My cheek drags against the sheets.
And still I stay with Papa, because if I can't stop this, I can at least refuse to be here while it's done to me.
I hope you can see this. I hope you can see every single thing your choices bought. I hope you know it's me paying for them—me—for every lie you told, every secret you buried, every selfish choice that dragged us here.
I hope you're burning in fucking hell.
Behind me, Jackson goes still. His fist tightens in my hair, dragging my head back, and on one final, brutal thrust I hear him breathe a single word against my skin.
Not my name.
Hers.
"Annalise."