Chapter 22 Ophelia
OPHELIA
I’m dreaming. I know because of the grainy black-and-white, old-movie quality of the scene. I know because I’m watching myself. Myself and Silas.
I recognize my mask. It’s the one I bought after saving months of allowance.
Dad never allowed me to get a job. I wanted one badly, if for no other reason than to have something outside of my life at school and home.
A change from what had become a lonely routine.
But he was adamant, seeming to grow more and more overprotective the older I got.
My dress is a mashup of the red dress I wore this year and the one I’d worn at the last ball. The ruby choker is tight around my neck. It’s the only thing in color. The room we’re in looks the same. And Silas and I are there.
The thought of Silas makes me weepy. Makes Silas blink out of focus like I’m looking at him without my glasses.
I concentrate, watch Silas and myself sitting on the chaise.
He’s smiling as he opens that bottle of champagne, and I am transfixed watching him, this man who feels like home.
But there he goes again, blinking out of the scene entirely, the scene itself changing to another, a house smoldering, ash on the ground, lives turned to dust.
Someone whimpers. I realize it’s me. My face feels damp, but I can’t move to wipe it away. I want to go back to that room, and I also don’t want to. My feelings around it are confused, mostly sad.
But there I am, and there he is, and we’ve drunk that bottle and are standing at the window watching the dancers when Silas bows, makes a grand gesture holding out his hand asking me to dance.
I giggle, hiccup. The champagne. And when I walk into his arms, it’s warm and he’s strong and I rest my cheek against his chest and close my eyes.
It feels so safe here. So safe with him.
But we’re not safe. I know. I look up at him, at his crooked nose, at the scar along his temple, and I know we’re not at all safe.
We dance, though, in that tiny room. I’m not sure how much is memory and how much is the dream, and I don’t care. I observe unseen, a voyeur in the shadows. There were other voyeurs too, later. How long did they stand there and watch us?
I’m sobbing. The scene is blurring, but I wipe away my tears because the dance is coming to an end, and we’re both a little drunk.
Silas tips his head down, sets a finger beneath my chin to tilt my face up and I stare up at his beautiful, beautiful eyes.
When he kisses me, I don’t close mine and he doesn’t close his.
I’m sobbing, and when he rests his forehead against mine, he whispers words I don’t hear before looking at me once more.
Before vanishing, leaving me not in that room but standing in the middle of the flames as my childhood home burns down around me and he walks away, stealthy in the dark.
I wake, gasping for breath. My eyelids fly open, and I stare up at the ceiling. My mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. Nausea coils up my insides, and rolling onto my side takes every ounce of energy, my limbs leaden. I try to sit up but can’t.
I blink at the unfamiliar room not sure where I am or how I got here. Snow is a blur falling outside the window. We’re in a high-rise, and it’s nighttime.
On the nightstand, I see a glass of water, torn wrapping of what look like bandages. I peer closer and blink. There are syringes beside those wrappers.
My glasses are there. I manage to grab them but I realize they’re useless, one of the lenses smashed, the frame bent like someone stepped on them. I put them on anyway because it’s better than nothing.
I manage to pull myself up a little, feeling out of breath when I rest against the headboard. I look down at myself. I’m naked. The blanket is thrown carelessly over my thighs. Every inch of me aches and I can see the purple welts where he whipped me.
Ethan beat me. After finding Silas and me, he whipped me. I raise a hand to my mouth to stop the sob that bubbles up in my throat.
I push the blanket off my feet, which hurt the most, and see the blood staining the white sheets, see the dried crusts of it on my feet. He wanted to be sure I felt him with every step. I did. Oh, how I did.
Or was it that he wanted his father to see how thorough he’d been? What was it he’d said before we’d gone back down into the ballroom? I was lucky it wasn’t his father to do the whipping.
Sullivan Fox beat his son and his wife. He said so himself. How did I never know it? I lived next door to them for ten years of my life. I spent so much time at their house. How did I not see?
I shiver with cold, and when I draw the blanket up I see there, on my left hand, the ring I’d just given back. The ring that feels too tight now.
The door opens, the light from inside so bright I turn away. Ethan is talking with someone, another man, and the instant he sees me, his smile vanishes.
The man behind him meets my eyes. It’s the same one from the hotel. I draw the sheet closer before Ethan closes the door.
“Modest now? Really? We all saw you, Phee. The guy out there, the cops, my father. My fucking father watched you, watched Silas Cruz rape you.”
“Rape?” I croak, my voice not quite working.
The glasses slide off my face and he crosses the room to take them. He looks at them, shakes his head and drops them onto the floor.
“I need those,” I say, my voice sounding strange, like it’s dragging. Heavy, like my body.
“They’re broken. They’re no good to you.” He walks over to the bed and my gaze is level with his belt. I find myself leaning away from him. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You think that was up to me?” he asks, sitting on the edge of the bed, pressing on a bruise before peeling a bandage off the bottom of one foot.
“Ow.” I try to pull my leg away, but he stops me.
“I need to clean them. It’ll hurt, but you don’t want them infected. We have a big day.”
I’m trying to keep up but it’s like the words are coming too slowly. I follow his hand as it moves to the nightstand. He opens the drawer and takes out antiseptic and bandages and I see a half dozen syringes lined up inside.
“What are those?” I ask as he closes the drawer, cursing when it sticks, and he has to ram it in.
“Painkillers.”
“What kind of painkillers?” I wonder if they’re the reason I feel so groggy.
He dabs antiseptic to the cuts on the bottoms of my feet and I groan. He doesn’t answer me, and I watch him while he works. I’ve known Ethan most of my life but right now, it’s like I’m looking at a different man.
“Ethan?”
He still doesn’t look at me until he’s finished his work.
He stands, throws away the used bandages, then collects the discarded wrappings on the nightstand and throws those away too.
He then picks up the bottle of aspirin. It’s new and I watch him peel off the protective sticker before he drops two onto his palm and holds them out to me.
“Here.”
I look at them, then up at him, realizing how thirsty I am, and, at the same time, how nauseated.
“What kind of painkillers did you give me?”
“They helped you sleep. It was bad, Phee.”
“You should know. You beat me.”
“Like I told you that night, better me than my father,” he says with a glance at the door. “Take these. I don’t want to give you more of the other one.”
I hear what he said then. That night. Not last night. “How long have I been sleeping?”
“Three days.”
“What? Where are we?”
“Boston. Here, take these. We need to talk before he gets here.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Take them or don’t, I don’t really give a fuck. It’s not my problem.”
I take them from him before he pulls his hand away, but he has to help me with the water.
“Where is Silas?” I ask against my better judgment.
He snorts, shakes his head, and sets the water down. He walks to the window and looks out over the city. Although he seems so lost in thought, I wonder if he is seeing anything at all.
“What I did the other night, I didn’t want to do that to you. You know that, right?”
I don’t actually so I don’t answer. Because I remember the look on his face as he wielded that belt.
He turns to me. “We all have to do things we don’t want to do, Phee. You included.”
I feel that ring burn a circle around my finger and a building sense of urgency has me trying to swing my legs out of the bed.
“Where is Silas?”
“He’s in jail, and he’ll be in prison soon, where he belongs.
He’ll be prosecuted for arson. He burnt down your fucking house, and you’re asking where he is?
You give a shit? Still? Christ. Maybe my father was right about you.
All those years I tried to protect you from him, and this is how you repay me? ”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, I can’t think about the house being gone, not now.
“We don’t have much time, so I’m going to lay it out for you. You’re going to need to do what I say, or I won’t be able to protect you.”
“I don’t understand.” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, my head hurts, my body aches.
“We’re eloping. Tonight. You and me.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I need you to get up, get showered. Wash the stink of him off you because I can’t fucking stand it for another minute.
” He stalks toward me, seeming to grow angry at the thought.
“Do you know I took care of you these last few days and all I could see was him fucking you. It’s all I could smell, the sex.
How could you?” he asks, his lip curled, and I wonder for the first time if all these years he’s hated Silas more than he’s ever cared about me.
“I told you, Ethan. I’m not in love with you. We broke up—”
He snorts, walks away.
“I’m not marrying you. I don’t care what you say.”