HAD IT NOT been for Charlie’s assurances that he would protect me, I would’ve been worried for my safety. Eric’s actions as of late reeked of desperation and instability. Granted, he was always a chaotic person, but he seemed to somehow miraculously keep the chaos under control. Mostly. While he currently embodied the man who could finish my mother’s last wishes, I needed him to stay away from me during the process.
My visits with Dr. Erin were to make me temporarily strong enough to reach this point, I wasn't sure if I had a will resilient enough to avoid falling right into Eric’s alluring snare.
Feeling slightly stir-crazy, I paced my hotel suite. It was highly likely I was driving the man seated by the door mad. I had been confined to the same hotel suite for the past four days and was told to remain there until Eric did what was expected to him. My only glimpses to the outside world were through my window. It was odd to miss things I never fathomed I’d miss. As it was, I felt heavily under lock and key. A simple phone call from Janet and my phone was taken away and dismantled.
“I can get ice on my own, it’s only down the hall.”
“Wait here,” he ordered, standing from the chair and grabbing the plastic bucket from the coffee cart. Touching his earpiece, he attempted to contact the man guarding the hall. He seemed perplexed after a few passing moments of waiting. He slid his gun from the holster and pointed a glance at me, warning me to stay put. Opening the door, he arched his body and glanced down both sides of the hall.
I quickly seized the opportunity and picked up the pieces to my dismantled phone, sliding them in my back pocket.
Turning back to me, he seemed tormented over allowing me to leave. “Here,” he shoved the bucket in my direction. “I’ll be right behind you.”
I waded through the narrow corridor of the hotel, observing the earthy colors on the walls, imagining they were better examples of a scenery than they truly were.
A man was ahead of me at the ice machine and gave me a friendly smile. “Are you all right?” he asked, concentrating on my jittery hands.
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “Can you hurry up?” I glanced at the agent not far from me and back to the man, worried that my small venture would be cut short.
“You look so sad.”
The man with a scruffy beard and an American flag T-shirt suddenly stopped pushing the lever to dispense ice and turned around to regard me.
I stared at his T-shirt for an inordinate amount of time, wondering why he decided to give me his undivided attention. “I’m fine. I just want to get some ice.”
“Traveling alone? Or is that man your husband there?” He moistened his lips with his tongue and made cringe.
I decided I wasn’t in need of ice for my lukewarm decaffeinated coffee and turned to leave. The man immediately grasped my hand, preventing me from leaving. Pulling me, he forced me back toward him.
“Let me go, okay?” I demanded.
“Public place. I can do what I want.”
I grabbed the bucket tightly, aiming to hit him over the head with it until I heard a soft thud from where the agent tasked with protecting me stood. When I glanced in his direction, he was no longer there. Instead, he was huddled on the ground in a lifeless heap and several of the lights that once illuminated the hallway during the late evening hour were out. A shadowed figure stood over him. I caught a glimpse of a man wearing a pricey watch, a slate blue sweater, and dark slim fit jeans. His features were indiscernible underneath the lack of lighting. The watch called my attention, because it was Eric’s favorite when he dressed down. Panic set in while I became cognizant of the fact my confidence was premature.
I’m not ready to face him, and he’s now here to kill me.
“I would be careful.” His gravelly baritone voice shot a chill down my spine, freezing me in my position. “She has a bucket and she intends to use it. Believe me, she knows her way around a butcher knife…and a razor blade.”
As unattractive as the man keeping me in place was, he was the better alternative over looking at the man standing a few feet down the hallway.
“Well”—the man tightened his grip on me—“I wasn’t addressing you. So get on somewhere else before I call the police.”
“No,” Eric said firmly. “Can’t do that because you’re fucking with my wife.”
“I don’t see no label on her,” the man retorted hotly. “Should listen when you’re told. Get on somewhere, boy.”
It was so swift, I didn’t know the man’s head hit the wall until the hallway seemed to shudder. Eric, with his hand firmly clasping the back of the man’s head, snarled at him, “And this is for touching her.” He thrust the stranger’s head against the wall with a force more brutal than the first time.
I could hear the bones in his face crack, the blood splattered and narrowly missed marking my clothes.
By way of the man’s hair, Eric lifted his head away from the wall. The stranger’s mouth and nose expelled a large amount of blood.
“Apologize to me,” Eric hissed, “and get the fuck out of here before I cut out your tongue, you worthless piece of shit.”
“I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry I touched her,” the man cried. “B-but, this wasn’t what you paid me for.”
My mouth fell open in utter shock.
Sighing, Eric’s eyes darted to the ceiling. “Fuck, you can’t get good help anywhere nowadays.”
The shackles once chaining me the floor and the cloud filling my mind, hiding it from rational thoughts disappeared. Turning quickly, I ran as fast as my feet would carry me down the hall.
I was no match for the man who practiced strength and endurance conditioning on a daily basis. He caught me before I reached the seventh door down. He deftly grabbed my bandaged hand, squeezing it with an intensity that made me whimper and yanked me around until I was in his arms and forced to face him. He shoved me against the wall, imprisoning me against his body. I opened my mouth to scream and he quickly covered it. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Be a good girl for me and walk with me to the car. Otherwise…” Gripping my hand, he forced me to feel the slender cylinder bulge in the back pocket of his jeans. “I have other ways of making you shut the fuck up.”
When I closed my mouth from underneath his hand and let the tears fall, he slipped his hand from my mouth.
“Are you ready to tell me what I want to hear, Nik?”
“I’ll behave,” I forced out.
“Thank you, Nikki. I sincerely appreciate your compliance right now.” He gently kissed my lips. Despite feeling sickened with his untainted ability to persuade my body into responding to his touch, I allowed him to kiss me.
It was purely deluded to think I could numb the parts of me held by Eric. His touch. His arms around me. His words. They all did things to me, compelling me to wish I could’ve hated him and shut him completely out of my mind and heart. He infiltrated too large of a piece and it wouldn’t relent to the way I needed it to feel.
Unable to move, I remained frozen.
Eric bent down to meet my height and lifted my unreceptive chin. I kept my eyes down as the tears flowed. “Nikki, I’m not above making you move.”
I turned, walking with heavy steps as I navigated my way down the hall, looking to each one of the doors, wishing for someone to exit their room at the right time. I wished further, hoping Eric hadn’t miraculously subdued all the men who were protecting me, and one of them would come to my rescue.
I glanced across the corridor to find one of my wishes had been granted. An unassuming man was exiting his room.
With enough space between Eric and me to run and not get caught, it’s exactly what I did.
I started to scream as I ran up to the man, “Please help me, he’s going to kill me.”
He stopped abruptly, and I ran into the stranger, almost tipping him over. “W-what? Slow down. What’s the problem?”
Quickly, while I spoke to the man about Eric’s desire to kill me, I retrieved the dismantled pieces of my phone from my back pocket and put it back together. Having only been able to turn on my phone, I was halted from making a call. Eric appeared at my side, covered my mouth, and strongly shook his head at me. “Speak one more goddamn word and I will beat this man into a permanent stay in the ICU. I think you should apologize to him for alerting him for no reason. Don’t you think, Nik?”
His control was a leather collar tethered to a lead, clamping around my throat and preventing my ability to obtain adequate oxygen.
The stranger turned on his heels with purpose, intending to return to his room.
Eric stalked toward the man. He grabbed him by the throat, lifted him in the air, and thrust him, back first, toward the brick exterior. “Where do you think you’re going, dumbfuck?”
The stranger waved his arms in front of him, horror was evident in his eyes. “L-look, man. I-I don’t know who you are, but—”
“Don’t do this,” I begged, placing a hand on Eric’s shoulder. “It was my fault. Don’t punish him for something I did.”
Eric never moved as he took in my words. “Let him find his own way out of my need to kill right now.”
I withdrew my hand from him, stung by the bitterness in his words. “This man is an innocent. You…don’t do this. Who…are you right now?”
Eric robotically turned his head toward me with a skewed smile. “Don’t you recognize me, baby? I am who you created me to be.”
“Let him go,” I implored. “Please. I’ll willingly go with you if you just let him go.”
My words seemed to piss him off more. He slowly blinked through anger and held strongly to the man’s throat, the stranger began to turn a different hue. “Did you bargain for this meaningless asshole’s life—bait me into letting him go—by throwing me your pity? Really, Nik?” He dropped his hold on the man and abruptly thrust his fist at the man’s chest in a way that made him buck and fight for breath. He slipped down to the floor, wheezing and struggling for air.
I attempted to see if the bystander was all right, but Eric grabbed me from behind. “Goddamn you, Nik. God-fucking-damn you.” He tossed me over his shoulder and walked to the car.
THIRTY MINUTES INTO A drive toward a place I knew wasn’t anywhere near my home, the panic set in, and I had to act fast.
“Why have you been such a deceitful and conniving bitch lately?” He put up a finger, halting my reply before I could give one and shook his head. “I have the answer. I just want to know if you can lie to me again. All you do…is lie to me. Like I’m not your husband.”
His grip on the steering wheel strengthened as the furor became more evident in his words. “Like I’m nothing. You’ve been…so disrespectful lately. Ungrateful. Uncaring. Pissing me off like you wouldn’t believe.
“Nikki,” he groaned with a slight brokenness. “Why are you”—an edge grew in his voice as he straddled between yelling and whispering to me—“fucking with me?”
“One of us needs to change. You will never let go of the monster you were made into unless you lost the one thing you claimed to love. I thought you would see yourself for what you were becoming. It doesn’t matter. Here you are to fuck up my life and steal any chance I have to redeem myself.”
“You don’t fucking deserve redemption,” he bellowed. “You deserve to be punished. Repeatedly.”
“This is your fault.”
“You’re playing the blame game? Really, Nik? I did nothing but sacrifice and make accommodations for you. And how the fuck do you repay me? Oh, right. You fucking drugged me, stabbed me, and left me for dead. I have to say, being stabbed a second time counted as the least favorite part of my life with you. I’m questioning your love for me, Nik. Not a good thing.”
“You never really loved me in the first place,” I refuted. “Does it matter what I felt?”
“How the fuck can you keep saying that?” He gripped the steering wheel with a white-knuckle intensity, his driving became increasingly erratic. “It’s driving me fucking crazy. Don’t…say it anymore. I loved you as much as I could’ve loved anyone.”
“Could’ve…loved…anyone. Do you hear yourself? It means you tried and failed. You don’t have it in you to love. You only know possession and obsession. I’ve become the latter. You can’t even see how being with you is no good for me. You don’t care. You don’t care about me at all.”
“Nikki! How the fuck—” He choked and seemed to have trouble continuing. He quietly added, “Can you say that to me?”
Because if you did, not for a second would you have doubted me when I told you the truth. “Because if you did, you would let me go.”
“I warned you.” He glanced at me with his eyes glossy and irritated. “I told you I could never let you go. I told you what would happen if you ever tried to leave.”
“Your choices in what I do, along with the love you claim you have for me, is all an illusion. Make me believe it’s not. Make me believe you do and walk away. Let me be happy…without you.”
He clasped my hand as it lay across my lap. “You may be fooling yourself,” he began softly, “but you can’t fool me. You’re not happy without me. If you thought you had a choice in the matter, you don’t. Maybe one choice. You can be here with me conscious or barely conscious, but you are staying with me…where you belong.” His jaw clenched for a moment as he glanced at me. “I’ll forgive you for all the things you’ve tried and failed to do to me, but if you ever betray me again…” He bit into lip for a minute as his gaze turned menacing.
I couldn’t be with him in the car any longer. I was afraid what I said next might not have had the outcome I wanted. “Why do you keep sweeping into my life, making me remember and fucking everything up? Why can’t I get sober from you? Why is it so easy for you to get me drunk and cloud my mind within seconds? Why can’t I get sober? I can’t be with you. You can’t even stand to be with yourself. You keep bringing me back to the woman I don’t want to be. The woman who hurts people. God, Eric. It’s horrible that at this moment I wished you’d never come home in time. I wish I died in the bathtub that day and never had to endure any of the things you’ve put me through.”
“Nikki,” he drawled, the simple sound of my name said so calm and collectively, it concerned me. “Are you…telling me you wish you were dead?”
I looked out of the passenger side window saying nothing in return. At three o’clock in the morning, there wasn’t much to see.
He suddenly skidded his tires and drove across the highway’s paved median, and began driving the wrong way on the highway.
He shifted erratically, eventually pushing past one hundred miles per hour. Reaching across with one hand on the wheel, he unbuckled my seatbelt and did the same to his.
“Eric, what are you doing?”
“You want to die?” he questioned, clearly not expecting an answer. “We can die together. I’m so fucking tired of you breaking promises to me. What did I say, Nikki? Your body. My possession. I decide what happens to it. But since you want to die so fucking badly, let’s do this. Let’s die together.”
“Please, stop.” I scanned the speedometer and frantically attempted to buckle my seatbelt.
“How long do you think we can go without hitting someone? A mile? Maybe more. We might have an answer.” Staring straight ahead, he squinted at a small stream of unsteady light miles ahead of us. “I think I see a car. Are you ready for this?”
My thoughts turned to the one thing that was more important than me or him—our baby. “Please, don’t do this.”
“Why? Give me one good fucking reason.”
I swallowed down the sick bubbling in my throat and clutched my stomach. Through closed eyes, I screamed out. “I can’t die. I have to live. Stop the car!”
“With me, Nik. You need to live with me. There is no other fucking way. Say it.”
“Live with you,” I said, my voice quavering with emotion. “I-I want to live with you.”
He shifted again, the car began to slow as he made an abrupt U-turn and pulled over on to the side of the highway. I immediately got out of the car, nearly tumbling into the steep snow-covered decline. I coughed and wheezed, battling against surrendering to a panic attack.
From behind, he grabbed me and pushed me against the passenger side door of his car. “Live with me, Nik,” he said with a debilitating sadness. “Because I can’t live without you.”
“I can’t believe what you almost did.” I glanced at the road as a car whizzed by, reminding me of how near we were to losing our lives. There was one life I cared about—the life he could’ve taken before he or she had a chance to truly live in the world. “You could’ve killed the three of us.”
As he stood frozen, the color drained from his face.
I covered my mouth, but it was too late. It slipped out.
His eyes slowly drifted to my stomach and remained there for many silent moments. He took a long wavering breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “How far along are you?” he asked, his words barely audible through the thickness of emotion that lingered in his voice.
“A little over two months.”
“Why are you just now telling me?” His eyes shot up to mine. “Were you going to abort?”
I shook my head with conviction. “I am going to have this baby. Just…with one parent instead of two.”
“Why?” His voice cracked severely and was barely able to be heard.
“Because…you’ve become your father, and I’ve become your mother.”
He immediately turned his back to me as he contemplated the tree line. A hand went over his face and remained there for a while.
Through his sweater, a large red stain appeared and nearly spread across his entire lower back. “I-I think you might have ripped out your…” my voice trailed off as a black unmarked car pulled up behind us. Eric didn’t seem to notice them until the doors slammed. Charlie approached our position with his weapon drawn.
“No. No. Please don’t.” I stood in front of Eric with my hands out in front of me.
Eric finally turned around. Slipping his arm around my torso, he attempted to move me. I fought against him, shooting him a look to let him know I wouldn’t back down.
“He won’t do this again,” I assured Charlie. “He…needed to talk.”
“Needed to talk? He slipped my guys at the hospital. He drugged the four men who were tasked with watching you at the hotel. Why is it you only reactivated your GPS thirty minutes ago when it seems Ethan more or less wanted to kidnap you?” Charlie questioned me.
“He wasn’t in the place we needed him to be in yet,” I replied. “I had to bring him there. We’re still on the same page.”
My statement made Eric drop his hold from me and take a step back.
I glanced over my shoulder, noting his awed expression. “Just take me back to the house,” I said to Charlie. “He won’t bother me again. He’s finally aware he has something he needs to do.” I was uncertain if it was enough to make me leave him alone. Telling him I was pregnant might’ve exacerbated his will to keep us together.