I knew not to look in the yard, yet my eyes lingered there anyway.
But not at what I knew to avoid.
No, there was something even more horrific than my memories out there in the dark.
The broken make the most conniving. Perhaps because they were once victims, because devious behavior became so normal it developed into reality. A person gets very good at becoming something if they live it long enough.
Hadn’t I gotten good at being Sadie?
There was a difference, though, wasn’t there? A difference between being something because you didn’t know any better and being something because it was all you knew. Because it was a learned behavior.
Actually, that didn’t sound that different.
And it made me feel worse.
My head was throbbing. I felt confused. All my thoughts were jumbled, and the vision of Eddie—a bright spot in the dark yard—with Sadie wrapped around him as she begged for protection from me was one of my deepest fears.
Watching Eddie turn away from me. Watching him decide all he ever saw in me was Sadie sat right below remembering my past on the checklist of things I never wanted to do.
Here I was, though, staring it in the face.
I trusted him wholeheartedly. The words he whispered to me in the dark of the night, in the dawn of the morning, even in the stockroom in the middle of day, swirled around inside me, giving me hope.
He promised I was it for him. I believed him.
I wouldn’t be human, though, if the sight of his first love clinging to him, crying, didn’t chip away at the confidence I felt. This situation was all kinds of fucked up.
The things Sadie said to me would likely haunt me forever.
She was crazy. No. She wasn’t crazy. Crazy (to me) required a lack of rationale. A lack of empathy and understanding.
Sadie had empathy. Mostly for herself and what she lost, but for Eddie, too. I knew she loved him. Hell, maybe it was that love that kept her from completely losing it all these years. Maybe that’s why she clung to him so hard now. The thought was so sad tears sprang to my already blurry eyes.
She also understood that years of her life were stolen from her. There were moments of clarity in her eyes when she realized what she’d lost, what she would never get back.
No, Sadie wasn’t crazy. She was broken. Probably shattered.
Left staring down at her shattered pieces with no idea how to put herself back together. She’d been vulnerable, and that made her susceptible to brainwashing. She was convinced the only thing left for her was to banish me back to Rumor Island and pretend none of this ever happened.
The mental abuse she endured quite possibly outweighed the physical. After all, physical wounds heal over… but the mental abuse?
It echoes inside your skin forever.
I was sorry for the way she hated me. I even understood it. Hell, in her position, I’d hate me, too. To her, I was nothing but a replacement. I escaped that island without looking back. I left her there to rot alone. To wonder. To be taunted about how I took her name. Her love. Her family and her life.
My amnesia was a get out of jail free card… but what she didn’t understand was nothing in life came free.
I watched just yards away as Eddie wrapped her up tightly, making sure she was completely against his chest. His hand caressed the back of her head, sliding down the length of her long hair.
I felt I was being gutted with a knife.
Oh wait, that sort of already happened. That probably explained that pain.
Regardless, it hurt.
Though he held her, his eyes stared in mine. I was afraid to yell to him. Afraid to tell him what really happened and plead my case. She would lose her mind again. I had no idea what she would do. I didn’t think she would hurt Eddie. But I wasn’t willing to take the chance.
After all, it was two against one.
I knew without looking exactly where he lay. I knew he wasn’t dead. The air still crackled with his sick and twisted energy. Just his presence made me feel weak. Made me feel scared and hopeless. How long did I spend feeling that way?
Long enough to crave death.
I was injured and bleeding. My body felt frail, perhaps my mind even frailer. If Sadie decided Eddie was somehow on my side, she could turn on him, and she would have help. I knew better than most people the kind of damage that man could cause.
Instead of saying anything, I sagged in the doorway, hand pressed against my side as blood slowly oozed between my fingers. I was getting lightheaded, woozy, and foggy. Even through it, though, I could hear her. Sadie poured out her twisted sense of truth, telling him I was playing him from the start. Telling him my amnesia had only been a game.
I asked him with my eyes, with no words, only with my heart.
Know me.
Know me without knowing, without hearing.
Know my heart.
“Where are you hurt?” Eddie asked Sadie, stroking her hair again. A part of my heart deflated. Everything inside me hurts.
“I’m not,” Sadie answered, pulling back. His eyes shifted away from me, and I felt cold the instant they were gone. “I made it out here to you before she could do anything.”
“Why is Amnesia bleeding?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle.
I perked up with renewed interest.
“Lily. I had to stab her,” Sadie said. “To keep her away from me. She was trying to hurt me, trying to steal my life.”
His eyes flashed to me, then quickly back to her.
“It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
“Look over there, Sadie,” he said, gesturing with his head.
“I don’t want to,” she said, her voice small.
“He’s here,” Eddie intoned. “Is that him?”
I had to make an effort not to look. In fact, I shrank back into the doorway.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“How did you know he was coming?”
“He told me. I was supposed to be ready.”
Eddie’s brow furrowed. He spoke to her as though he had all the patience in the world, as though he were trying to understand her. “Ready for what?”
“For him.”
As if just the mere mention of the man were a catalyst, a low groan filled the air.
“No!” Eddie’s voice erupted along with the sound of pounding feet. “Get back, Am!”
My body buckled, my back hit the doorway, and began to slide down to the floor. Squeezing my eyes shut, fat tears rolled from beneath my lids, slipping down my cheeks. Seconds later, he burst up the steps, and familiar, warm hands slid around me, lifting my paralyzed form.
“He’s out there,” I whimpered. “I didn’t look. Sadie stabbed me.”
A numb feeling mixed with a muted rush of hysteria bubbled up inside me.
“I know, baby,” he whispered and lifted me off my feet completely. Even as he moved so urgently, he was gentle. Always so gentle with me.
“I’m bleeding,” I said, even though that was pretty obvious.
He sat me on the kitchen counter, quickly grabbed a towel, and pressed it to my side. I cried out, and he made a sound.
“I’m sorry,” he moaned. “Pressure. Put as much pressure on this as possible.” He pressed my hand against the towel. Breath hissed from between my teeth. A phone slapped down beside me. “Call 9-1-1,” he demanded.
He gazed around, then lunged at the bloody knife lying on the floor. “This what she stabbed you with?”
I nodded. “She’s so brainwashed, Eddie. They told her I left her there to die and stole her life. Stole you.”
“I know,” he replied, grim.
“But how—”
With the knife in hand, he lunged forward. I flinched, recalling what it was like to have it slip so easily into my body. His touch was gentle, though, as he cupped my head, pressing a soft kiss to my hairline. “I love you. So much. Don’t ever forget that.”
A sound like someone coming onto the porch made him jerk back.
“Eddie!” Sadie yelled, a bit of hysteria in her scream.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” I whispered, afraid. “You should have just stayed with her.”
With wide, angry eyes, he told me, “Do not come outside. No matter what you hear.”
“But—” Oh my God, he was going back out there!
“Promise me!” he snapped.
I balked. “I can’t.”
“Call the cops. Stay inside,” he ordered again, then rushed outside. The moonlight glinted off the red-stained blade of the knife as he went.