Held A New Adult Romance(59)

"I don't know," she says. "I sometimes wonder if I'm broken inside. I don't..." She runs her tongue over her upper lip. "I guess I should feel worse than I do. About him."

"Amber, what happened? What happened when you went up to Big Sur?"

She gathers back her hair and sighs. "He'd been holding back," she says, after a short pause that lasts forever. "He knew - about everything."

"He knew you were pregnant?"

Amber nods. "Yep. He'd been watching me. Following me. He knew I'd been to the clinic. But he didn't know that I hadn't had the abortion."

I let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding. She's told me enough about this guy to feel like I know him, like I know how he'd react. It's not a pleasant thought.

"He had the gun all along," she says. "It's possible he was planning to kill me when he came to the apartment, but I said something he wanted to hear. Isn't that funny? Everglade always said I was stupid to forgive him or try to understand him, but in the end I think it might have been the thing that saved my life. I took him to bed, told him we'd go to the house - and he went along with it."

She sniffs hard. Her eyes glitter. "Because he still loved me," she says. "Everglade was wrong about that too. He did love me, even if it was twisted and wrong and crazy. He still loved me enough to believe I'd want to die with him."

"Die with him?"

Amber tosses her cigarette out of the window, turns back towards me and then moves wide around me - in a half-arc that takes her to the chair in the middle of the room. There she sits, straight backed.

"He used to sleepwalk sometimes," she says. "He had very vivid dreams - nightmares, sometimes. He said it was part of the price he paid for being creative. We used to sleep in the most ridiculous positions - wrapped around each other until our limbs turned numb. I was afraid to let go of him, in case he got out of bed and started walking around in his sleep. He used to scare me, Jaime. He was like a different person. Or maybe that's just what he was like all along - I don't know. Like I say - I was an idiot. So many things about this man - all ways that nature says 'Do Not Touch' and I was just...fuck it...so into it. I thought he was deep. I thought he was complicated. I thought he was broken and that I could fix him."

She slumps and rubs her forehead. "I thought he was sleepwalking," she continues. "When he woke me up. We went straight to bed when we got to Big Sur - it was a long drive. It was twenty past three - I remember looking at the clock and thinking that was weird. If he was going to have some kind of wig out in his sleep then it always happened between three and three thirty. Strange time of night - just...dead time. No time, you know? Like when you're a little kid and you wake up at that hour - and it's like everyone in the world has been asleep forever and will never wake up. Do you know what I mean?"

I nod. "Yeah. I think so."

"He was staring at me. Like so hard that I could feel his eyes burning into his face even while I was sleeping. I snapped awake and there he was, just staring across the pillow at me. It was dark but I could see him clearly. I could see his eyes were shining, like he was about to cry or something."

She takes a breath and swallows. I feel like I should go over there - touch her hair, hold her hand, do something - but I'm afraid that if I do she'll stop talking.

"He said 'When were you going to tell me you'd killed our baby, Amber?'"

"Jesus."

She shakes her head. "He'd been sitting on that for I don't know how long. Fucking psycho." This comes out in a sort of angry, frightened spit, and for a moment her eyes shine bright. She rubs a hand over her mouth. "Then I felt it - under my chin, right here." She presses two fingers under the point of her chin. "He had the gun right there. He was going to blow the top of my fucking head off, and it's so stupid, but all I could think of was please don't let him fuck up my face too badly. All I could think of was my Dad, and how much worse it was going to be for him if I didn't have a face for him to kiss goodbye when they found my body. If they found my body."

Tears start to run down her face. I move towards her, but she holds up a hand.

"Don't," she says. "Please don't. It's hard enough having to remember that I did that to you."

"Amber, it's forgiven. Forgotten. You were panicking."

She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. There's no excuse, not for me. Not when I know what it's like to feel that scared."

I go to the chair and kneel at her feet. "It's okay. It's done. We're both here. We're both safe. Please - go on."

She takes another cigarette from the packet and doesn't bother going to the window this time. "He said," she begins again - a false start. She clears her throat. "He said that the world wasn't going to come between us anymore. I didn't dare say anything - if I moved my jaw I'd feel the gun and if I felt the gun I thought I was going to die of fear before he even had the chance to shoot me. I'd already pissed myself. Isn't that awful? I'm such a coward."