"And he said 'Amber, let's talk about this, okay?'"
She pauses. "I missed," she says, and I exhale. "It was mostly dark and I'm a terrible shot. It went about a foot wide and embedded in the wall above the bed. Like an idiot I freaked out and dropped the gun. He was halfway across the room before I even realized. I ran for the bathroom - there was a lock on the door, you see. I cracked my knee on the bathroom floor. I screamed and he turned on the light. I knew I was bleeding - I could see it kind of black and sticky looking in the dark - but that was when I saw my legs were streaked with red. It was a moment's panic but that was all it took - he was through the door and on my back."
Her hand goes to the scar on her neck. "That was when he decided to try a little DIY tattoo removal."
"Amber..."
She shakes her head. "I'm okay. It's okay. I can do this. I've done it before." She keeps her fingers pressed to the back of her neck. "He said if I didn't want to be his in this life, I sure as hell wouldn't be his in the next one. I had his full weight on me - totally pinned - and this knife in my neck. I couldn't move so I just screamed. The pain in my belly was getting worse - like something was working its way out. I could feel my back was soaking wet - there was fucking blood everywhere. All this red under the bright bathroom light. 'That's what happens when you go to the abortion doctor, baby,' he said. 'He butchers you and you bleed to death - and serve you goddamn right, you murdering bitch.'
"I was getting lightheaded. I really did think I was going to die then. I didn't think I had any more blood left in me. And then...it was like a miracle. I felt him kind of jerk on top of me - like he'd had an electrical shock. He started moving - like flailing. Really hard. I was covered in bruises afterwards. I heard the knife hit on the tiles and he was making these weird gobbling, gasping noises. I managed to get out from under him and realized what was happened - he was having some sort of seizure."
She takes a deep breath. "And then he stopped," she says. "And that was that. He died."
"Holy shit."
Amber shrugs. "Afterwards they said I'd fractured his skull. When I clocked him with the bedside lamp. I barely broke the skin, but it was enough to make him bleed into his brain."
"It was an accident, Amber."
"No," she says. "I meant to do it. If I'd had the gun in my hand I would have unloaded the rest of the clip into his evil fucking head." She gets up from the chair, her arms wrapped around herself. "I wasn't sorry he was dead. I was relieved."
She exhales and turns back to me. "I called 911. I kept thinking 'I've killed him. I killed Justin,' - kept trying to make myself feel something I should have felt. I killed a person, Jaime. And I wasn't sorry."
I get to my feet and go to her. "Amber, he was trying to kill you. State law says..."
"And what about natural law?" she says, her eyes filling with tears. "What about that? What kind of human being takes a life like that? I bashed him on the head with a rock like a goddamn cavewoman."
"It was him or you." I reach out to her, and this time she walks into my arms. I hold her there for a moment, her chin sharp on my shoulder.
"I know," she says, in a near whisper. "I keep telling myself that. My doctor tells me that too - there are some relationships that almost always end in murder, and that I'm lucky it wasn't mine."
"Well there, see? She's right. It was the only way it was ever going to end. You got out alive."
Amber sighs. I feel her ribs expand against me. "I know that. It was afterwards - that was the hard part. I got out alive, but the hardest part is convincing myself that I deserved to."
Chapter Twenty
Amber
He spent the night.
It was all very proper, or maybe he just didn’t feel like trying to get down and dirty on an air mattress.
There's no coffee; there's no kitchen as yet. He rubs the back of his neck like it's stiff and it's all I can do not to pounce on him with the pretext of offering him a neck rub. The awkwardness is coming off him in waves. For the first time I wish we'd had sex last night - maybe things would be less uncomfortable.
"We could go out for coffee?" I say.
He hesitates, and it's all I need to know. I can feel the anxiety bubbling up from my chest like acid indigestion - that same fawning, edgy state that's so familiar. It was the way Justin used to make me feel.
"I just think," I begin, unsure as to how I'm going to end the sentence. "I just...it would be nice. We could...I don't know..."
"No, I know," says Jaime, the goddamn liar. Nobody could have made any sense out of that last mouthful of word salad. He doesn't want me. He doesn't. How can he?