“It just didn’t seem smart to leave my fingerprints on it. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
Anton shrugged. “Pick it up.”
“And do what with it?” She’d uncurled herself from the balled up position, but she was still on the ground, eyeing him warily.
“Just end it. I don’t want to kill you or your sister, but I can’t leave you as a loose end, either. It’s just easier this way. You stabbed me in the heart when you ran away. This is just making it official.”
“You’re insane. You know I’m not going to stab you.”
He bent and picked up the knife, and just when she thought she was in the clear, Anton used his free hand to pull her up to stand. He held her against the wall and rested the flat of the blade against her collarbone.
Her breath barely moved in and out of her. Running away had done something strange and wild to him. She’d never seen him this way. She could hardly believe this was Anton. Looking at him now, he didn’t just look tired. He looked disheveled, his energy a sort of erratic heavy metallic grating against her skin when he touched her.
Annette felt the tears gathering behind her eyes, and then they began to slide down her cheeks. “Please just go and leave me in peace. We aren’t loose ends. We won’t tell anyone anything. Just go,” she whispered.
It was impossible to tell which way he would go in the long stretch of silence that followed. It felt equally possible that he could kill her… or himself. He seemed so completely broken, which felt wrong and indulgent since she was the one who’d been his slave, not the other way around. He’d been in control the whole time. And now, faced with a single grain of uncertainty, he couldn’t hack it? That was the man she’d given herself to?
She felt angry at him for this moment of weakness. This was the man whose hands she’d put her life into, and he couldn’t keep it together when things went south?
Finally he stepped away. “I’m sorry, kiska. I haven’t slept in three days. I haven’t eaten in two. I had vodka, but that doesn’t count, does it?” Those were his last words to her. No kiss goodbye. No final embrace. No threats. He just turned and left.
On his way out the door, he slammed the knife down into the kitchen counter so that it stood straight up and down, the point trapped in the counter. Annette slid back to the ground and cried.
She tried to move on with her life. But once Anton left, the finality of it had slithered up around her neck like a choking vine. It was only weeks later that she was finally able to admit what she’d hoped would happen. She’d known deep down Anton would come for her. But she’d wanted promises and assurances. She’d wanted to know he would keep Brian away from her, at any cost.
When that didn’t happen, she’d thought she could go back to being the person she’d been before him and the house. But she’d been wrong. Before that night in the apartment, she’d known he was coming, so any sadness she might have felt, she wouldn’t have to sit with that grief for very long. Because he was coming for her. If she hadn’t welcomed such a fate in some dark corner of her heart, wouldn’t she have taken Janette and run?
It was the part of the movie where the couple is separated temporarily. Then they see each other again, and work things out, and then everything is okay. Somewhere in her mind, Annette could now admit that’s what she’d thought would happen. She’d thought he would make some grand gesture, or that he would just take her no matter how much she kicked and fought so she wouldn’t have to blame herself later if everything went to hell. If Brian hurt her. If Anton did.
They both knew eventually she’d get past it. And maybe they would talk and reach some compromise, and he would promise her protection, and everything would just… work out.
But then another part of her, a more conscious part, had thought that if he let her go, everything would just be okay. She could somehow… go back, to what, she couldn’t fully articulate anymore. Her life before Anton felt like a dim, barely remembered and half-forgotten dream.
Her fingers ran absently along the scar on her lower back. She hadn’t shown it to Janette. She could never show it to anyone.
She jumped when the key turned in the lock. Every time that happened, she jumped now. As if somehow Anton had gotten a key and was coming back. But it was only her sister. He wasn’t coming back. He’d made his final drunken, nonsensical visit. She wasn’t even sure what he’d wanted or how he thought it would turn out.
When she woke in the night in the middle of a dream of him, she could sometimes piece it together in her mind, like a blurry watercolor. It was never fully clear in the daylight. But at night, in the stillness at 3 am, she thought sometimes that he’d hoped she would come back with him. But he didn’t want her cowering on the ground terrified of him, bargaining for her life. He wanted her to want all the things he wanted.
And the fucked-up part of it was… she did. Somehow when she hadn’t been paying attention, this desire to be his had snuck inside her heart. If it hadn’t been for that stupid shit with Brian. If she could have had some kind of reassurance. If...
“Annie?”
Annette looked up to find her sister standing in front of her, a worried expression knitting her brow.
“You have to get off this couch and put something else on besides a bathrobe.”
“No, I don’t. The clients don’t know the fucking difference,” Annette said. She’d been taking calls like this. She could barely stomach the work anymore because all the pretty lies she told didn’t feel pretty anymore. They only made her miss having something real. It wasn’t easy money anymore. Somehow the whole thing felt gross and degrading.
It was absurd to her that she should feel that way about phone calls and fantasy when she hadn’t felt it with Anton and all the real life debauchery he’d subjected her to.
“Annie!” her sister shouted.
“What? I’m right here!”
“No. You aren’t. It’s been six weeks. I’m worried. Maybe you should talk to someone.”
“Hell, no.” She wasn’t going to sit on some therapist’s couch and discuss how somehow her every longing and desire now revolved around whips and chains and slavery.
“Maybe we should call the police. He’s got to pay for what he’s done to you.”
“No! It wasn’t him. If you call, I promise I will never speak to you again.”
“Well you have to fucking talk to me! I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
This was serious. Janette almost never cursed. It wasn’t in her makeup. She was the sweet one, the one birds and butterflies followed around whenever she stepped outside.
And yet… Annette couldn’t be bothered. What if she just showed up back at the house? Would he take her back still? He’d probably moved on.
57
“Are you just going to let your spa go to hell?” Gabe asked from the doorway.
Anton looked up from the desk in his room and shrugged and poured another shot of vodka. “Fuck it.”
He’d left one of the other massage therapists in charge at Dome. He was too busy losing himself inside the bottle to give a shit about it. Besides, it was in the city. It was close enough to Annette that if he let himself go there, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t bring her back with him. And then what? She hated him. He’d been arrogant and so sure she would never try to leave him.