He turns to me, hopeful, relieved I am warming. Then I shift my weight and the cuffs above my head clink against the bedframe I am chained to, and my rose-tinted glasses shatter. It’s obvious; forgiving him is wrong, so wrong, but it’s easier to believe the man on a hill is a stranger, someone I will never meet again, because this Jack, the one with tears in his eyes, the one who is soft and who tells me he loves me, is the real Jack. It is easier to believe that than it is to admit I never knew the real him. That you never really know anyone, not all the way.
He crouches beside me. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’
‘No. You can’t guilt me into forgetting what you did. You can’t haul out the violins and expect everything to go back to the way it was.’
‘You told me once that I couldn’t be a bad person if everything I do is done with love.’
The first time we kissed, the day Jeffrey caught us together on the windowsill.
‘This isn’t love. It’s control.’ He’s incredibly manipulative and I’m angry I didn’t see it before. But maybe coming up against a puppet master means it’s impossible to know your strings are being pulled.
He balls his hands into fists and presses them against his eyes. He makes a sound – a low growl of frustration. He is like a child in a toy shop being told he can’t have what he wants. I hate him for what he has done to us because there’s no going back.
‘It’s insanity,’ I spit. ‘You’re fucking insane.’
He raises his head slowly; the usual intensity in his eyes has bubbled over into something feverish and unstable, something which makes my breath freeze in my chest. ‘Told you before, don’t confuse insanity with drive.’
I look away, remembering him defending Bundy; it makes sense now.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he insists. ‘I’m not. Listen to me, I lost control this morning; I thought the second we went back to Crosshaven, you’d overanalyse everything, overanalyse us, and you’d put an end to it because that’s you all over, Elodie. You have something good and you let it go, you have something bad and you hold it tight. I panicked, okay? I wanted what we had last night. I wanted to make you remember what we had last night. Look …’ He breathes out. Runs his fingers through his hair again. ‘Now I have you here with me, I’m calm, in control. I won’t hurt you again and now’ – his expression softens – ‘we have time for me to make it up to you.’
I swallow. ‘That day in the woods after I was taken, if I hadn’t agreed to your plan to come to Wisteria, would you have let me go?’
He searches my face and I know the answer; even if I’d begged to go back to Crosshaven, he’d have dragged me here against my will. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I knew once we were alone, truly alone, you’d realise how you feel about me. It was different for me, I knew I loved you that first time we met, right here, right outside. This is our place. It brought us together …’ He trails a fingertip down the side of my face as though we are two lovers and not a captor and his captive. ‘And now it’s going to keep us that way.’
My stomach turns over and I swallow against the rush of bile.
He is watching my mouth with the same hunger he did last night, moments before he kissed me. My heart thuds hard, but this time it is with terror, not excitement; if he decides he wants me, there is nothing I can do with my hands tied above my head. So, before this spark of lust turns into wildfire, I whip my head to the side, catch his finger between my teeth and bite down so hard, I taste blood. Wrenching his hand back, he stumbles. I am tense, terrified, waiting for him to react. He examines his torn finger with shock. Then laughs. ‘Last night was perfection, Elodie. You were everything I knew you’d be.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
36 Days Missing
Adaline Archer
After picking Dad up from the police station on Saturday night, I drove him back to mine. I wasn’t even surprised to see Ethan still hadn’t returned. Dad mumbled something and went upstairs for a shower.
I don’t know if you know this about Dad, but he only ever cries in the shower. The first time I heard him, Nanna had just died, and through the wall came this soft burbling beneath the spray of the running water. Now, fifteen minutes later, Dad emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, the redness of his eyes the only sign he’d been crying, and I stood in the doorway of my bedroom in my Saved by the Bell pyjamas and was so shocked that my dad, my strong dad who could carry my six-year-old self under his arm without breaking a sweat, had been crying. I think it was the first time I realised parents were just people and not unfeeling cornerstones of our family.