Silver Stilettos

EPILOGUE | I will always love you [6]

My breath left me. All of it was gone. I'd been conscious of the time passing, even with all the hours I'd lost in a drugged stupor, but until that moment, the enormity of the loss never quite penetrated.

It was like when I used to wake up to Kelly Clarkson blasting from my phone's alarm and press the snooze button. It seemed like time was infinite then, in those in-between moments of dawn, when catching a few more minutes of sleep seemed more important than jumping out of my warm bed to get ready for school.

"She told him they should live apart. For my sake. It was only because she didn't trust me enough to believe me, but she didn't trust him enough to rule it out. He moved out. Lives abroad," said Caroline. "She used to visit him." Not a trace of sadness was in her voice.

"How did she die?" It was strange that I didn't know.

"Trial by fire."

"What does that even mean?"

Caroline shrugged. She had grown tired of the conversation, I could tell, and her hand twitched toward me. "Lie down." Fingers worked over me, arranging my pliable body like a ball-jointed doll. "Tilt your head," she instructed, and I did so.

My head was on the pillow, hair fanning around me like a dark halo. Some of the long tendrils, straight except where they curled at the ends, had been artfully tossed over my neck and chest. It was supposed to look sexy, but in actuality, it was anything but. My hair hadn't been washed in a week, and I knew it looked as stringy as it felt. My scalp was sweaty and my armpits even more so.

Nothing about tonight would be beautiful. Especially not me.

"You're lucky you have such long legs," she said, clucking her tongue and grinning at me like we were pals, just girlfriends chatting in the restroom before heading to our next class. "And those big brown doll eyes." She sighed in envy.

I finally asked the question that had been simmering inside me ever since she'd admitted her accusations against her uncle were lies. "Was Baron another lie?"

Caroline hummed and her long, nimble fingers unbuttoned my jeans and pulled down the fly. "Kick them off," she said, and when I didn't, she began to yank.

Whenever we stopped and had a chance to shower, she'd let me wash myself, but the Venus razor she hoarded to herself, insisting I couldn't be trusted with it. It was humiliating, letting her crouch between my legs and slide the sharp blades over my skin, holding perfectly still and praying that she wouldn't nick me.

As bad as that was, it would have been nothing compared to the shame of having hairy legs revealed when my jeans came off, and I raised my head long enough enough to make sure my legs were just as bare as they'd been this morning when Caroline had dry-shaved me.

"I don't think you were raped," I said, closing my eyes when I felt her fingers skip up my calf, over my knee, and shimmy to my upper thigh. "I think you're an actress."

"Who's my audience?"

"The whole world. Me, maybe. Reed, definitely."

Her fingers stopped moving. "Is that right?" The words were slow, deliberate. Weighed with calm.

"You're a fucking psycho, but you were never abused, were you? It's a catchphrase to you, a gimmick. You know it's the one thing that makes people uncomfortable, guilty and ashamed enough to listen to you, to do what you want." I couldn't stop the words from coming, couldn't stop looking at her as I went on the offensive, claws unsheathed.

Her face was pristine, unruffled in its delicate, serene beauty. It was her mask, the one she wore when things weren't quite going her way, and the barely-there flutters of her eyelashes meant she was thinking hard and thinking fast.