My phone was in my fucking dress pocket. The loose material of the fabric made it hard to notice the pocket, Anderson obviously didn’t know this, or he would have taken it away from me. I looked around and couldn’t see my bag anywhere, so I knew he had searched it and taken it out of my sight.
“What?” Anderson said, his gaze on me. “What is it?”
I glanced at him. “My wrists are sore.”
“They’ll be fine,” he grunted. “The skin isn’t even chafed.”
I looked down at my red wrists and realised that he was right.
“They’re still sore.”
He didn’t reply, he just finished off his food and his wine. Then he proceeded to wash and dry his dishes like it was a regular day, and not like he was keeping me hostage in his home. It hit me then that Anderson was really deranged. Not just sick, but twisted and clearly evil. He had to have some sort of mental disorder to think what he was doing was okay. It was fucking crazy. He was crazy.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he told me with a pointed glare. “I’m leaving the door open, so if you move, I’ll know, and I will not be happy.”
In other words, he’d beat the shit out of me if my arse left the sofa.
“My leg is sore,” I said, shrugging. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He walked out of the room and my mind raced with my options. I couldn’t call Elliot because he would come running and probably get hurt, and I couldn’t call 999 because I couldn’t speak to answer any of the questions they’d have. I had to think of what I needed at the current moment, and what I needed was Anderson verbally saying what he’d done on the night I left him. I needed proof. I hurriedly got out my phone and triple-checked that it was on silent. I turned the volume up so the microphone would pick up the words more clearly, then I opened the voice memo app, pressed Record and put the phone back in my pocket.
When Anderson returned, I groaned when I reached behind me and rubbed the throbbing spot on the back of my head. It really was hurting me, but I was trying to appear to be as little of a threat as I could – so I wanted to appear as weak as possible.
“I can’t believe you’ve attacked me, Anderson.”
He retook his seat.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, it’s why I gave you some morphine. Don’t you understand?”
I sat upright. “You could have killed me . . . you know I’m recovering from a brain injury!”
“That is the very reason I put morphine in your tea, so you’d just fall asleep.”
“Wait.” I felt my lips part as I realised just what he was saying. “You drugged me?”
I recalled him mentioning it when I woke up as well, but I hadn’t focused on it until now.
“Yes, but not very well. You’re still conscious. You said morphine makes you sleep.”
“Yeah,” I replied dumbly. “It does.”
“I should’ve used two capsules instead of one.” He shook his head.
I stared at him. “You drugged me and you hit me!”
“I didn’t want to hit you; I never want to hit you.”
“But yet you always do hit me.” I glared at him. “You’re the reason why waking up in a hospital felt familiar to me when I awoke from my coma . . . each time I woke up in a hospital, it was because you put me there.”
“Me?” Anderson jumped to his feet. “I had no choice but to discipline you! You never listen to me, when all I want to do is protect you!”
I clenched my hands into fists to keep myself from screaming at him.
“Protect me?” I repeated with a slow blink. “You protect me by physically damaging my body? Is that it? You almost killed me, and you did succeed in killing Bailey. Anderson . . . you killed her.”
My voice cracked as the weight of my words took hold. Anderson had caused Bailey’s death; he was the reason we were so scared that night. He’d caused every single thing.
“I didn’t mean to cause the crash, but she took you from me!” His hands shook as he spoke. “I just wanted to get to you, I didn’t think she’d drive so fast to get away from me.”