as I squinted that I recognized them as Yuri and Reid.
So I wasn’t dead? Or were we all in hell?
I was very cold. Only corpses could be this cold. I reached for something that was wrapped around me, but Charlie got to it before I did and tucked it in more closely around my neck. I still heard the drums, though they were skimming out into the distance, fading out in the darkness of bad dreams.
“Are you all right?” His hand held out a glass of water, except I flinched at the sudden movement. The hurt in his face was evident.
In an attempt to regain my self-pride, I tried to sit up. I was in Charlie’s cabin again. The mattress had been put back in its frame and the crate was in its original corner. But before I could do much more of anything else, Charlie had me by the shoulders and gently pushed me back on the bed. As his touch registered, everything he last said to me rushed in as an extraordinary combination of memory and heartache.
“Don’t overdo it, Vicious.” Everything about him was clenched now: his stare on me, his voice, every muscle.
I quickly shoved him from me and retreated as far away on the other side of the bed as I could possibly get. With my back against the wall, I huddled with my knees against my chest and pulled the blanket up to my neck. It was the only protection I had, and I was miserably aware of how pathetic it all was.
“Get away from me.” The words felt like lather in my mouth but they were effective enough because he stood up from the floor and moved across the room to be as far from me as he could be. I must have disgusted him with my attempted escape. I figured it was the reason he wouldn’t look at me now, why he stared passionately at the floor.
I hated myself intensely. Not only had my plan failed miserably, but I had also earned Charlie’s hatred in the process. I turned my head away and dug my nail into my palm to keep myself from crying. It would have been so much better if he had just let Wallace kill me when he had the chance. How much longer would it have taken to freeze to death? Though now I could feel my fingers, my toes were just starting to thaw. I tried to assess the danger of my situation. If I didn’t have any food to fuel my muscles, didn’t consume any water and just let myself fall asleep, it might have only taken a day.
“You gotta tell me what happened.”
Charlie had interrupted my self-loathing. Only then did I look up to realize he had been watching me all along. His face had again become ravaged by anger. The darkness that held him wasn’t showing any restraint and Charlie was ready to do damage. Whether it was upon me or not wasn’t going to matter. I figured I had already inadvertently tried freezing to death. Maybe being killed by someone I loved was the better way to go after all. At least he would be the last thing I saw before the Nothingness caved in.
I narrowed my eyes. I wanted to be very clear about my newfound revulsion for him. “What do you care?” There wasn’t a chance I was going to give him or anyone else the satisfaction of knowing the idiocy of my plan or how I had pathetically failed.
His brow furrowed, but he remained silent, only kicking some imaginary dust at the end of his boot.
“You should have just left me there,” I whispered. Maybe this response surprised him because his head jolted up and the stare in his eyes changed yet again. I didn’t know whether or not I should be afraid. Unfortunately, as usual when I was with Charlie, my mouth did the thinking for me.
“You’re just going to kill me anyway. So what was the point in delaying the inevitable? If you changed your mind about the whole ransom thing—”
His fist slammed down on the plastic crate with such force that its lid flew open. I trembled and tried to pull myself away from the display—closed my eyes even, but Charlie wouldn’t let me escape.
“Addie, I’m sorry.” He came over and knelt beside the bed. His voice cracked with every word. “Addie?” He paused, then tried again. “Addie?”