Kiss Me in the Dark Anthology - Monica James Page 0,154

I was very much a taken woman. Never mind the fact that the man I was to marry was nothing to me. An arrangement I inherited from my dearly departed older sister, a future husband I could never love.

“An engagement ring,” I echo, moaning through clenched teeth as I cut deep enough to get a steady flow of blood - but hopefully not deep enough to kill myself. There’s a fine line between self-mutilation and death, and I pray I’ve stayed on the right side of it for now.

Who knows, if we have to stay here much longer, my proof of life wrist-slashing mission might become my proof of death suicide mission.

“Jesus, Avery,” Rome protests, using is considerable strength to wrench the knife away. “Stop.” He places the knife on the ground beside him, just out of my reach, and drops the newspaper beside it.

“No,” I cry, snatching for the rolled-up newspaper. “We have to get the blood on the newspaper.”

I watch as blood courses from the wound along my inner wrist, pooling at the spot where Rome’s heavily tattooed fingers are wrapped tightly around my hand. It looks surreal, the black ink on his tanned knuckles and fingers, against my milky skin and my bright red blood. “You’re wasting it!’ I struggle with him.

“Avery, look at me,” Rome demands. I meet his gaze, his normally indifferent blue eyes suddenly burning with emotion. “I’m going to get us out of here, okay? Do you hear me?”

I shake my head, grabbing again for the newspaper with my good arm, the one that isn’t currently bleeding. This time I succeed in snatching it up. I shake it open, wrenching my arm out of Rome’s grasp, laying my arm flat across the newspaper to ensure I get the rest of my blood soaked in.

I stay there as the minutes drag past, squeezing my arm, trying to get more blood to rise to the surface. But it’s no use. Even in my weakened state, my blood pressure is probably too low to pump out enough blood to get more than a few drops on the paper. I know that might not be enough for the police to test for DNA, because I’ve watched a true crime series or two in my time, and I know what proof of fucking life means.

“Avery,” Rome tries again. I push him in the chest, hard, on the side where we wasn’t shot. “Shut up,” I whisper, getting up on my hands and knees, snatching the knife from beside him. “It’s not enough,” I explain, gesturing to the drops of blood on the newspaper. “It’s not enough!”

“Okay,” he says helplessly. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

I want you to save me. I want you to get us out of here. I want you to forgive me for the way I betrayed you all those years ago.

“Cut me again,” I press the knife handle into his hands, guiding it toward the slash already decorating my wrist. “Make it deep. My pulse is barely registering enough to pump my blood out as it is.”

He hesitates over the cut. “You’ve lost too much blood already,” he says weakly.

I want to scream at him. But I don’t have the energy to make words. I just look at him, and something in my eyes must tell him how important this is, how much I don’t want to be shocked again by the collar.

It kills him to do it, I can tell. His eyes film over with trepidation, with guilt, as he presses the blade down into my already broken flesh. It fucking hurts, it fucking huuuuurts, but I bite down on the insides of my cheeks and will my blood to flow faster, because it’s better than the alternative.

I whimper, but I don’t fight him. I just watch, dead inside, as my blood dips steadily onto the rolled-up newspaper sitting on the floor between us.

Proof of life, the masked man had said. Today’s copy of The New York Times, its headlines obscured from us, not that I could even read it in this dim light.

I swallow thickly, watching as Rome twists my arm this way and that, as gently as he can. He’s trying to get as much blood out of the cut along the inside of my wrist as he can. He picks the newspaper up and presses it to my arm, getting every drop he can onto the inked paper. I know he doesn’t want to have to cut me