He narrows his eyes. “Is this some kind of trick?”
I shake my head even though he’s right. “No, I’m just trying to understand.”
“There is nothing to understand,” he says with a clenched jaw. “Not about hell.”
Liam
* * *
Two and a half years ago
* * *
I pinch the wire and try to make it go through the hole for the millionth time. My patience is thinning more than usual, and when I can’t take it anymore, I scream and chuck the hook away.
“Fucking fish,” I growl. “Better off eating the fucking moss off the ground.”
I didn’t know how hard it would be to fish on my own without proper tools and an actual fucking boat, but now I do.
I don’t think I’ll ever get to eat anything other than the berries and mushrooms this forest has to offer.
Why did I want to move out here again?
I sigh and fish my knife from my pocket, staring at the blade for a while. I wonder if I could kill an animal. If I could eat something that was alive mere minutes ago.
This knife won’t cut through a deer.
Though it’ll definitely kill a sparrow, if I threw it at him.
The thought makes me laugh.
But my own smile glinting in the blade causes painful flashes in front of my eyes.
A woman, brushing her pretty blond hair. My eyes, staring back at me in a mirror embellished with a flower.
“But I promise I will always be here to protect you.”
Words that came from my mouth.
But I don’t remember ever saying them.
What the fuck was that?
The blade in my hand shakes vigorously.
Visions such as this one come and go like droplets of rain pitter-pattering down on my head during a storm. Together, they form a cobweb of images, barely sticking together by a thread.
Are they memories of my previous life?
Who the fuck even knows.
I can’t ask anyone.
I don’t fucking want to either.
I close my eyes and try to focus on the here and now, but it’s hard when all I see is her. The girl in the mirror and her solemn eyes, those soft, delicate lips, and that precious smile she gave me that still manages to make my heart beat faster, and faster, and faster, and—
THWACK!