No time to think. No time to act.

“Chris …” His name is the last word that leaves my lips.

The last word before I grasp behind me, desperate to escape … And my hands find one of the knives from the wooden block.

And in one quick jab, I’ve lodged the blade right into his chest.

His hands lower as he stumbles away from me. I grasp my throat and inch away as he sinks to the floor. But something in my mind clicks. Something wicked. Something cruel.

And instead of running, instead of calling for help, I stay and watch him drown in his own blood.

Present

My lips feel icy cold against his as images of a cold-hearted bitch stabbing her own boyfriend to death spring into my mind. Memory after memory comes flooding back inside. Blood seeping from Chris’s wounds. Him falling to the ground like a bag of potatoes. Me not giving a single care in the world if he lived or if he died. And when I pulled that blade from his soft flesh, I smiled.

I actually smiled.

The one person who could hurt me, really hurt me, no longer could.

Because I hurt him instead.

I back away from Eli slowly as the tears spring into my eyes. “I … I …”

“Tell me what you did,” Eli murmurs, grabbing ahold of my face.

“I stabbed him,” I say, hiccupping. “I’m a murderer.”

“You killed him because he was going to kill you,” he says.

My eyes skid back and forth between him and the memories lodged deep inside. “Oh God, oh God.”

“Look at me, Amelia. Look at me.” Eli holds on tight, keeping me here in the moment. “Stay with me. Don’t lose yourself.”

“I can’t. I’m a killer. I did it. I … I … I’m a monster,” I mutter, unable to keep the weeping at bay. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He shushes me and pulls me into him, wrapping his arms around me so tight it feels like I’m suffocating. But it’s not the same kind of chokehold that Chris had on me. It’s a warm embrace, one filled with love and acceptance, one where I can let go and cry until I have no more tears left.

“You’re not a monster,” he says.

“I stabbed him!” I yell through my own tears.

“You had no other choice,” he says. “Kill or be killed.”

I close my eyes and let the full depravity of my actions wash over me like the ocean water washes over the beach. This is what Eli meant when he told me I needed to face my own sin. The sole reason for me wishing I would be punished over and over again.

I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember.

But now that I can, the memory is eating me alive.

All I see is Chris and his blood-drenched chest, eyes wide open, begging me to help him. And I refused.

“Please … make it stop,” I beg, my fingers digging into Eli’s shoulders as images of Chris’s dead body flash into my mind.

I was drunk. Foolish. And so out of it that I must have stumbled out of my apartment and ran as hard as I could. Until I no longer had the will, no longer had the energy … and collapsed in the park. Where my brain locked itself out of the memories it needed to hold close … just to protect me. There’s no other explanation for me losing so much time, and I’m only now starting to remember glimpses of this frightening reality.

“I can’t take them away,” Eli says. “ I told you, it would be harder than anything you’d ever done. This was never going to be easy.”

“Why did I want this?” I mutter. “I would’ve been better off not knowing.”

“Because your soul knew it needed to release this. Your mind was drowning in pain,” he replies. “And now you’ve released it from the burden of keeping it a secret.”

He’s right, but I don’t want him to be right.

I sniff, trying to cope with the immense feelings overwhelming me. “It hurts. It hurts so much.”

“I know …” he whispers, and he tilts his head down and presses a soft kiss onto my forehead. “But I will be here every step of the way.”

“Why? Why didn’t you call the police if you knew? Why didn’t you have me arrested?” I ask.

He looks at me, and for the first time, it feels sincere. “Because this is what we do. We punish the sinners until they repent.”

I lean back and lick my lips. Even though I’m completely naked, I’ve never felt this warm and comforted before. As weird as it may seem, skin to skin with my chest against his is the only place I feel safe right now as though he is the only person on this earth who could understand what I’m going through.

“All this time, I thought you were lying. That you were keeping me here for your own dirty needs,” I say as I listen to his heartbeat, the sound keeping me in the here and now. “But you were just trying to make me see the truth.”

Tags: Clarissa Wild Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net