Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55308 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Because she was sick.
Because she was broken.
Because all the women went back and she never would.
When the dogs finally ate her, she’d be wearing that dress.
Because the fact that Aaron might have been right about everything was too terrible to swallow down.
This, she told Li Wei; she told him everything. Sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, always horrendously honest. How much she missed him and the life they should have had. How angry she was that he left her as if he stood a chance at finding his parents. How much she envied him for loving so hard that he knew she would live without his help, but his Māmā and Bàba would not.
Sometimes, she railed as if the imagined phantom might reply, screaming out hateful things. How could he have left her? Didn’t he love her enough to stay?
Of course he had. He loved her as much as any man had ever loved.
Even as much as Aaron loved her.
And Li Wei would have married her, and they would have been happy. But…
The world died, and men like Aaron lived.
Li Wei was too good; he would have been slaughtered protecting his wife. Aaron would have killed anything and everything that might even approach her.
Like Neil.
“I miss you.” There had been a great deal of honesty in solitude, but that she had never dared mutter aloud.
Her new phantom answered back, “I shouldn’t have done it.”
Fever had grown worse by the day. A diet of bugs and weeds, of raw vermin and the occasional slow bird tended to do that.
Fallen log supporting her weight, Eugenia plopped down and stared as the world’s ugliest river flowed past. “The bigger question is which it you mean. The slavery? The manipulations? Level 9? Fucking Jessica?”
“Jessica.”
What was there to do but shrug then frown. “She’s popular for a reason.”
“I went to her room, traded her one-hundred thousand tickets.”
Impressive when Eugenia thought about it—it even deserved a low whistle. “Wow, that’s a lot more than I was ever offered…”
“I paid her to tell everyone I fucked her all night.” The man took a deep breath, one so unlike the composed captain. “Instead, I got drunk on her balcony and passed out on her floor.”
Standing on shaky legs, Eugenia approached the water’s edge to pick up a flat rock and skip it over the tide. Eight skips before it sank.
“Eugenia. Did you hear what I said?”
How much she’d missed hearing the way Aaron said her name. As if there was no one else in the world but them. As if he really knew her… which he did. “I feel sorry for Jessica. She’s been in love with Maxwell for years. He’s been in love with her. But to hide it from you, they are always with other people.”
“I know.”
A sorry snort, and she started looking for a new rock to skip. “If you knew, both of them would be dead.”
The specter’s voice came nearer. “I know all of it, Eugenia. And I turn a blind eye when I can.”
“That’s… almost sweet.” The real Aaron wasn’t sweet. He was aggressive, relentless, unscrupulous, generous, beautiful, loving, and twisted.
“Going to Jessica was the cheap trick of a desperate man. One who knew you’d get off the boat one way or another. A man who’d tried everything he could think of to manipulate you into surrender. I left the room that night, because I needed you to be jealous, to be anything if you couldn’t love me. Because I was jealous of everything you fought for. I’m jealous of the fucking ground you walk on.”
This just might have been the most fulfilling fever dream she’d had yet.
Sane enough to remember that auditory hallucinations were a terrible sign, Eugenia looked down at the mud-stained, ugly blue cotton under her crusty furs. She’d lost weight. “I thought I’d die in a nicer dress, wearing the pearls my daddy gave me. I had never taken them off until the day I traded them for scraps, because it was that or pussy. God only knows where they are now.”
“Honey, please look at me…”
Another perfectly shaped rock skipped over chilly waters, Eugenia smiling to beat her record. “Shouldn’t it be lamb? Lamb to the slaughter? Lamb on a spit? You called Brooke lamb.”
Pain, there was so much pain from her ghost’s confession. “I could have told her about Fresh Water, and I didn’t. I needed a living example to open your eyes.”
The tear that fell was warm on her cheek. “I know… but it wouldn’t have mattered which way she went. There is no happy ending anywhere.”
“Eugenia… please.”
Closing her eyes to the sound of a stalwart man begging, she sighed.
But the phantom was relentless. “I would be happy to just be able to see you”—and the voice came closer—“even if you never let me touch you again.”
“If we’d met in some bar before the bombs, if you’d approached with your swagger, your good looks, and your unbearable pretentiousness... I would have thrown my drink in your face.”