Primal Pursuit

He killed my parents. I watched him kill them.

This is the worst kind of wrong, and I have to do…something.

My heart’s beating hard and fast in my chest.

I have to end this.

The thought is there, loud in my head.

I feel like if I don’t, he’s going to pull me under into a place where I’ll lose myself. Lose them. My mom and dad. All I have is their memory, and by doing this…with him, being happy with him, it’s like making a mockery of their deaths.

If they’re staring down at me now, I can’t imagine them feeling anything but shock and disappointment.

I’ve let things go too far.

I can tie him up, wake him, point a gun at him and demand the information I need from him.

Because if I don’t…if I don’t, then he’ll win because my resolve is crumbling. It’s cracking into dust, and once it’s all gone, what will be left of me? Left of my parents’ memory?

I sit up, breathing in slowly to calm my racing heart.

That almost tender and borderline sweet sex was the last straw. He’s so beautiful, and my heart aches when I look at him, asleep, in the dark with the moonlight streaming in. He looks like a dark and fallen angel, one who could be redeemed.

It’s a fallacy.

He can’t.

Redemption isn’t for a man like him.

It probably isn’t for me, either. But he stole from me.

He stole my life, my future, happiness. He stole my innocence and my home.

He killed my parents, and I know he’d have killed me, too, if he knew I was there.

I’m fucking him, something I should be able to handle. But feelings? Ones that grow and deepen? Those, I can’t. Because I have them. Deep, complicated ones. Like love and hate, and it’s all a toxic, fucked-up mess.

In playing a game with him, letting him hunt me while I hunted him, I got lost. Caught up. How the hell did I think I’d be able to beat a master gamester? That was foolish…isfoolish.

Maybe what I need to do is end him now. Just kill him while I still can. In his sleep.

I’ll never get a chance like this again, when he’s this vulnerable. This weak.

My contingency plan, if I couldn’t get the names of the ones who hired him, will just have to become my actual plan. Deep dive into research.

I need to do it. Now.

On wobbly, rubbery legs, I get up and go out of the bedroom to where I saw him put his gun.

It’s not there. But my purse is.

It’s empty. And I don’t even have my corkscrew. But I look at the collection of knives in the kitchen and pull the big chef’s knife.

I pad back into the bedroom, heart in my mouth, but he hasn’t moved, just the even rise and fall of his chest.

Climbing on the bed, I slide onto him, and I wait. But he doesn’t move. So, I bring the knife up. I have to clench my teeth to stop the cry that wants freedom, a cry from the bottom of my soul, and pain rips through me as I put it carefully against his neck.

All I have to do is press down and slice.