Page 10 of Shadow Man

He changes gears with a furious jerk.

“You're a bad fucking liar, Anna.”

To me?

To us?

To the dream of a possibility?

I hear the real accusation in his voice, but I block it out along with everything else.

“Do you want to know how I can tell?” He brakes violently as the lights change from yellow to red. “Because primal screams don't sound pretty,Luna, and yours were ugly as fuck.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms.Luna.He always calls me this, butI’m not deserving of that endearment. There’s nothing whole about me. I’m as empty as that word is complete.

“Open up,” he orders, his voice rough and abrasive like the carpet in the institutions he locks me up in.

“No.”

Never.

“Fucking do it!”

“It’s not your decision to make!” I dig deeper with my nails until I feel the sting.

“Staunch the wound. You’re bleeding out. You’ve been bleeding out for months.”

“This coming from a man who thinks stone-walling is a regular state of mind.”

I press my palms together to hide what I’ve done to myself.

“Tell your shrink what happened to you six months ago. Tell the mirror. Tell God, if you’re a believer. Don't keep it all inside. Trust me on this—”

“Does your skin ever burn when you say His name?” I mock, turning my inner masochism onto him. This man’s lack of morality is scrawled all over the gates of Heaven in crude graffiti. “I talk to God even less than I talk to my shrink.”

“Talk to Eve then.”

I turn back to the window. “I don't even know who she is anymore.”

“New last name, a little older, a little wiser, but the rest is the same.”

“How’s your Greek mythology?” I mutter, tears muddying my vision. “Hades and Persephone were just reincarnated in the twenty-first century.”

“Who gives a shit what they are if they work.”

“I do! She made the biggest mistake of her life marrying that man!” I swipe at my face angrily. “I hate her for making me her collateral. I was guilty by association the minute she fell in love with him. I was abducted because of that bastard, even though he’ll never own up to it.”And you’re just as complicit,I want to add.

“There are no mistakes, Anna, only consequences.”

“Bullshit. You’re all animals!”

“And you're self-destructing.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “Maybe I prefer to play God with my choices instead of talking to him.” He brakes again, and the seatbelt slices into my chest. “You want to know what happened to me six months ago, asshole? You and yourjefedecided to play movie directors with the story of my life. You switched me from lead role to supporting without my permission…” I pause, turning back to the window. “I don't know why I was taken, Joseph. I don’t know why those men did what they did to me. Do you know how much that screws with a person’s head? And now? Now I’m as much in the shadows as you are in this epically fucked-up Santiago show.”

“Anna—”

“We’re toxic! I run—you chase. I mess up. You clean up. Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

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