Page 119 of Savior

After pulling on my running outfit, eating yogurt, and slipping into running shoes, I watch Luca sleep peacefully. I wonder if I should wake him, but he smiles in his sleep, and I can’t bring myself to do so.

I decide against a note, too. We’re not that serious to where he needs to know where I am every moment of every day. At least, I don’t think we are. I want us to be, but I can’t make more of things than they are.

Sure, we’ve spent the last two days in shacked-up bliss. But I think we both know how it ends. He will repent, and I will return to my apartment if it’s not gone.

For all I know, no one’s paid the bills, and my shit is sitting on the side of the road for the trash trucks to haul to the landfill.

The thought makes my chest beat hard.

I need this; I think as I close the door and head down the steps.

Evading the guard is easy. I noticed unless we tell them we need them specifically; they watch over us and keep their distance.

“I’m going for a run, and no, I’m not taking anyone with me,” I shout toward where I know they have a base camp set up.

No one says a thing in reply.

I shrug at no one, looking above me at the rolling clouds and the sound of far-off thunder approaching the island.

Hopefully, it’ll pass over us or steer the other direction.

But I need the burn in my muscles like my next heartbeat.

Running along the same trail I did the other day with Rich feels ominous. Like the far-off storm is a warning for me to turn back. There’s a foreboding in my bones that I’m choosing to look away from. I can’t give it life.

I’ll soon grow too afraid to leave the cabin if I do. Then, I’ll be too scared to leave my house before long. So that even when I get back to my life, I’ll be a prisoner.

I bear down, pushing myself further, harder as my body cries out in delicious waves of sinuous tissue, seizing and burning.

My breaths waft out in moist, foggy clouds.

I push until I reach the edge of a cliff that overlooks the roaring ocean below the island. Stopping, I heave a breath in and out, looking below as tears flow steadily down my cheeks.

I don’t know when I started crying.

Flashes of the man in the alley, the boy in ninth grade, and Matteo Barone haunt me as I close my eyes. Men who felt they were owed something from me. That they were worthy enough to touch my body, even when I cried out. Even when I begged them to stop.

I don’t know if Rich’s death brought this about. If his soul leaving triggered all these feelings that I usually keep wrapped up so well. Bound tight with twine or ropes. It could’ve been that the rosary bound them—the one Luca broke my neck in the weehours this morning. The beads still lay scattered on the bedroom floor, reminders of our sins.

Though, to me, he doesn’t feel like a sin. He feels like a blessing.

Like an enlightenment, one I’ve been waiting my entire life for.

But to have him, I must ruin him to his very center.

And that’s the part that stings.

I can’t escape this part, no matter how I feel or how much I try to justify my feelings about him.

My eyes fly open as a twig breaks behind me.

But it’s too late.

A man grips his hand around my mouth and nose tightly.

“Don’t fight, little slut. I was told to bring you in without a scratch. I don’t want to know what Mr. Barone will do if I accidentally snap your delicate little neck, do you?”

I fight with all my might, slipping out of his arms to the ground below and crawling as fast as possible.

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