Page 107 of Misery
"Wait," I call out. He turns. "Thiago. Will you kill him?"
Something dark passes over his face. "If I have to."
"He was like a brother to you."
"And you're my heart." He starts the bike. "I can live without him, not you."
Then he's gone, leaving me standing there covered in paint and tears and the weight of truth I never asked for.
I go back inside.
My mother and sister are where I left them, but the bottle's emptier.
They look up, read my face.
"What happened?" Helle asks.
I pour myself another drink. A big one. "He told me he’s been watching me. Seven months. Ever since the attack. Watching everything."
"Jesus," Helle breathes.
"The man you love has been stalking you?" My mother's voice is carefully neutral.
"Apparently. Him and Thiago both. I'm very popular with obsessive men."
"What are you going to do?"
I think about Oskar's face when he said he loved me.
Think about his hands on me, in me, holding me together when I was falling apart.
Think about seven months of lies and one moment of truth.
"I don't know," I admit. "How do you forgive something like that?"
"You don't," my mother says. "You decide if you can live with it or not. Forgiveness might come later. Or it might not. But right now, you survive."
"Is that what you did? With Dad? With the club?"
She's quiet for a long moment. "Your father's never stalked me. But he's lied. Kept secrets. Put other things first. And yes, I decided I could live with it. Because the alternative was living without him, and that was worse."
"Even now? Even with him missing because of club business?"
"Yes." She reaches across the table, takes my paint-stained hand. "Love isn't clean, Elfe. It's not safe. It's messy and dangerous and sometimes it breaks you. But sometimes—if you're very lucky—it's also the thing that puts you back together."
"He watched me paint," I whisper. "My most private moments."
"And what did he do with what he saw?" Helle asks.
I think about it. "Kept me safe. Killed for me. Loved me."
"Not saying it's right," my sister says carefully. "But maybe ask yourself—would you rather he hadn't been watching? Would you rather have faced everything alone?"
The question sits heavy between us.
Because the truth is, I don't know.
My phone buzzes.
