Limerence: Chapter 18

mommy is mad at me

daddy is too

i dont know what I did wrong

i fell and it hurt and i cried

i dont want to be down here

its dark and scary

I stare down at the first page, more perplexed than ever. What sort of small child wrote this? At least, it sounds like a small child, but there’s no name attached to the page or the book. The entry doesn’t look new either, the ink faded with time.

I turn to the next page.

I didnt mean to do anything bad. Daddy said I embarased them at dinner and he put me back down here. I told him sorry but he said he will decide when Im sorry. I wanna go back upstairs.

The cuff on my leg hurts. I think im bleeding. I screamed for Mommy but she didnt anser.

Please Im sorry. I dont want to be down here.

Im sorry.

Im sorry.

I promise Im really sorry.

I didnt mean to stain my new shirt.

Eyes wide, I go to the next entry.

I dont think Mommy and Daddy know about my book. I found it one of the cardbord boxes down here. I write in this till Daddy lets me out. Last time he did I ran to Mommy and tried to hug her but she wouldnt let me. She said to stop crying or id go back.

Im sorry.

Maybe if I write sorry in here Mommy and Daddy will believe it.

I’m really really sorry. I wont ever oversleep again.

So, this is a child. One that’s written an unsettling record of their…punishments? I keep reading.

I know what I did wrong this time. I tried very hard to be good. I promise I did. Mom took me to tea with Mr. and Mrs. Costa so that I could play with Miguel.

He is the same age as me. I asked him if his parents lock him in the cellar when he does something bad but he didnt know what I was talking about.

Miguel told Mr. and Mrs. Costa who told Mom who got very angry with me when we got home.

Im sorry.

She said I can come out when I learn to keep my mouth shut.

Im really sorry.

Im going to be good from now on.

Horror creeps over me.

There are several more entries just like that. Written apologies and promises to be good or well-behaved – all for seemingly innocent mistakes. Crying. Expressing fear. Speaking out of turn. Dropping a bottle of expensive whiskey. Forgetting manners in front of company.

And each mistake seems to warrant the same punishment: being locked in the cellar. There are no dates tacked to the entries, but when I reach the last page, I can tell a significant amount of time has passed. The writer’s much older here.

Father hasn’t forced me into the cellar in a long time, and tonight will be the last. I know it as well as he does. Earlier, when he tried to manhandle me down the stairs, I nearly overpowered him.

And, for a moment, there was genuine fear in his eyes. A second where he realized that I’m no longer the small child endlessly grasping for the fickle love of my parents. I’m almost a man, one that’s all but as tall as him.

I keep replaying the panic on his face. If I could turn back time and relish in his terror just a little while longer, I would. I think it may be the most enjoyment I’ve gotten out of his presence in years.

And it almost makes this entire ordeal worth it.

My ankle went numb ages ago, though there’s still a shooting pain whenever I rattle my leg. I told Mother the chain wasn’t necessary, but after the incident with Father, I suppose I can’t blame her for being uneasy.

She did, however, argue with him for nearly thirty minutes about whether a trip to the cellar is truly necessary. Even now, she’s telling him that my B-plus on that Wuthering Heights paper is the result of my trouble sleeping lately, and not a sign that I’m becoming lazy about schoolwork.

I wish I could say that I appreciate her coming to my defense, but I know it’s not borne of any sort of maternal instinct or guilt.

She’s doing this because she senses the same change that Father does. She knows that I’m getting older, and one day, sooner than later, she won’t be able to control me anymore.

Nobody will.

Holy shit.

There’s an endless list of question bouncing around in my head. Was the journal’s owner right? Was this his final trip to the cellar, or did he simply run out of space to record future ones?

And, more importantly, why does Adrian have this?

It’s not like Mickey’s journal, depicting the day-to-day drudgery of senior year.

This is a depiction of abuse. An innocent child locked away in the dark, their leg shackled to the point of bleeding, probably scarrin –

Oh my God.

“I see snooping through my things is a habit of yours,” a cold voice cuts through the room, and I drop the journal – Adrian’s journal – like it’s made of nitric acid.

Body stiff and heart racing, I turn to face him and say, “Adrian.” As if I’m not standing here, the living embodiment of a deer in headlights, with nothing better to add. “I can –”

Explain.

The word dies on my lips the moment I see his face.

Because Adrian’s anger is not heard – it’s felt.

It’s in the tensing of his shoulders. The hardening of his jaw. The narrowing of his eyes. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed casually, but there’s so much icy-cold rage radiating off him that I swear the temperature of the room drops by ten degrees.

I am so fucked.

“Did you enjoy it?” He suddenly asks, every word clipped and sharp as a knife.

“What?” My heart thunders through my ears.

“Your read,” he says, and jerks his head toward the journal sprawled open on the floor. “Did you enjoy it?”

I shake my head vigorously. “I didn’t know. I was just – I mean, yes, I was snooping, but I would’ve never read it if I’d known it was yours.”

“But you did.” He says it softly, but it carries as much edge as anything else.

“Yes, and I wish I could –”

“Do you know what I did to the last person who read my journal?”

He must be able to see the terror in my eyes because he continues, just as softly with: “Keeping it in the drawer is a recent development, you know. I used to keep it on the bookshelf with everything else, but one day, Mickey Mabel stumbled upon it.” A muscle ticks in his jaw. “He borrowed some of my books for a science class and supposedly took it home by accident. Thought it was his journal when he opened it – or so he told me. And really, I can admit that they do look similar.” He gives me an expectant look. “Don’t you think so, Poppy?”

“Yes.” My voice is quiet. Small.

“But is it really an accident if you keep reading something that you know doesn’t belong to you?” Another expectant look.

“No.” My hands are shaky, so I stuff them into my pockets.

“Well, look at that. We agree on something,” he says. “Not that it matters. You have even less of a leg to stand on than Mickey did because you didn’t accidentally pull it off my bookshelf. You rummaged around in my desk. You were looking for something worth hiding.”

Panic threatens to envelop me because I know, we both do, that this situation’s already spiraled out of my control.

“So, this is why you killed Mickey.”

I’m not entirely sure what prompts me to say it, only that if I can shift the focus away from my blunder, maybe it’ll buy me enough time to figure out how to de-escalate this situation.

Something sparks in his eyes – something dark and deep-seated that was probably there long before he ever came to Lionswood. Something probably born in that cellar. “Well, since you’re so curious,” he drawls. “Let me tell you about Mickey.” I tense as he steps into the room and strides right over to the desk – right over to me.

But it’s not me he reaches for. It’s the journal. He plucks it from the floor and says, “To be honest, I had no idea he’d taken it. Not at first. It wasn’t until he showed up at my door, threatening to plaster its pages all over social media unless I gave him a million dollars, that I realized what had happened.”

My jaw drops open. “A million –”

“Is nothing,” he interjects with a roll of his eyes. “And certainly not worth risking your life for.”

Says you, I want to add, but don’t.

“The whole thing was a rather pathetic attempt at blackmail,” he continues, “He was shaking like a leaf as he tried to extort me. Said I had a week to get him the money, or he’d let the scandal ruin my family.”

I swallow. “That’s…”

Awful.

Cruel.

Ruthless.

A rush of pity rolls through me, and it’s not for the boy who’s dead. Because, if Adrian’s telling the truth – and I think he is – then Mickey made his own bed.

And I was right about the blackmail.

“Of course, the thing that Mickey didn’t account for,” he says, “Is that if you’re going to use the possibility of scandal to threaten a family that doesn’t have any, you should probably think about why they don’t.” It takes a lot of effort to avoid retreating when he takes another step toward me. “I played my part well enough. I told him I’d do it. I’d get him the money as long as he didn’t release it and ensured there was no paper trail to link us together. He thought it was all about keeping the extortion quiet, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t a suspect in his death.”

My breath catches at the sight of a bone-chilling smirk beginning to curve the corners of Adrian’s mouth. “I wanted him nervous and jumpy by the time it happened, so I waited the entire week before I set a time and place. He wanted to do the exchange somewhere public, but Mickey wasn’t a particularly good negotiator, so he agreed to use his own dorm room. Right after swim practice.”

I stare at him.

He’s telling me everything.

…why is he telling me everything?

“I was careful. I chatted with him just long enough to make sure he didn’t see it coming, and well, by the time he did see it coming…he was so afraid. He didn’t scream – I wouldn’t let him – but it was in his eyes. People’s eyes never lie.” The smirk widens. “And all that planning, all that hassle…was worth the fear in his eyes as he fell to his death.”

It’s as if I’ve been doused in ice-water. This…this is Adrian. Not the charming boy he masqueraders as during school hours. Not even the deceptively friendly boy who took me to the movies.

This is Adrian – stripped down, mask shed.

Someone who’s killed and taken pleasure in it.

“But I’m sure none of this is a surprise to you,” he continues, voice sharpening back to an edge. “You’ve read my journal. You’ve seen who I am. You know all about me now, don’t you, Poppy?”

My heart stutters as the tension in the room returns ten-fold. He takes a step forward. And then another. Adrenaline courses through my veins, my muscles screaming: Run! Fight! Get out of here!

So I do.

Or try – because the moment I dart for the door, Adrian has his hand wrapped around my neck and my back pressed into the glass-paned window.

I can’t tell if it’s terror or the weight of his hand clogging my throat, but I gasp out his name all the same and tug uselessly at his fingers.

There’s no give as he stares down at me, coal eyes half-lidded.

And cold.

Freezing cold.

I am going to die.

He’s actually going to kill me.

I should be pleading for my life or concocting some sort of explanation that’ll convince Adrian to let me go, but my brain feels like a record player stuck to the same track – utter disbelief.

How am I here…again?

I mean, this is ridiculous.

And I am ridiculously stupid to end up in the same dangerous position again. Curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it killed the dumb teenage girl who couldn’t keep her head buried in the sand. I’m going to die a cliché, Adrian’s going to cover up my death, and my mother’s probably going to wear some ugly hot pink maxi dress to my funeral.

An uncontrollable giggle bubbles out of me, and Adrian’s hand loosens just enough for it to turn into a full-blown laugh. “I’m sorry –” The laugh becomes a hiccup. “It’s just –” My eyes water. “This position’s a familiar one for us, isn’t it?”

Had he grabbed Mickey by the neck right before he killed him too? Or was I just special?

His forehead creases and then clears. “Oh, I see. This is nervous laughter. Your body’s using this as a defense mechanism to avoid panic.”

The laughing stops.

The fear returns – twice as potent as before. It might as well be leaking out of my pores.

I’m going to die.

I am not going to survive the night.

I force myself to look him in the eye. “Are you going to kill me, Adrian?”

Several long seconds stretch between us, each one as heavy as the hand over my throat. He says nothing, not even as I tremble in his grasp.

And then his hand moves.

Not off me, just upwards. His large fingers settle on my cheek, his thumb grazing my mouth.

My throat constricts with fear.

“You know, I was beginning to enjoy your presence,” he murmurs, dark eyes flashing. “You were…what did you call it? An obligatory friend?” I’m very aware of his thumb as it gently pulls my bottom lip from my top.

“We could still be friends,” I whisper. “Nothing has to change.”

His gaze sharpens. “You read my journal. Everything has to change.”

Panic seizes me. “I’m not Mickey. I would never try to use what I learned tonight against you. You don’t need to kill me to keep me quiet.”

“I didn’t need to kill Mickey either. I could’ve given him the money. Or called up my family’s lawyers and scared him into an NDA,” he retorts, “But, as you’ve learned tonight, I’m very much the monster my parents have made me. And their first lesson? When you find a weed in the garden, you pull it out by the roots.”

“Adrian.” His name is a soft plea on my lips. “You didn’t deserve what your parents did to you. No parent should –”

I gasp as his hand shoots back to my throat and squeezes with warning. “Do you really think I need pity from someone raised in the armpit of civilization without a nickel to their name?” He sneers. “You can keep your fucking pity.”

The words don’t sting. I’ve heard worse in the passing judgment of my classmates, but it takes every ounce of my courage to avoid shriveling under his glare. “It’s not pity,” I rasp. “It’s just something you should know if you don’t already. You didn’t deserve it.”

I can’t read the look on his face or discern what the tick of his jaw might mean. “It’s my due,” he says quietly. “For being born an Ellis. Nothing’s left to chance. You nip imperfections in the bud. You mold your children long before they ever have a chance to mold themselves. In a way, I’m lucky. I learned quickly. I never made the same mistake twice. My parents never had to resort to measures beyond the cellar.”

“How long did they keep you down there?” A stupid question, considering I’m probably one poor choice of words away from a crushed windpipe, but if curiosity’s already going to be my downfall tonight…

Adrian answers with little hesitation. “It depended how sorry I was,” he explains, and for all his talk of ‘being lucky,’ anger seeps through his tone. “In the beginning, it was only a few hours, but if I came out crying, I had to go back in. As I got older, my sentences got longer. The longest…” He hesitates. “Was my final trip to the cellar. The last entry in the journal.”

“How long?” I prompt softly.

“Two days,” he answers. “It was the first time I’d ever pushed back against my father, and I believe he was trying to make a point. I don’t remember much of it. I was never allowed food or water in the cellar, and at some point, I must’ve gotten dizzy and passed out. When I came to, it’d been more than forty-eight hours, and our family doctor was tending to the wounds on my ankle and the nasty kidney infection that must’ve developed from the dehydration.”

Adrian may not want my pity, but it’s there anyway – a pity-sized rock making me sick to my stomach.

“I’ve never told anyone these things before. You’re the first.” His voice is deceptively gentle.

“Why did you?” The obvious answer is, well, because I asked, but he’s volunteered far more than that.

Our faces are inches apart, his cool breath ghosting over my skin – though it’s an equal effort of my craning and his stooping to get it that way.

His answer is just as soft. “Because it doesn’t matter.”

My eyes widen.

And then his hand tightens.

I react instinctively, shoving at his chest with all my might, but he doesn’t budge. Not an inch. “Wait!” It comes out as some sort of half-gasp, half-wheeze, and to my absolute surprise, his hold loosens.

The choking couldn’t have lasted more than a second, but I suck in oxygen like there’s not enough in the room for the both of us. “Just wait,” I force out another strangled breath. “Just wait. You’re going to want to hear what I have to say.”

“Will I?” he murmurs, and though he’s no longer trying to strangle me, the hand around my neck is warning enough.

I take several long, shuddering breaths.

Think, Poppy.

What the hell can I say to keep me alive right now?

Option one: dissolve into a puddle of tears and hope that Adrian has the same allergy to crying women that Rick seems to have. Tempting…but I doubt Adrian’s going to tell me to find my mother and send me off for a beer.

Option two: flash my chest and hope it distracts him long enough to slip away. Except, Adrian hasn’t shown a shred of attraction towards me, and I don’t need someone to laugh in the face of my C-cups before they kill me.

I take another drawn-out breath.

I’ve been here before. Same room, different journal. And Adrian let me go then.

But only because I interested him.

And I only interested him because I was…honest.

I go still, the answer striking me with all the force of a lightning bolt.

“You don’t need to kill me,” I blurt out.

“Oh, I don’t?” There’s a twinge of sarcasm in his voice.

I shake my head and look him in dead in the eye. “No. You don’t. As it stands, yes, I’m a liability. I know something about you that I can never un-know. Something that I could use against you the same way Mickey did.”

“Well, look at that,” he drawls. “We’re on the same page.”

“But –” I raise a finger. My voice is shaky. Desperate. “We both know that killing me is messy. Two deaths in a semester? It’d ensure I keep my mouth shut, but it’s a lot of hassle for you and obviously not great for me. So, I’m prepared to offer you something else that I think will be ideal for both of us.”

“I’m listening.”

I swallow. I never thought this would be the way I revealed myself to another person.

The very thing that could ruin me might save my life.

How ironic.

My stomach a queasy mess, I pitch it like a business deal. “Right now, I have leverage over you, but what if I could give you the same thing? A piece of leverage to hold over me and tip the scales more evenly. Mutually assured destruction.”

He raises an eyebrow, seemingly unimpressed. “I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you have nothing worth leveraging. Your childhood trauma might make for a mildly interesting therapy session. Mine would be blasted on every major news network by the morning.”

“It’s not my trauma that I’m trying to leverage,” I shoot back. “It’s something else. I’ve done something…” I can’t find the words to describe it. Wrong? Illegal? Immoral in just about every religion in the world? “…really bad. Something you could use to ruin me.”

Interest sparks in his dark eyes. “Is that so? And what sort of ‘really bad’ thing could ruin a girl from the middle of nowhere America?”

“An illegal thing.”

He nods, prompting for more.

“You were right,” I whisper, “About me.”

He gives me a dry look. “I usually am, so I’m going to need more than that.”

“I’m…” Another swallow. Here goes nothing. “Not supposed to be here. At Lionswood.”

“You have a scholarship to Lionswood.”

“But I shouldn’t.”

His eyes narrow. “You misrepresented yourself to get a scholarship here?”

I nod minutely. “Yes. That’s a perfect way to put it. I misrepresented my academic abilities so that I could get the scholarship.”

“You cheated,” he says plainly.

“Cheating, misrepresentation…same thing,” I shrug. “And honestly, the details don’t matter. What matters is that I have a scholarship that I shouldn’t. And I know I shouldn’t have it, but nobody else does. And if you told anyone, say the Dean –”

“He’d make you pay back every cent you owe in tuition,” he finishes, and the dark smile that fans over his face does absolutely nothing to calm my nerves. “Possibly file criminal charges.”

“Which is $846,000 I don’t have, not including room and board.”

Oh, I know the exact number.

On the nights when my anxiety keeps me awake, I like to calculate how many lifetimes it’d take to pay it all back.

Cheating my way into Lionswood has been hands-down the worst thing I’ve ever done to someone else.

And the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.

Because if I hadn’t – if I’d listened to my conscience or my nerves or anything else that day – I know exactly where I’d be: still stuck in Mobile with a future headed nowhere but sharing the graveyard shift at the diner with Mom.

Pratt wouldn’t even be a possibility.

“You see it now, right?” I urge. “You could ruin me with this, and if you told the right people, it might end up the same place your journal would: splashed all over the front page news with some headline like, ‘Girl Scams Elite Boarding School Out of Full-Ride Scholarship. Jail Time Pending.’ We both have things to lose here.”

Save for the sound of my own shaky breathing, the room is quiet.

Adrian is quiet.

My brain flits between panic and anticipation.

My heart pounds in tandem with my breath as he lets go of my throat, steps back and –

Laughs.

He’s laughing.

Not just a chuckle, but a full-bellied laugh that has him leaning over the desk, clutching his stomach.

I eye him warily, unsure what to do with this reaction. Laughter was not the response I expected.

Still chuckling, he grabs a tissue from the box on his desk and dabs at his eyes. “Well, this…” He shakes his head. “Explains quite a bit about you, sweetheart. And your inability to discern where a semi-colon should go.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I get it. I’m not exactly an academic genius by Lionswood standards.”

“No, not a genius,” he says, “But you are…”

My breath catches. He’s looking at me, which, on its own, should not be a novel revelation. But he’s not looking – he’s looking, eyes shamelessly raking over me from head to toe, lips upturned as if he enjoys what he sees.

Like I’m not Poppy, the perpetual thorn in his side, but a brand new woman who’s just walked through the door.

Like he’s seeing me for the first time.

“…something,” he finishes quietly.

It’s too intense. I’m worried I’m going to melt under his stare if I don’t look away.

“So,” I clear my throat. “You have leverage over me. I have leverage over you. It’s –”

“Mutually assured destruction,” he cuts in, eyes still twinkling with intensity. “I suppose it’ll have to do.”