“I don’t understand where this is coming from. Just give yourself a couple more days to think things through. I’m not letting you go, Lexi. You love me. Fight for me. Fight for us. Don’t you dare give up now.” Panic was starting to creep into his voice.
Lexi closed her eyes for strength. “I need you to leave. I need you to go be the rock star and wow your fans. Write the music that makes other people fall in love. But you’ve got to go. I’ll always be a part of you. I’ll always love you. But a life together isn’t in our cards. You need to play the hand you’ve been dealt. We all do.”
She was glad she had her leg holding the door in place when Noah slapped his hand on it. She jumped and looked at him, wide-eyed. It took everything not to push him out the door and tell him to run.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on but I’m giving you until tomorrow to come to your senses. I know today has been rough on you. That’s the only reason I’m not busting in there right now and throwing you over my shoulder. You’d better get some sleep because tomorrow I am going to spend all day proving to you that I’m here to stay. This is your one free pass. Next time, I won’t take no for an answer.”
She watched him turn and walk away, barely holding back the sob that threatened to choke her. Her whisper almost didn’t make it out of her throat. “Good-bye, Noah. I love you.” She closed the door to face Jeremy with a small smile on her face.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you smiling about?”
She shook her head. “You just don’t get it. You don’t understand. You gave me a chance to say good-bye to him. When they find my body, he’ll remember each and every word I just said to him. I know it will take him a while but at some point he’ll realize I knew I wasn’t going to come out of this alive and I had the chance to tell him one last time that I loved him. He would do the same thing for me, whatever it took so that he wasn’t in danger. At some point, he’ll find peace. That’s more than I can say for you.”
With a scream of rage, he came at her, and she was ready for the pain that exploded across the side of her head. She tried to stay on her feet but the force of the blow threw her to the side and she crashed into the side table. Through the pain, she kept a grip on the weapon hidden in her hand. He was on top of her, one hand pressed down on her throat as the other ripped at her clothing. She took a deep breath with all the force she could muster, stabbed the small scissors into his arm and dragged it down the length of his left forearm.
“Whore!” he screamed as he back-handed her with the scissors still imbedded in his arm. Blood splattered on her face as he removed his hand from her neck and started punching her. With him pinning her legs down, she couldn’t curl up into a ball to protect herself.
He ripped the scissors from his arm and began stabbing her, and Lexi scrambled frantically to find where he’d dropped the gun even as weakness spread through her body. Raising the gun, she aimed it at his chest and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He threw his head back and laughed.
“Silly girl, do you think I would have a loaded gun around you?”
She was losing focus. The pain increased as he dug his fingers into the stab wounds the scissors had made in her. It terrified her to look into eyes that filled with delight at feeling her from the inside, at causing her excruciating pain. He closed his eyes and put his fingers in his mouth to lick her blood off them… and Lexi wished for death.
*
Noah stormed off toward his house. He couldn’t believe the things she’d said to him. It hurt him that she didn’t have the same faith in their relationship he did.
“The music is in your blood,” she’d said. Of course it was, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do something different so that they could be together. He was sure someone would butcher something he did, but he’d get past it. There were more, important things on the line.
“I’ll take the pain for both of us.”
Life was full of pain. There was no way to get around that. Wouldn’t it be better to face everything together? He stopped walking and turned to stare back at her house. The words she’d used…
Blood. Pain. “We have no future,” she’d said. He felt that something wasn’t right.
“Fuck!” He started racing back toward Lexi’s house.
*
The door behind Jeremy burst open as Noah came through. With a vicious kick to Jeremy’s head, his weight was taken off her. She watched through blurry eyes as Noah stepped over her and grabbed Jeremy by his shirt, throwing him into the wall. The picture of her grandmother fell off the wall and crashed to the ground.
She could hear Noah screaming but couldn’t make out the words. She was so cold. Noah’s fists were flying, she could hear him connect with his target time after time, but everything was growing grey. “Noah,” she whispered.