Page 88 of Forsaking All Others
When she stills, I lean back and take my shirt off.
One hand flies to her mouth, her eyes wide as she stares at me appreciatively before recovering her half-drunk composure and continuing to undress, stripping down to little pink lace panties and a matching bra.
Physically, I can’t fault her. It’s just when she opens her mouth…
The director urges the cameras to pan in as Valérie takes my hand and we turn to plunge into the dark water off the end of the pier.
Rising to the surface, I float on my back enjoying the cool water against my skin and the bright full moon. This is the best I’ve felt all evening. I could happily spend all night just floating, my ears below the waterline, the world’s noise, and hers, muted.
But Valérie has other ideas. Laughing, she splashes me, shouting, ‘catch me if you can,’ as she turns to swim out to sea.
I laconically begin to follow, but she can’t be more than one hundred metres out when she makes a huge splash.
Her scream reaches me seconds later.
“Christ, what now?”
Swimming fast, I reach her as she begins to sink. Even though it’s night the amount of blood in the water is clearly visible as a dark, rapidly spreading stain.
“What?” She gasps. “What?”
“I don’t know,” I growl, scanning the water for sharks.
I turn three-sixty with her in my arms, seeing no obvious threat, before towing her quickly towards the shore. When my feet hit sand I lift her into my arms and carry her to the beach. Lying her down to inspect her wounds, it’s clear there’s not going to be any need for medics.
She’s almost been rent in two.
‘A sword did this. Christ, tonight just got MUCH more interesting.’
As the camera crew run up the beach and array themselves around us, I hold her up off the blood-stained sand and keep my eyes on hers as she stares wildly at the men filming, and begins to whimper.
“Shhhh, everything’s going to be fine, Valérie. Just look at me. Keep looking at me.”
“Why are they…? Oh, Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu. Why me? Why me? I don’t deserve this. I deserve love, you deserve me. Oh, this is not right, this is not fair…Jaguar.”
Her body twitches once, twice, and she’s still. As the light dies out in her eyes I lift her, carrying her away from the cameras.
She’s correct; it’s not fair and it’s not right, but those words could also be applied to the life story of the one who’d wielded the sword tonight.
One who claims she loves me and asserts there will be no other.
63
The make-up lady seems extra brusque tonight as she applies my cosmetics and brushes my hair into an elaborate style, but I don’t say anything.
All of us are a little more subdued this evening, despite the prospect of the ball.
Valérie may have constantly whined like an out-of-tune motor, and she may have been the messiest, albeit most short-lived, roommate I’ve ever had. But all of us had kind of grown used to having her around; I’d even stopped fantasising about throttling her quite as often as I had when I’d first met her.
“She would have loved this,” Thorun murmurs, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye as she surveys the row upon row of ‘Gone With The Wind’ type ball gowns that have been wheeled into our suite for us to choose from.
“It’s just the shock of the thing,” Sona shrugs, “no one else has died on a date. Everyone else has come back happy. Well, except Cat, when the bachelor brutally savaged her.”
“Call me that again and I’ll stab you, Sona,” I flash her an angry glance while at the same time acknowledging that she’s right. No one had expected our roommate to die last night, least of all me, knowing that the bachelor doesn’t kill women. But accidents happen; they happen in the real world, and they happen here. It’s a salient reminder to not form bonds and to expect the unexpected, always.
“Valérie’s gone, and that’s the end of it,” I snap. “It doesn’t matter how or when. Now we’re down to three in our room again and eleven contestants in total — that’s all that we need to focus on.”
“I don’t believe you really mean that, Cat,” Thorun says quietly as she turns from the mirror to look at me.
