“If I’m yours, why didn’t you try harder to see me at the hospital? Why did you only come to me twice?” I quizzed. “Why wait until I came to you?”
“Because your parents and that piece-of-shit ex of yours got to you first,” he replied, his voice so low it sent a shiver of fear up the length of my spine. “They never liked me. None of them did. At the start, I was extra nice to them. I wanted them to like me because it makes things easier when people like you . . . but none of them ever did. It’s why I stopped you from having any involvement with them.”
I lifted my hand to my mouth. “You stopped me from seeing them because they didn’t like you?”
“Because they would have had influence over you,” he corrected as I dropped my hand. “We would have never been able to be together the way we wanted if everyone from your life was sticking their noses into our relationship. You didn’t need them . . . don’t you see, baby? You only ever needed me. I take care of you, I protect you. Me, not them – and not him.”
He words felt like a pile of bricks weighing me down.
“When I met you,” he continued. “I didn’t know you were the one for me, but when we started talking, I saw that we were meant to be together. I wanted someone for my own, someone I could love deeply, and I found that in you. You love me, Noah. You do.”
My gaze bored into his. “It’s ownership, not love. You don’t hurt someone you love, not in the ways you’ve hurt me.”
He didn’t reply, he only watched me.
“I’m scared of silence because of you.” I clasped my hands together. “I remember the night of the crash . . . you beat me badly. I remember you were glad of the blackout the night I left you. You wanted things silent so you could hear nothing but my cries.”
“So you could hear them,” Anderson corrected. “So you could hear yourself be disciplined for your actions. You never understand that I do what I do for your own good, Noah. Please, believe me.”
My body began to shake.
“I won’t be like that again.” I lifted my gaze to his. “I won’t be the shell of a woman you want. You can beat me until I’m dead. I don’t care, I won’t be that woman.”
Anderson nodded his head slowly.
“I know,” he answered, surprising me. “You’re a different Noah from when I knew you; you’re strong of mind. I knew when you first looked at me in the hospital that you were lost to me.”
I frowned. “Then why keep me here? Why do this?”
“I said you were mine.” He got to his feet. “You’ll be dead, but you’ll still be mine. You’ll never be his. Ever. I told you in the hospital that this would all be over soon. I meant it. We’re going to be together forever. Just you and me, the way it always should be.”
I sucked in a breath when he pulled a piece of white material from the drawer of the coffee table and advanced on me. I screamed, but a punch to the face silenced me as blood filled my mouth and dribbled down my chin. Anderson made quick work of tying my wrists together once more, followed by feet. He pushed me on to the floor, and I stared at him as he reached behind the sofa and produced a jerrycan. I sucked in a breath and was about to scream, but one look from Anderson kept me silent. I was frozen as he uncapped the can, and the fumes of petrol stung my nostrils.
“Anderson,” I whimpered. “Please, don’t.”
He ignored me as he splashed the fuel around the room, then he went down the hallway and I heard the petrol sloshing around as he dispensed it in each room. He hadn’t poured it on me or on the part of the sofa I was near, and I wondered if he planned to do that last. I leaned forward to watch him and was gobsmacked when he went outside the flat and splashed fuel on the walls all the way down to the elevator. When he reached the door of his flat, he produced a lighter, flicked it, lit a newspaper and dropped it in the hall. The fuel on the ground ignited instantly, and it spread like wildfire down the corridor.
“Anderson!” I shouted. “Please, just talk to me. We can figure this out, things don’t have to be this way.”
“We can’t,” he snapped as he came back into the room. “I sensed the change in you the night you woke up and in the times when I finally got to speak to you. You made eye contact with me and questioned me . . . two things that you knew never to do. I touched your wrist and you still did all of those things. I knew your parents and that McKenna prick would never let you go this time, so I made a promise to myself that if I couldn’t have you then no one could.”