Solution

Her words had seemed so sincere. Had she not upheld her promise of traveling to his home, without money or even directions? He should have trusted his gut feeling to leave her alone when he had the first doubts. It was so easy to be a kinder person when your only method of communication was text.

This was the best way to get her off his back. She had not let go of his small, frail body since the moment she’d undone her robe. It had been the same every night. Now, it came to either this, or endure a life with the girl who held him down on the sofa. All her family knew was that she had gone to live with a distant friend who had a spare room.

The soreness lingered long before he had lain down hours ago. Having slept next to her, he wriggled out from the warm blankets and stumbled to the kitchen. The shining blade waited in the holder on the kitchen counter. He would have to use steel; guns weren’t kept in the house.

A faint pulse beat in her pale neck. She was sound asleep, not even snoring. Placing the silver across her pale flesh, he narrowed his eyes to dark slits. It would be easy to say she had turned the knife on herself when he had left her. Without allowing any more delay, he sliced the major vein, his stroke rough and sloppy.

She was hardly awake, her legs crumpling like a fawn’s as she half-attempted to stand. Not a moan escaped her paling lips as blood spouted over her hands and the fallen knife. In a moment her gasping, desperate breaths had stopped, and her attractive figure crumpled on the floor in an expanding puddle. 