Chapter Sixty-Two Eden #2
“You’ll never be his equal, I hope you know.
” I want to keep pushing. “He’s just stringing you along like he’s been doing these past couple of years, and he’ll keep doing it until you stop him.
He’ll keep promising and promising you shit, but you’ll never get it.
” The words spew forth, and I can’t stop.
“You’ll just be his bitch for the rest of your pitiful life.
Just like your daddy was for mine, simpering and sniveling, hoping for scraps that Bennett may or may not feel magnanimous enough to bestow upon your dumbass head. ”
Danny shakes James off, and I’m surprised James was able to hold him back as long as he did. James, a truly gifted pianist who should have gone far if it wasn’t for Bennett’s poison and the secret we share, pleads with me to stop, just stop.
“If you don’t shut the fuck up,” Danny warns, taking a step toward me.
James steps in time with him. “Rog, call Bennett. Tell him to get his ass over here now to stop this.”
“Yeah, tell him to get his ass over here,” I mimic, eyes moving from Danny to James to a way out should I need it, but Danny is too close. Much too close. Reaching-and-grabbing distance.
Roger takes one hand away to get his phone and call my brother. Bennett connects on the other side. “What?”
Roger tells him what, and we all can hear Bennett losing his cool, saying to tell that fucking idiot Danny to back the fuck up.
He’s going to be right there. He’s going over the hill now.
It is an eight-minute walk or so up here from the bottom of the hill.
But with as hot as Bennett is, it’ll be three. He’ll be sprinting to get here.
“Wait the fuck until I get there.”
Danny tries to speak, but Bennett disconnects mid-speech. Danny stares at the cell, dumbfounded and open mouthed. He doesn’t know whether he’s hurt or angry.
“You’re not even important enough for him to stay on the line.”
Danny decides angry.
Danny steps forward, his heavy boots thudding against the dirt. “What’s your angle here, Edie? Blackmailing Bennett? Running your mouth about something we all agreed to bury? You think you’re better than us because you skipped town and played ghost?”
We’re nearly there. And we have to get there before Bennett comes because when he does, everything will be shut down. “What did we bury, Danny?”
James shifts uncomfortably, his voice low. “Eden, come on. You don’t need to do this. We’ll figure something out—”
“Shut up, James!” Danny snaps. He rears on me, tone full of disdain and hate. “It doesn’t matter what we did, and she really doesn’t care about figuring any damn thing out.” He goes off and says it all. Bennett. The prank. The accident. The deaths. The story we made up.
“Is that what you wanted to hear? All you know is how to blow in and out of town and blow shit up. Beggin’ for money like you aren’t a fucking Corrigan. You don’t know how good you got it.” He steps closer.
“Danny,” Roger warns, moving forward to join Danny or stop him. “I don’t know.”
At the same time James says, “Hey! That’s not right, bro.”
But Danny doesn’t stop. “Just like your fucking mother. I heard that’s why she was kicked out on her ass and sent to Daytona to slum it with the common folk. Because she’s nothing but a money-hungry whor—”
He doesn’t get to finish. Because he is now sputtering and rubbing his eyes and spinning in circles, crying in pain from the squirt of Mace I unleashed on him.
Roger and James, and even I, myself, become collateral damage.
The snap in me when he invoked my dead mother’s name was instant, volcanic.
I can’t even say when the Mace came out.
“Don’t you dare mention my mother’s name. Ever!”
“Danny, no!” James and Roger say together through tear-streaked eyes.
Mine are blurry too, but not enough that I can’t see Danny recovering quicker than the other two.
He charges and runs into me with more force than I expect.
It’s like he’s back in high school, trying to sack the quarterback before he throws the ball to his teammate to run for a touchdown.
I am that quarterback. Danny’s shoulder connects with my chest. His impact makes me stumble several steps back, my heel catches on a loose board behind me, and gravity takes over.
I am going back, back, back—right into one of the broken window frames.
The jagged pieces of glass bite into my side with a sickening squelch, and my backward momentum is suddenly stopped.
It is not just me that stops. Everything stops.
Even the barn, which has been creaking and groaning as the faint wind rustles through the broken slats and rotting wood, goes silent.
My shock blocks the pain. All I can do is look down at this alien thing that is not of my body but is now embedded in me.
There is a tiny crack as the glass separates itself from its bottom half, and a trickle of warmth begins to move down my side and hip.
Red spreads across my sweatshirt. I gaze at it.
Alien. Not me. But yes, me. I look at the three guys.
Each of them registering different versions of shock.
James doesn’t understand what he’s seeing, eyes full of complete shock.
Danny is still in his linebacker stance, hands splayed and white as a sheet. Our eyes connect, and it is the first time that even I feel sorry for him. His mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
Roger breaks the silence. “Oh my God. Oh my God!” He looks like he’s going to be ill. His already-pale face becomes paler in the dark.
Danny whispers haltingly, “I didn’t mean—I was only trying to—I didn’t mean to.”
Words I haven’t heard in two years.
I slide to the ground, my knees giving. The movement jars the glass in me, and the pain radiates outward and nearly knocks me out.
James is jolted into action. He rushes to kneel next to me, his hands hovering over my body like he is casting some sort of magic spell to telepathically pull the glass out. Roger moves toward me. Stops. Pivots. Moves there. Stops. Pivots. Comes back. Stops, too afraid to get closer to me.
James yells, “We need to get help.” He goes to touch the glass like he’s about to pull it out.
I flinch away from his hands, guarding the glass with a block of my hand. What if it is the only thing keeping me from bleeding out? There isn’t much blood. Not yet. But there will be. And then there will be no more me.
Danny is still in shock. His hand is at his mouth, and all he can do is stare at what he’s done.
“Ay, yo! Where the hell is everybody?”
“Bennett,” Danny whimpers, fresh tears of uncertainty and fear forming. It’s one thing for Danny to trash-talk me when Bennett does and throw his weight around. It’s another thing entirely to have hurt me. There is no way of knowing how Bennett will take this and who will feel his wrath.
The three of them run for the door, leaving me alone, to cut Bennett off before he walks in and sees me.
I have only a moment to decide. We are on a precipice.
The wild card is Bennett. What will the story be?
There is already an admission, which is all I wanted.
For one of them to say in his own words what happened so that when I tell my father, there can be no question.
The money was never a factor. I didn’t want Bennett’s money, wherever he got it from.
I only wanted them to admit what we did.
Bennett can blame my getting hurt on them.
He can spin the story to say they acted on their own.
But they will say he told them to bring me here.
There are too many variables, and they all point to me.
I am the piece that needs to be removed.
And if Bennett is anything, a survivalist is number one.
He has too much to lose. I know too much about him.
If I stay, Bennett may finish what Danny started.
I move, but the pain rips through me, and a gasp tries to escape. I suck it in. I can’t be heard. Distancing myself is the only way to ensure I have a chance. My hand brushes against the glass and recoils, then moves to clutch it to keep it from shifting or coming out. I need to get to the road.
With the decision made, I grimace against the way the glass teases that it’s still there, probably causing more damage.
But I’m more afraid of removing it and bleeding out.
I hold it firmer, determined not to let it move more than it is, and I get up.
I can hear the guys arguing out front. The four of them are talking at once, so how they can understand the others, I have no idea.
Danny is desperately trying to soften the blow, explaining his story from the beginning.
Somehow his linebacker move morphs into a defensive maneuver from my Mace and as he tried to deflect my attacks on him.
James and Roger interject, James saying we need to hurry.
Bennett is asking, “Hurry and do what?” Because no one has cut to the chase yet. He’s demanding to know what’s happened.
“Where. The fuck. Is Edie?”
I am stumbling toward the back door and squeezing through the ragged gaping hole in the corner of one of the back stalls that easily crumbled away after years of abuse by Mother Nature.
I’m in such a rush to get away quickly that as I move through the hole, my bracelet, the one that matches my mother’s locket chain, catches on splintered wood and breaks off.
I hesitate, about to stop and grab it, but they’ll be after me at any moment, and I won’t be able to outrun them. Not in this condition.