Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
LIAM
I hear the door before I see it, and sit up when I hear footsteps. He’s fucking whistling again, and despite the weakness I feel, a renewed buzz of determination hits me.
Kat’s hand tightens around mine. I squeeze back once before letting go.
Sam stands in the middle of the floor and looks at us. He has a different knife in his hand, long and sharp and glinting.
‘We need to get him close to me,’ I whisper. ‘It’s a long shot, but we have to get him within my reach.’
‘You’ve blamed your whole life on those men,’ Kat says. ‘But maybe you’d have been a loser anyway.’
Her voice is wrecked. Three days of the drip and nothing else, and it comes out cracked and wan.
Anger flickers across Sam’s face.
‘No,’ he says.
‘And you can’t fuck, Ellie told me.’
His fingers clench tight around the knife handle.
‘You don’t know anything.’ Sam sneers.
‘I know that Liam went through what you did, and can still fuck me until I come.’ Kat adds venom to each word, even through the crackling voice.
The room is very quiet.
Sam stares at her for a long time. His breathing turns ragged as he fists the knife. It’s a risk, but it’s all I’ve got. I reach behind me and find the belt I took off, slowly, not to attract his attention.
Then he’s stalking across the floor, and grabbing my girl by the throat, I hear the way she gurgles and pull myself unsteadily to my feet. I draw on all of the cold rage that’s been sitting in my chest for the past three days.
I lunge, tightening my belt around his throat, pulling as tightly as I can muster.
He releases both Kat and the knife at the same time, her dragging breath as soothing to my soul as the dreadful noises Sam makes.
It’s not elegant. My wrists are in pieces, my hands are weak, and it takes longer than I expected. The noises coming from his throat are positively demonic just before the end. Kat stands, steadying herself against the post and shakes her head at him.
‘We could have been on the same side, Sam. We could have been friends.’
I don’t let go.
I keep my eyes on Kat, who doesn’t flinch even when facing his purpling face. And hold on. Until I don’t need to anymore.
The belt falls to the floor with Sam, still digging into his neck as he lands at my feet.
I follow, my legs too weak to carry me, catching myself on one hand and staying there.
The bulb swings.
Kat’s looking at Sam and crawls forward, gently reaching out to close his gaping eyes.
‘Are you hurt?’ I ask.
‘Given everything, I’m better than I could be,’ she says. Her voice is very small. ‘Are you?’
‘I’ll live.’
We look at each other across the floor.
‘I hope to god he’s got the keys,’ Kat says.
I find the keys in his back pocket after heaving him over, my hands not cooperating with the heavy chains still on them. I unlock Kat first, and she returns the favour, then we sit on the floor for a long time.
She reaches over and takes my hand as we look at Sam.
I feel hollow. We were three kids thrust into bad situations by the adults in our lives; none of us deserves this.
A boy in the back of a car, waiting for what was coming, watching through the trees as a girl accidentally saved him while killing her friend’s father. It had twisted us all in our own ways.
‘He was right about some of it,’ she whispers.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Someone should have helped us all.’ Her voice is broken. ‘All the boys in that cottage and all the ones who the men hurt after. Someone should have gone after every single man who was ever in that room and made them answer for it.’
I look at her as a surge of heat fills my chest.
Her face is thin and pale from three days of nothing. Her lips are cracked, but those eyes are clear and determined.
‘Someone should,’ I say.
‘We should,’ she says. ‘Together.’
The bulb swings, and I nod. It feels right.
‘Together,’ I say.
We get to our feet.