Chapter 40
The wedding lights glared inside the stuffy ass building, all soft, sweet, and the biggest lie there was. It was the kind of shit people clung to when they needed to convince themselves the world is gentle despite seeing the cruelty right in their dumbass faces.
I knew better.
I’d been watching from the tree line long before Xanthy slipped into the reception and before Shiloh’s temper snapped and Tyler ended up on the ground getting the hell beaten out of him.
Beautiful.
Watching Tyler getting his pompous ass pummeled in general gave me a boner, but seeing my Sunshine turn into the dark storm that broke him was even better.
I lived for watching this dickhole eat his teeth.
I stayed in the shadows, leaning against a cedar trunk, my hands stuffed in my pockets, letting the music drift over to me.
It was all too perfect before this: laughter, champagne, and that ever-dull hum of conversation.
Nobody ever looked for monsters at a wedding.
I blended into the suit-and-tie get-up just as easily as I always had.
Tyler rolled on the ground of the gravel like a fucking turtle as Shiloh and my banshee sister sped off. He was trying to slink away from the pavilion, likely fearful that people from the party would see his sorry ass through the windows.
His pride was bleeding harder than his face. He kept growling, trying to readjust his face with all the dislocations present.
“Fucking doctor. Fucking Xanthy. I’ll fuck your bitch in your blood! Touch me and think you can run? Ha!” he was muttering to himself as he staggered to his feet, limping toward the parking lot to his flashy black Hummer.
I followed him, veering toward the back while he went for the driver’s side. He couldn’t see me past his busted eye and blurred vision. I was in the passenger seat, my hands gripped around the scissors, the same ones I used to end his sister.
He didn’t notice me until the hummer was off the gravel, and my body swayed into his shoulder from the bumps.
“What the fuck!” he screamed.
The car veered, screeching to a halt, throwing us both forward.
Darling Tyler didn’t wear his seatbelt, so his body crumpled into the windshield, fresh blood painting the dashboard from his forehead.
I saw the moment his hazy gaze met mine, recognition at first, then disbelief, and finally fear slid over his glassy eyes.
“Harding? What…what the fuck are you doing in my fucking car?” he croaked.
I hadn’t heard that voice in years, but it still punched the same bruised nerves, breaking open all the cuts and gashes of my past. Tyler always loved to touch me, grope my ass in the showers, drag his boots over my dick, and make my world a series of shouting and pain.
“Hello, Tyler,” I said, leaning forward in my seatbelt to brush hair out of his face with my scissors. “Didn’t expect to see you eating dirt instead of the bride’s pussy at a wedding, old pal. Losing your touch, Veering?”
His throat bobbed, his anger evident as it sobered him. “Carrington fucking Harding. Still sucking on your sister’s tit like always, I see.”
I laughed at that.
“Nah, her boyfriend’s dick tastes better.”
That was enough to throw him off, and I took advantage, throwing his body back in his seat and holding the scissors’ sharp point to his carotid.
“Wha—”
“Drive, Veering. Unless, of course, you want to get your precious car dirty.”
He shut up immediately. Bullies always did when the prey they picked grew teeth to bite back. His hands were shaky as he shifted gears, and the car continued to move forward.
“Where the fuck do you want me to go? I swear I’ll have your dick for this, Carrington.”
I leaned in, my hot breath brushing his ear. “You and I have unfinished business, Tyler.”
He flinched and looked around like maybe someone would save him. No one was on these backwoods roads, and even if they were, people in small towns were smart. They didn’t involve themselves unless they wanted to be the replacement.
The reception music hadn’t covered his beating outside. His friends had known he was getting his ass handed to him. This was what happened when a socialite fell from grace: the masses buried them and stole the jewels left over.
“Stop your fucking games, and get to it,” he whispered, trying to hold onto that venom. “Or I’ll fuck it out of you.”
Ah, yes, the threats that used to break me. The fear of losing something I held so sacred. What a joke. I never willingly gave myself to anyone.
Except my Sunshine…
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and all that.
“Go ahead, Tyler.” I moaned, reaching his hand and shoving it into my pants, right on my bare cock.
There was no burn, just the heat in knowing some of the blood on his hands was Shiloh’s.
Tyler shrieked like a bitch, cutting his neck with the scissors as he jerked his hand away and swerved on the road to steady us.
“Your sister’s shop,” I said with a chuckle, and when he looked confused, I rolled my eyes. “Why am I not surprised you’d let that girl die, never knowing anything but the sound of her misery?”
He growled. “You got your fucking sister, and I got mine, asshole.”
“No, Tyler,” I said, punching in the address to the salon in his car’s GPS with my free hand. “Your sister is fucking dead.”
When we arrived at the shop, it was dark. The sun was setting and disappearing behind the flat ass land on the horizon.
“Walk,” I told him, grabbing him by the scruff of his hair and dragging him out of the passenger side.
“What the fuck you want from me, freak?”
His bulky, stupid body didn’t move, and my patience was growing thin. Normally, I was more methodical, but having my very own bully in my gloved grip made me antsy.
“Now.”
He still didn’t move, so I kicked the back of his knee just right, and the snap had his body flying forward with a scream.
Shit, someone could have heard that. Move Harding.
I all but dragged him across the dirt path toward the salon, making my way to the back, where I kept a spare key to her lair. He got to his feet, trying to prove something, as he stumbled more than once.
Every time he did, that old familiar rage twisted in my chest with the raw heat it brought.
The same rage that used to burn when he cornered me in the showers.
All his fucking friends were taking turns kicking me, laughing at my body, and the never-ending blood making me dizzy until I prayed I would just die.
His cries now reminded me of my sister every time she called our parents, telling them she couldn’t make it to holiday parties because she was “sick.”
She was sixteen when he got his hands on her.
She trusted him, a mindless love that blinded her until…
She ran off and met her prince fucking charming.
My prince. My Sunshine.
How the fuck did I become the dragon in this fairytale? What good was fire when you wanted to burn yourself anytime the princess kissed your fucking Prince?
The shop now had boards on the windows, faded somehow despite the short time. The sign was cracked, and there was trash and food left inside from assholes or homeless people finding a way inside. Carmen would roll her eyes, seeing the way her sanctuary was now tainted.
Good thing, I came bearing a parting gift.
Tyler froze the second he saw her smiling face plastered in pictures with various hairstyles and kickbacks that still smelled like her.
“No,” he rasped, his vibrato faltering even slightly when his foot hit the entrance. “Carrington, don’t—don’t make me go in there. I…I can’t.”
Don’t tell me this monster has a soul.
“You scared of memories?” I said. “Funny. I thought you reveled in the scars you caused.”
“I didn’t kill her!” His voice broke as I shoved his ass through the door, falling to the ground and curling in on himself. “I swear to God, I didn’t—”
I laughed, kneeling down and running the scissors lightly up and down his face.
“I know you didn’t kill her,” I whispered. “I did.”
He went pale, not because he doubted me. But because he believed me. And he knew he was fucking next.
“She begged me to stop,” I said, my voice steady, seeing the memories replay like a play before me. “Begged me not to hurt her. But you know what made her finally give up?”
Tyler visibly swallowed as I began pulling his body right to where she had died. There was no blood, no trace she ever breathed here, but I knew. And now he would, too.
“You,” I said to him, mounting his broken body and reveling in his struggle. “She knew she couldn’t escape you. Your torment and abuse. Dying was a better option than surviving you.”
“Car-Carmen…no…please….I’m not like her…” he whispered, his sister’s pain forgotten when I ripped off his jeans and flipped him over like a log.
“This was her safe haven from you,” I continued, my tone soft despite wrangling him down with my body on top of his back, my weapon turned toward his ass.
“Let me go, Freak! She was weak…I’m not her. I won’t let you erase me! People will notice!”
I smiled and glided the scissors down his head, past his back, and right to his ass.
“I’m sure they will, Tyler. They’ll notice they can feel safe again, they’ll see they don’t have to be afraid of every corner, wondering when you’ll come back for them. They’ll notice when you are rotting in the hell you created for them.”
Tyler grunted, the piercing tip entering him without any further irritation.
“I am, boy…w-weak!” He tried to buck me off as I increased my speed and mimicked his hands and the pace he liked to use when he broke all those women, including my sister.
I couldn’t give Xanthy or Carmen a happy ending any more than I could myself, but now they could find it themselves.
“Please!” He choked, the blood flowing over the crevices in his back and down into the ground below us.
Funny how all bullies knew how to beg.
“Yes, let me hear it, Tyler. Good Boy. You learned from them how to scream so damn good.”
The asshole was getting weaker, and I was getting bored, but simply killing someone like Tyler was too good.
“Her sanctuary,” I said, ripping the scissors free of his body and slamming them into his caged hands. “Your hell.”
He wasn’t getting up from this. The blood was too thick, too warm, flowing like a river from his wounds.
I left him there in her shop, begging in the dark, his voice getting weaker and weaker.
Like those he broke.
Like me.
I knew this was the final time I could let this thrill flow through me, the last time I could hold a blade and orchestrate the perfect play. This was it.
Because I chose him.
I’d leave my darkness behind to die with my past and the pain I left there. I’d leave the groping hands, sour mouths, and retribution I felt with each release.
I’d walk away from it all if it means…
I can live in your light, Sunshine.