Chapter 70
CHAPTER SEVENTY
There’s an explosion of sound, concussing my eardrums while my nose is hit with the hot smell of gunpowder.
A gun. I just shot a gun.
I blink into reality, and I’m in a patch of bamboo, the crashing of waves behind me, and before me is Weston, crouched over with a gun in his hand. He doesn’t look hurt. Did I shoot and miss?
Weston raises the gun in his hand, and I look to see where he’s pointing it, and my heart stops.
Holli.
Holli is here, and Weston is trying to kill her.
Hatred burns in my chest and tightens it as I jump toward him, slamming the butt of my gun into his forehead hard enough that I hear a crack.
How fucking dare he? How dare he?? He ruined my life as a child, and now he wants to take Holland’s life too?
Weston crumples, dropping his gun, and I kick it into the woods.
Holland is mine. I know it with a certainty deep down in my chest, and I’ll never let anyone have her.
I crash my foot down on Weston’s skull. My boot thuds against it, knocking him all the way to the ground, where he lies there for a moment, mouth opening and closing.
And for a moment, he looks old. My brother, with the age lines around those eyes that used to look at me with such hatred, the leathery skin from all those days in the sun chasing me down.
I’m hit with a memory that doesn’t feel like mine, but I recognize the players.
Dad on the porch, looking at me in the dark with his gun.
Then I see Weston in the chicken coop with a twisted smile on his face.
I see Dad again, screaming at me. For some reason, I’m wet and shivering, and it’s hard to breathe.
A groan breaks me into reality again. Weston is moving, climbing to his hands and knees.
I slam my foot down on his head again, stunning him. Freezing him in that moment between confusion and action, where the pain is bouncing around inside his skull.
In that moment, I feel the memories in me stir. Those memories never had this moment. Never saw Dad or Weston like this. I never saw them like this either.
And it feels…good.
Suddenly, a plan fills my mind with such clarity that it makes all the distant memories in my head still.
I’m going to get us vengeance. Me and my memories.
As soon as I think it, an overwhelming calm fills my mind, and I get to work.
First order of business is to break Weston’s legs.
I roll him on his back, and slurred curses come out of his mouth as he raises his hands to defend his face, but that’s not what I’m going for.
I slam my foot down on his knee with a satisfying crunch, bending it the opposite way than it’s supposed to go.
There’s a scream, and he curls into the fetal position, making it harder for me to get to his other leg. That sends a pulse of annoyance through me, but no matter. Stalking to the bamboo, I pat my belt for my knife.
No knife.
Fine, I still have my gun. Shooting into the bottoms of the stalks, I yank some bamboo away.
There’s a sharp intake of breath, and I look back to see Holland there, watching me. She looks concerned. Oakley is behind her, too, looking afraid.
“Are you hurt?” I bark, immediately worried, scanning to make sure Weston hasn’t gotten up.
Holland shakes her head. She doesn’t look hurt, but as soon as I take care of him, I’ll do a thorough check over her and Oakley, since Oakley seems important to her.
Ripping the bamboo the rest of the way off proves difficult, but I get them with jagged edges.
Stalking back to Weston, who’s moaning and trying to army crawl away, I snatch him up by his shirt and start pulling him to the beach.
He fights me so much I can’t grab my bamboo, but with every jerk of his body and with every sink of my feet into the sand, I feel a rush of adrenaline.
I’m winning this fight. He’s playing my game now.
I get Weston to the waterline and drop him down.
“Really?” Weston coughs out, laughing. “You were always too weak to take over for Dad. Too crazy.”
My chest tightens, and I clench my hand into a fist, slamming it down into his chest with a satisfying crunch. Cracking ribs doesn’t take much, and I do it again. Weston arches his back with a silent scream.
It knocks the wind out of him. Hopefully, I didn’t puncture a lung. That would be too quick a death for him.
There’s a shift of sound, and I look back to see Holland and Oakley drop the bamboo they’ve dragged here. Holland gives me a nod, the light of the rising sun caressing over her face and giving her the most beautiful look I’ve ever seen. For a second, I’m stunned, staring at her.
Then a spluttering wheezing comes from below me.
Right. Time to see if Weston can breathe underwater.
I stomp his head one more time and flip him on his stomach, chin in the wet sand. He’s too knocked around to fight too much, only lifts his head and tries to get up as a wave comes to bubble around his throat.
Oh yeah, I’ll take his arms too.
Instead of breaking it, I grab a piece of bamboo, jagged edges down. I raise it above my head and slam it down toward the back of Weston’s arm.
It makes contact with a squelch.
Weston jerks and screams, but I’m already raising it again, aiming to puncture the flesh. I do so, pinning his arm into the sand and twisting the bamboo to bury it deeper.
“Fuck, Jesus, it was a joke!” Weston’s voice is guttural. “Let me go, it was a fucking joke!”
I ignore him, aiming for the fleshy part of his torso right under his ribcage and beside his spine.
The resulting scream as I slam the bamboo down reaches into the deep recesses of my memory, smoothing over my own screaming there.
This piece takes a ton of hits, probably more than is prudent to keep him alive for days.
But that’s okay. I don’t need him alive for days. Just long enough to suffer.
I’m not sure how long it takes to pin him down with a few more stakes, one to the leg, and one to the groin, but Weston has stopped screaming, and the waves are lapping at his face enough that he has to pick it up.
Standing back, I survey my work. It feels…good. It feels almost peaceful. Only, it’s missing…I look back to see Holland and Oakley are sitting on the beach higher up. They haven’t left.
Slowly, I walk up there, and the closer I get, the more that feeling of something missing disappears. When I’m next to them, it’s like peace overtakes me like a blanket, exhaustion falling quickly in its wake.
I drop down beside them, sitting on the beach overlooking the ocean, and the offering I’ve left it.
No one says anything. There’s just the crash of waves, the hiss of the water as it pulls back into the ocean, and the crying of gulls.
The crackle of a walkie-talkie fills the silence. “Butt plug, come in, butt plug.”
The fatigue has my limbs gripped like a vise, and I don’t even try to answer.
Breaking the relative peace, my brother lets out a hoarse scream. I glance over at Holli to see if she’s uncomfortable.
She isn’t. She stares stony-faced at my brother.
My brother. I wait for the feeling that I’m not safe to overwhelm me. The feeling of panic that he always brings.
But that small voice in my head is suspiciously missing. It’s not screaming anymore. Not flooding my body with adrenaline. It’s…satisfied.
The annoying crackling of the walkie-talkie starts again. “Piano fingers? You there? Where’s Wyatt?”
We all ignore it. Instead, Holland asks, “You okay?” She looks over at me grimly, but not scared. Oakley is shivering.
I just grunt.
“Not sure where Twenty-Seven is,” Sawyer says on the walkie-talkie. “Anyone have visual?”
“Of course you’d lose him.” Riley’s voice comes over the air.
Faint gunshots sound in the distance, but I don’t really care. I realize that Holland and Oakley stayed. They…stayed. They could have left, but they didn’t.
I can’t help but look at Holland again. The light from the rising sun lights her up like an angel, the sweet look at war with the deadly gleam in her eyes. I can’t help but feel she both doesn’t belong here and was made to thrive here at the same time. Two sides to the same coin.
“Now what?” Oakley’s nervous voice fills the space.
I look away, back at the ocean again. The tide has risen enough to make Weston rise up against the bamboo, ripping it further into his skin.
But he isn’t going anywhere. The stake through his torso is dug so deep into the ground that he’d have to rip his body off the top, and there’s a good four feet up in the air.
I don’t know what’s next. I just want to hold onto this moment for as long as I can.
Holland’s voice fills the space. “Day fourteen. Still alive.”
I glance over at her. Right. The game.
“I’m the first woman to win.” She looks over at me. Triumph mixes in her eyes with a little bit of something else…something…hollow.
I blink at her.
She raises an eyebrow, that dangerous woman I’ve come to know flashing in her gaze. “So how about that boat?”