Chapter 52 Cash
FIFTY-TWO
CASH
SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
Cash stumbled toward the double sliding doors that led from the emergency room and out into the blinding glare of the breaking day. He felt as if his mind were detached from his body. His heart severed from his soul.
A walking shell while his ghost hovered in the blank space above his head.
They were dead.
All of them.
His mother.
His father.
His brother.
Nausea roiled in his guts, crawling from a dark pit inside him and slipping out to saturate every molecule of his being.
A festering sickness that corrupted and decayed.
Eating him from the inside out.
He blundered out into the parking lot. No clue where he was going.
Disoriented.
Lost.
Once Daisy had been discharged in the middle of the night, Ms. Lopez had forced her into leaving, doctors ordering that she needed to rest after the mild smoke inhalation she had suffered.
She tried to refuse. Tried to cling onto Cash to give him hope and support.
But there was none of that.
Hope.
He’d been so catatonic, he’d barely recognized she was there, and when he shunned her affections, Ms. Lopez had pried her away and told Daisy she could return in the morning.
He had to get out of there before she did.
He was sure he couldn’t stand the light that would shine on her face. Sure he couldn’t stomach the sympathy that she would pour into him.
Because the only thing he could process right then other than the unbearable numbness was the hate.
Hate for himself.
Hate for Matthew.
Hate for the men who had put him in that position.
It was a hate that was as hot as if he were standing beneath a thousand-degree sun and letting it boil his flesh. The same as the flames that had licked up the skin of his back. Burns that right then he could barely feel.
The drugs they gave him to ease the agony still running through his veins.
He wondered if they’d directly injected him with poison instead.
With venom.
Some social worker had told him that his grandparents were on their way. That he’d likely be in the hospital for a week, then they would take him back to Florida where they lived.
He had to get away before then, so he’d ripped his IV free and forced himself from the fifth floor of the hospital.
Now, he fumbled through the cars in the parking lot. His hands shooting out to hold onto the metal to keep himself upright.
When the strength left him, he leaned his back against a red sedan, panting toward the sky as he struggled to maintain coherency.
To hold onto the rage that kept him moving.
He managed to make it out to the street as a bus came to a grinding halt at the stop.
He climbed on, digging into his pocket and finding a five. He shoved it into the box.
His knee bounced a million miles a minute as they traveled, and he exited from the bus one street over from his house.
He jogged the rest of the way.
Ignoring the misery.
The agony that carved into his back.
Let it fuel him as another part of his consciousness snapped.
He nearly passed out at the sight of his childhood home in the distance.
Char and ash. Taped off with a few officers milling around the yard.
His keys were still in the ignition of his truck where he left it on the side of the road, and he jerked the door open, his face contorting with the tearing of his back as he hoisted himself inside.
Breaths heaving from his empty lungs, he jerked at the gear-handle and shifted into drive. Gunned it as he made a U. He fishtailed down the road and out onto the main street.
He squinted, trying to focus.
Roughed a hand down his face like it might open a pathway for him to see.
A right.
A left.
A right.
It was like autopilot, where the fury took him.
To that fucking house where he knew Matthew went.
Right in the middle of a decent family neighborhood, but there was something about this one that smacked of indecency.
The innocuous one-story bleeding corruption.
At the curb, Cash came to a skidding stop.
And he was out.
A savage storm that stalked up the walkway.
He didn’t knock.
He kicked open the door.
The wood banged against the interior wall.
Shock sent Jaimie catapulting off the couch, and the bong he was inhaling from crashed to the floor. “The fuck are you doing in here?”
“You piece of shit. You did it. You killed them.” Cash didn’t recognize his own voice. The vicious snarl he emitted.
Maybe when his soul had died, he’d been possessed.
Understanding dawned on the monster’s face, and he cocked an arrogant smirk, tilted his head as he laughed a mocking sound. “So you’re the superstar who couldn’t throw one single game? Fair’s fair, isn’t it? Matthew knew the score. If he didn’t come through, he was dead.”
Jaimie raised his hands out to the sides as if he were completely innocent. “That fire? I was only doing what I was told. You see, I’m the kind of guy that comes through, unlike you. Can’t help it that your parents got in the way.”
Cash lunged for him, but before he got there, Jaimie pulled out a knife.
The metal glinted against the sunlight that streamed in through the window.
Yet, it somehow didn’t deter Cash. Did nothing to stop him from hurling himself for the bastard.
Jaimie whipped the knife through the air, and Cash ducked out of the way before he caught Jaimie around the waist. They toppled to the ground in a pile of flailing arms and legs. Jaimie had Cash by at least four years, but Cash was faster.
Stronger.
Only he imagined his body type had nothing to do with it.
It was entirely the fact that he’d come unhinged.
There was nothing left to tether him to sanity.
He had one goal.
Revenge.
His own death didn’t matter.
They tussled, each vying for dominance. Cash had one hand wrapped around Jaimie’s wrist that held the knife while he spread a hand over Jaimie’s face to tack him down. He slammed his hand to the ground.
Once.
Twice.
Jaimie howled as the knife was knocked free.
Cash shifted higher, pinning the bastard down as he wrapped his hands around the fucker’s throat.
Squeezing tight.
He couldn’t stop the satisfaction that pulsed at the edges of his consciousness as he watched the life begin to drain from the asshole.
Jaimie kicking and scratching and trying to break out of Cash’s menacing hold, but his attempts slipped away, the same as his breath was beginning to.
Pain suddenly splintered through Cash’s skull as a glass vase shattered against the back of his head.
A flickering blackness threatened to take him under. He blinked, disoriented, though he managed to stagger to his feet.
On a roar, he whirled around.
A blur of color and energy came at him. The only thing he could discern was the wielding of a knife.
He ducked to the side, and the tip of the blade nicked his shoulder.
He didn’t even process what happened as he shoved the person backward.
The way they flew halfway across the room and slammed into a television.
The screen splintered as the person crumbled to the ground.
Confusion held him for a muddled beat as he tried to process what he saw.
Hadley.
It was Hadley.
Daisy’s sister with blood pouring out the back of her head.
Cash bellowed when pain suddenly sliced at an angle across his back. From his right shoulder down into the lower left that was already raw and ruined by the burns.
The slice only incited a new rage.
A new fury when he realized that Hadley had known. That she hadn’t warned them. That she was involved.
He whirled back around to find that fucker Jaimie wasn’t dead.
Any amount of humanity Cash had left disintegrated.
Obliterated in a flashfire of violence.
Before Jaimie had time to prepare himself, Cash had grabbed hold of the bastard’s wrist, turned his hand around, and drove the knife through his jugular.
The blade devouring the flesh.
Blood poured out as the motherfucker’s eyes went wide with the truth that he was going to die.
Clawing at the knife, Jaimie dropped to his knees before he fell face first at Cash’s feet.
There was no relief, only the thirst for more. To enact vengeance. To destroy every last monster that walked the earth.
He turned around. Hadley was face down on the ground in a pool of blood.
Unmoving.
His throat thickened when he realized what he’d done.
Shame.
Guilt.
Hate.
He didn’t know which one he felt the strongest.
The only thing he knew for certain was he was empty.
His soul a void.
Numb, he turned and walked out, climbed into his truck, and drove.
Drove into the nothingness.
Because he had nothing left to give.