Chapter 19
Ramsey~
I knew Liam’s voice as well as I knew my own. In fact, I could make out Deke and Liam in the dark, even if I were blind, deaf, and dumb. That’s how I knew that it was Liam when the roars from the hallway hit my ears.
I didn’t think.
I just ran.
I raced down the school’s main center hallway, then rounded the corner to see Liam in the middle of a melee with three other guys. I ran straight into the fray, then grabbed the first guy that I got my hands on. It was Roman Cruz, and I laid the motherfucker out with one shot to his face. I didn’t even wait for his body to hit the ground when I was already on Jamie Turner while Liam finished up who I saw was Ricky Peterson.
I didn’t ask any questions; I just started pummeling Jamie with everything that I had. I had no idea why they jumped Liam, but they had to have known that there was no way that they’d have gotten away with it, even if I hadn’t shown up.
“You sick motherfucker! You piece of fucking shit!” Liam was screaming down at his victim with every blow to Ricky’s body, proving that I wasn’t the only psychopath in the group. Liam and Deke fought like demons just like I did.
Now, while Jamie was doing his best to fight back, he was no match for me, and he knew it. Everyone knew it. He also had to know that this would not be the end of it. No one messed with Liam or Deke and got away with it.
No one .
“I’m going to fucking kill you! Kill you all!” Liam shouted, and when I looked over, I could see that he was definitely on the fast track to killing Ricky. I gave Jamie one last slam to the face and knocked him out cold, laying him out next to Roman.
I ran over to Liam, then pulled him off Ricky. “Liam, man, stop,” I tried to reason. “You’re going to kill him.”
My words must have gotten through because Liam’s right hand opened, releasing Ricky’s shirt, and Ricky went sliding down to the ground in a bloody heap, dancing in and out of consciousness.
I turned Liam around, then shook him back to reality. “You okay? What happened?”
Liam looked at me, and I’d have to say that I’d never seen him look so crazed. He looked lost and out of his goddamn mind. He looked wild as he shoved my hands off his shoulders, and I watched as he ran his bloody hands through his hair, then pulled. Liam let out the most heartbreaking roar that I’d ever heard, and it had me worried.
“Lee, what’s going on, man?”
He turned back towards me, but before he could answer, I heard a faint whimper float in the air, and my eyes followed Liam’s as he looked over towards the wall leading back to the library.
My breath caught in my chest, and my mind froze, not wanting to process what I was seeing.
Emerson stood leaning up against the wall with her arms wrapped around her waist, her eyes wide and her face blank. Her uniform top was ripped down the middle, and her bra was twisted, one breast hanging out in the open. Her arms and legs were a bloody mess, and her hair was in total disarray. As my eyes scanned the length of her body, I saw that she only had one sandal on, and it was the partner to the white pair that she always wore.
When my eyes searched around for the other shoe, I noticed something white tossed a few feet away from Liam’s feet.
It was a pair of panties.
My eyes shot back towards Emerson’s face, and I couldn’t get a grasp on everything that I was feeling. She was making no effort to cover herself up, nor was she crying. She wasn’t doing anything but staring at the pieces of shit on the ground.
I didn’t take my eyes off her when Liam spoke. “I was on my way to practice when I heard someone screaming. I ran in the direction of the commotion, and I saw…” He paused as if saying the very words were causing him physical pain. “I saw Jamie on top of her, and…” Liam trailed off, not being able to finish his accounts of what happened.
Before I could comment or move, Emerson seemed to snap out of her shock. Her eyes flew to where Liam and I stood, and I’d never seen so much hate on one person’s face ever .
“Emerson-”
She immediately scrambled to right herself. She pulled her bra together, covering up her modesty. Her shirt was in tatters, but she did her best to pull it tightly around her body. I watched motionlessly as she stared down at her one shoe. When she lifted her head to search for the discarded match, I saw her entire body freeze as her eyes landed on her underwear.
Liam and I remained absolutely still and didn’t utter another word as we watched a myriad of emotions play across her face.
Her mannerisms were killing me.
She wasn’t crying.
She wasn’t hysterical.
She wasn’t screaming.
She wasn’t doing anything, besides assessing everything around her.
A second later, all three of our heads snapped sideways when we heard a moan rise from the ground. One of the guys was coming to.
I fucking wished that he would.
I wasn’t done with these three.
Not by a long shot.
I turned back towards Emerson, and the agony that consumed my body was paralyzing as I watched her wobble forward, then squat down to pick up her shoe. I watched in silence as she put it on, and then the anguish really took hold when she squatted down again to pick up her panties. She fisted them in her right hand, her left hand still holding her shirt together.
Liam finally moved, going over to pick up her backpack that’d been tossed down the hallway. He walked up to her, then placed it at her feet. Emerson looked up at him and just stared wordlessly.
“Emerson…” he said but stopped. Neither of us knew what to say. Oh, we knew that we were going to kill those motherfuckers, but we had no idea what to say to Emerson.
I followed suit, walking up to her. I wanted to take her in my arms and make whatever she had experienced go away, back from the first time that she’d ever seen her father hitting her mother. I wanted to take it all away.
“Em-” Her silver eyes shot up to my brown ones, and the pure fury in them shut me up.
Emerson’s eyes scaled down my body and back up again in complete, utter loathing. When her eyes met mine again, she said. “I guess there really is no limit to what you’ll do to win, huh?”
Sonofa-fucking-bitch .
Emerson thought that I had orchestrated her attack.
She thought Jamie, Ricky, and Roman had gone after her at my urging.
That knowledge sliced through the heart that I didn’t even know that I’d had.
“Emerson,” I said, my voice low and forceful, “I would never-”
“Save it, Reed.” Reed? She turned her eyes of wrath towards Liam. “What I don’t understand is why you bothered to stop them, Liam? Isn’t that going against your master’s wishes?”
Liam’s spine snapped. I could feel the rage and confusion radiating off him in waves. “Ramsey’s not my master, Emerson. And no matter what we’ve ever done, rape has never been a part of it.”
She didn’t look like she believed him, and worse, she looked like she didn’t care.
“Emerson,” I said, drawing her attention back to me, “they’ll pay for this, I swear.”
I was expecting her to tell me to go get fucked. I was expecting a reaction of rage and pain. Instead, she finished me off with a knife to my gut to match the piercing that I felt lodged in my chest, and I’d never underestimated someone so much in my life.
Emerson’s hand loosened its grip on her blouse. Her shirt fell open, exposing her bra and bare stomach. She pushed it back off her shoulders, then gathered it in the hand that wasn’t gripping her panties. She stood before me and Liam in nothing but her bra, uniform skirt, and white sandals, her chin held high.
I didn’t move or say a word as I watched her scrunch up her blouse, then throw it in my face. Besides the clenching of my jaw, I didn’t react. She had every right to lash out, and she threw her wadded-up panties at me next. They hit my face, then tumbled to the ground, landing next to her blouse.
Her eyes volleyed back and forth between me and Liam as she said, “I would rather have had them rape me than owe either of you anything.” I felt her words like a kick to my chest. “I may be trash, but at least I’m not a rapist or a bully. If you think that you guys are going to get credit for putting out a fire that you guys started, you’re not. The both of you can go to hell.”
She walked past us, half-naked, leaving us to suffocate on her words.