48. Eden
FORTY-EIGHT
EDEN
Business as usual. C U tonite.
The text from Cash’s phone is a message from Teddy. One that has me flipping open my phone every ten seconds to read it again, as if I will find something new woven between the little black letters.
Why is he backing out? He’d seemed so eager to do it, to run away and never look back. Is it because he finally realized what a freak I am? We fucking killed someone together, and he liked it, and I let him fuck me over her dying body, and I liked it, and?—
“Quit,” his sultry voice says from right in front of me, his pointer finger tapping my forehead harshly. I jump as he materializes from the darkened hallway that leads to the dressing rooms, his teal eyes swimming with warmth but with a guarded edge, as though shark fins are circling the outer ring.
My eyes dart behind him, ensuring no one follows before I speak. When I find his face again, his lips are set in a pressed, harsh line, his jaw is ticking it’s so tense, and those bags under his eyes are as dark as the storm clouds over the Sound.
“What’s wrong?” I hiss, dread creeping quietly into my veins. It aches, the way my heart clenches, the way my pulse squeezes. I know he’s always been able to read me, often better than I think I can read myself, but here and now, something is wrong, and I don’t like the way it’s making me feel.
The weight of the reckless decisions we’ve made over these past few weeks settles into my stomach like a burning hot stone. He’s killed and I’ve watched in fascination, and then I’ve killed for sport, for curiosity…for him . Are we about to end up in prison? Or worse?
“My mom?—”
“C’mon, kids,” Vic says from the ring behind us. I whirl, heart racing, for his approach was as silent as a ghost. He stands beneath the only light that’s currently on, and it washes his gaunt face to eerily pale shades, his skin almost luminescent. “Tick, tock. Knives again.”
Teddy moves to breeze past me, but before I can whirl and stop him and demand an answer, Daniel storms down the stairs.
Tie askew, hair disheveled, face blotchy with drink, he points a finger at me—at Teddy .
“You little fucking freak! You fucking killed him, didn’t you? My client! You worthless little faggot?—”
“Enough!” Vic snaps, stepping between us just as Daniel comes within a foot of Teddy. Spittle flies from Daniel’s lips as he jabs his finger at us and hurls more insults, Teddy pushing me behind him.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” Teddy yells, a note of desperation to his normally calm tone. It’s then I see it, the silver glint of a revolver in Daniel’s other hand. My hands fly up of their own accord, sinking into the soft material of Teddy’s black hoodie, keeping him cemented from going forward, though I am powerless to drag him back, to push him behind me and protect the only thing I have left in this world worth living for.
“Calm down, you drunken bastard! It wasn’t the boy!” Vic yells, shoving Daniel’s shoulder. It’s enough to make him stumble backwards slightly, his irate attention now directed at the one who became a father to me when mine couldn’t leave his bed anymore.
“You,” Daniel seethes, pointing the gun at Vic’s chest.
“No!” I squeak without thought, jumping around Teddy, who catches me easily and pulls me into him, locking his arms around my torso as I stare in stunned horror.
“Aye. You think I’d let you harm a hair on her head? She’s like a daughter to me, you bloody animal.”
Daniel smirks, his eyes glazed with drink, his frame wavering as though he’s floating in the steady current of the ocean. Time seems to suspend, to still to an impossible degree, the same way it did in the moments before and during my father’s death.
Vic glances at me. Tilts his head toward us. Gives me a small, sad smile.
“I’ve always thought you were a fucking waste,” Daniels says.
The gun fires.
Shock encases me as though I am stuck motionless in a block of ice. I blink. Red. So much red. Even more than when I drove Teddy’s knife into Miss Goss’ throat.
The body of the man who protected me while I was stuck here in this living hell wavers unsteadily, a gaping hole where his face should be. Someone screams. His body thuds resoundingly to the ground. The screaming reaches a fever pitch, threatening to cleave my skull in two, and before I realize that I am the one wailing, I am rushing forward through hot, sticky blood and bits of bone.
“Eden, no!” Teddy screams, his fingers just barely grazing my own as I throw myself toward Vic’s dead body. But my knees never meet the ground. A pair of arms wrap around my torso and cinch down so hard my ribs crack. A cool kiss of metal hits my temple, the center fiery hot from the round that just blew one of my only friends to pieces.
It’s then, as I’m trapped in Daniel’s arms, staring at the lifeless corpse, that I realize my grave mistake. My eyes, so wide now they feel as though they will pop from my skull and roll across the floor, land on Teddy’s.
The comfort and surety I knew I would find there is gone, replaced by nothing more or less than a type of terror that seizes my heart and prevents it from beating.
“You,” Daniel seethes, pressing the gun deeper into my temple, an ache surging where metal and bone meet. “You killed him, you filthy freak, she helped, and so did he.”
A knife glints by Teddy’s thigh, but can he be faster than a fucking bullet?
A tear rolls down my cheek, followed by another. Reality sets in that this could be it for me, the end of my short, lonely existence.
Even if that’s so, I would do it all again, if it meant finding my way to Teddy Poe. I know there’s something beyond this life, and so dying…dying doesn’t seem so scary to the girl who can see the dead.
But Teddy dying? I will never be able to bear even the faintest thought. When that day comes, I have to go first. I know he will follow.
I shake my head as much as I’m able, fear gripping me tighter than Daniel. All I can do is push it aside, but when he speaks again, my hope flickers in the cavern of my chest.
And dies.