Chapter Thirty-Five
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
A crack of thunder swallows the sound of my steps. I look down at my phone again, rain blotting the screen, to confirm that I’m in the right place. The gray cursor marking Hunter’s location hasn’t moved since I left the concert hall, but I never would’ve expected to find him here: a library on a Saturday morning. I step out of the rain and under the cover of the library entrance, my grip never loosening on the weapon in my pocket. My palms sting, the edges of the blade digging into my skin, but the pain is a faraway whisper. There’s no room left in me for anything but hate, spite, rage.
A security guard glances at me. A few students do too. I can feel the heat of their eyes on me, but all I see is a world bathed in red. Tunnel vision carries me forward, keeps my breath coming out in labored pants, my body wound tight and ready to snap when I find who I’m looking for.
The first two floors of the library are mostly empty. I move quickly, making sure to scan every table and study room before moving on. By now Claudia is either taking the stage or ratting me out to security. They won’t know where to look for me, but it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out.
The third floor is sparser than the first two. Only a handful of desks sit crammed up against the railing beside a smattering of poetry shelves. A sign on the large door at the end of the hall reads Reserved for H. S. III , and I feel my breath catch in my throat.
Behind the door is a room that feels out of place in the modern, sleek library. Antique round tables are spread throughout the room, polished until they’re gleaming. The rows of shelves are made of wood instead of metal, ornate carvings on the corners of each. Even the books sitting on them seem impressive, with gilded spines and enough dust coming off them to know they’re at least a few decades old. Beyond the stacks are glass cases displaying preserved teacups and jewelry and letters, plaques above each item labeling them as pieces of Kingswood history.
Gifted by the Sinclair Family , written on the largest copper plaque.
Right in the center of the room his family helped build is the person who broke my sister.
Hunter’s hunched over a textbook and wearing headphones. He doesn’t hear the click of the door locking behind me, or the creak of a loose floorboard. Or the quiet swing of the switchblade coming unsheathed.
This place, with its glimmering trophies and Gothic buildings and perfect, polished students, ruins people but it’ll never ruin him. Solina tried and wound up dead in the process. He could hurt a thousand girls and never experience the pain he left me with. The pain of knowing I pushed my sister back to the place that broke her.
This place won’t ruin him, but I can.
I dig my fingers into the back of his head, getting a good grip on his hair. He doesn’t even process the touch until I’m slamming his face down onto the table. A satisfying crack echoes in the empty room when he collides with the wood, blood splattering across the notes spread out in front of him.
The left side of his headphones slides below his ear, EDM buzzing beneath the sound of his screams as he scrambles to stop the blood gushing from his nose.
“What the fuck?!” he screams, one hand applying pressure to his swollen nose and the other trying to get a hold on me.
I shove my forearm against the back of his neck to pin him against the table, using my free hand to press the switchblade to his back. “You hurt my sister,” I whisper into his ear.
“Who are you?” he growls as he squirms beneath my hold, trying to get a look at me. Despite the extra height, he doesn’t have the same fight in him that Claudia did.
I don’t bother replying. No point in him knowing my name, my story, my pain, when I’m about to make him feel all of it for himself. I press down lightly against his back, letting the tip of the blade dig through his sweater until it meets skin. Books and papers clatter to the floor as he thrashes against my grip, screaming and shouting like I just stuck the knife straight through his chest.
A thick weight crashes against the side of my torso, knocking the breath out of my lungs and the blade out of my hand as I topple to the floor.
“Stella?” Hunter’s mouth gapes open like a fish out of water as he leaps out of his seat, textbook in hand. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
The knife is just a few inches in front of him. Close enough that I might be able to nudge it over with my foot, assuming he doesn’t notice and try to grab it for himself.
“Her name was Solina,” I spit through gritted teeth, fixing my gaze on the shelves of dusty books behind him because I know I can’t meet his eyes. Subtly, I extend my foot forward until the tip of it rests over the handle of the switchblade. Instead of pulling it back, I hold, waiting to see if he notices.
“What’re you talking about?” he spits as he brushes strands of bloodstained hair out of his face.
“My sister’s name was Solina.” Rage vibrates in each syllable, my body clenching so tightly I’m locked in place, my foot refusing to budge.
Hunter shakes his head in confusion, squinting at me as if that’ll help him see more clearly.
“Wait, so you’re not Ste—”
Whatever he says next is lost as I yank my foot back toward my body and reach for the switchblade. Hunter’s instincts are quick as a cat. Before I can grab the knife, the textbook he’s holding comes crashing against the side of my head. I taste blood on my tongue when my head slams into the legs of a nearby table. My vision blurs, the world spinning off its axis as I spit onto the floor, more blood than saliva. Between his legs I spot the switchblade, kicked off to the opposite side of the room.
“I’m only asking one more time,” Hunter sneers before squatting down in front of me. Thick, dark blood smears his upper lip, stains his teeth. The bridge of his nose is warped, jagged and twisting in an unnatural direction. The blood has already started to clot. His perfect, flawless fa c ade, finally broken. “Who are you?”
Somewhere deep inside me, I find the strength to hold his gaze. Our eyes meet and I put all the things I refuse to say out loud into the force behind my glare. All the pain and the lies and the suffering he’s caused. How he didn’t just hurt me, but Solina, and Izzy, and Poppy, and all the faceless girls on that flash drive.
All I get back is a blank stare.
When I don’t reply, he scoffs. “Fine. You can tell it to the cops.”
He keeps the textbook locked tight in his grip as he backs away slowly, never taking his eyes off me. While his free hand searches the table behind him for his phone, I brace myself to run. Phone in hand, he turns his head for the briefest second to unlock it. Soon as his head is turned, I bolt.
I grab the switchblade off the ground and lunge before Hunter can finish dialing. His arm comes up to block me, the edge of the blade hovering between his eyes. He’s got enough strength in him to throw me back, but his phone clatters to the ground in the process. It’s my turn to kick it aside, sending it flying somewhere in the stacks.
“Bitch,” he mutters, shoving a chair into my chest before taking off after the phone.
The chair lands square between my ribs, knocking me back but not over. In the few seconds I closed my eyes to wince, Hunter disappears. When I open my eyes again, all I’m met with are bloodstained papers and knocked-over chairs.
“What the—”
Before I can finish, a roaring shout comes barreling toward me. Hunter, hidden between the bookshelves behind me. We go toppling onto the ground, the switchblade clattering out of my hand as Hunter attempts to pin me down by the wrists. His fingernails dig into my skin as I try to push him back, finally landing a kick to his abdomen that leaves me with enough wiggle room to get on top of him instead.
The element of surprise only lasts so long. In those few moments of confusion, I grab the switchblade, hold it high over my head, close my eyes, and plunge down into his chest. The primal, guttural scream he lets out doesn’t make me feel alive. The feeling of the knife slicing through skin and muscle and bone isn’t satisfying, just terrifying. There’s no weight off my shoulders, or that sudden clarity I’ve been looking for. The world doesn’t feel any different now that I’ve hurt him. Everything still feels just as hollow.
I crack open one of my eyes, afraid of what I’m going to see. It’s more horrifying than I ever could’ve expected.
Hunter’s hand is folded in front of his face, blood dripping into his open mouth. The stained tip of the blade flickers as he flips his hand over, the switchblade nestled cleanly through the center of his hand. His screams pierce my eardrums, loud enough to make me wince, as he takes in the sight of his hand. No matter how empty the library is, there’s no way someone won’t come looking for us now.
I could end it. Stop the screaming and shut him up for good. All it would take is a nudge, push his hand back against his chest and finish what I started. He wouldn’t even have the strength to fight back. After everything, it’d be so easy. Just one push.
Instead, I double over and retch. Nothing comes up, I don’t have anything left to give, but my body tries its best anyway. I lose my breath to the coughing, to the ache of wanting to expel all the hurt and the anger that’s been sitting in the pit of my stomach since Solina left that night. I come up empty every time.
All this time I thought what I wanted was to make the person who hurt Solina hurt just as bad. Hunter won’t forget a knife going straight through his hand, but that pain will fade eventually. Not like the wound his actions left behind. I don’t have it in me to kill him, like I didn’t have it in me to hurt Claudia. I thought I didn’t care about what comes next, that I’d be fine with living with the consequences of what I’d done so long as it meant whoever hurt Solina was gone. All I really want now is to go home, to forget this ever happened. To hold Tiffany close and tell her I’m sorry.
Before I can go too far down that path of thought, Hunter pushes me back against the ground. My cheek is pressed against a pool of his blood as he holds my head down with his uninjured hand.
That’s one thing that hasn’t changed—his touch still makes me sick.
He straddles my waist, keeping my left arm pinned under his knee. His eyes are dark, wild, and bloodshot as he leans down to whisper against my cheek, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Unlike me, he would really do it.
He leans back, holding his hand up to the light, examining the blade sticking out of it before reaching for the handle. Closes his eyes. Pulls. Another scream rips through the room, followed by the wet squelch of the blade slicing back through him. I’m overwhelmed by the urge to gag again, but I only have a few seconds to figure something out or have him slit my throat. I scan the floor beside me, looking for something I can lob or hit him over the head with, but the scattered books on the ground are all too light to pack a punch. Something silver catches my eye, trapped beneath an open book. I reach for it and pray to a God I don’t believe in that it’s something I can use.
But it’s just Tiffany’s shitty lighter.
The blade springs free from Hunter’s hand with a snap, blood dripping between his trembling fingers. With the knife now in his uninjured hand, he lets out a chilling, desperate laugh before lunging straight for my throat. I flick the trigger on the lighter, hoping for a miracle but expecting nothing, and hold it up in front of my face like a shield.
A flame bursts to life. So small I don’t even feel the heat of it. So small Hunter doesn’t notice it either. Not until the edge of the flame catches on a loose thread on his sweater—the entire sleeve igniting within seconds.
“Shit!” he exclaims, keeping his grip steady on the switchblade as he waves his arm in the air, attempting to put out the fire.
I use the distraction to my advantage, pushing his chest until he topples back against the shelves behind him. The shelves don’t hold up against his weight, toppling over one after the other like dominos. The shelf behind me wobbles unsteadily just as I spot the switchblade on the ground between me and Hunter. I bite my lip, the smell of smoke clogging my throat, before moving out of the shadow of the shelf seconds before it comes crashing down where I just was.
In the mad flurry of limbs and blood and smoke, I didn’t notice that the flames have spread. They move quickly, traveling across the dust-covered books and to the scattered pages on the ground. Within seconds the smoke is thick enough to cloud my vision, the room nothing but a blur as I pull the collar of my coat over my mouth and nose. Overhead a fire alarm begins to blare, but the sprinklers catch before they can release any water. A thin sprinkle comes raining down on us for half a second. All it does is make the flames angrier.
Between coughs I hear Hunter’s calls for help, his voice loud enough that I’m sure he’s only a few feet away. Through the smoke I can just make out the shape of him, still lying on the ground, his legs trapped underneath the fallen bookshelf. Beyond him, the fire spreads across the shelves like a fuse, moving faster than I can keep up with. Overhead the alarm wails in warning, but no sprinklers come to life to hold off the fire. Hunched over, I scan the room for a way out, the entrance lost in the thick, dark smoke.
“Help, please!” Hunter cries out, his voice hoarse.
Over my shoulder, I spot something in the light of the fire alarm’s brief, bright flash. An exit sign. I move as fast as I can toward the door, heat clawing at every strip of exposed skin. Hunter cries out again once I reach the door, an emergency exit to a back stairwell.
“Please, I swear, I didn’t mean to hurt her!” he calls out into the smoke, extending his hand into the darkness.
In the few seconds I stand there, stalled at the door, a dozen images flash before me. The dirty looks Gabe sent my way. Poppy cradling my cheek with anything but tenderness. Claudia pushing my sister because it was all she could think to do. Hunter’s hands on my shoulder, the small of my back, my throat. The bruises on Solina’s.
Suddenly, I’m on that cliffside, watching Solina go tumbling toward the edge. Her hand stretches out toward me, waiting for someone to come along and save her. I think of what I have to lose if I hold out my hand, whether I’ll make it out of here alive if I do. When I open my eyes, she’s gone. All I’m left with is the smoke and the heat and the screaming. I glance over at where Hunter is still trapped on the ground, his body going limp, his voice too quiet to make out over the crackle of burning wood.
And close the door behind me.