37. Sydney
thirty-seven
sydney
I don’t think—I just run.
I’m so glad I shed my jacket while watching them play, because it would just slow me down. Same with my bag, left on the seat beside me. It can be found later, if at all. If I’m still breathing.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is moving faster. I scramble up and over one of the rows, then another, putting some distance between me and the masked man.
Bear took his mask with him.
Bear knows how to get in here.
Of course Oliver would put me in this position. He told me to wait, but he’s probably showering or taking his sweet time getting dressed. If Bear was watching any of us, he would’ve seen me enter.
I reach the end of a section and rush up the stairs, taking them two at a time, then three. At the top, I risk a quick glance behind me.
He’s coming, but not as fast. Like he’s content to terrify me first.
My chest is so tight, I can’t get in a good inhale. My lungs burn. I nearly fall as soon as my feet touch the polished floors outside the ramp to the section. All the concession stands are dark, their metal grates pulled down across the fronts. It leaves me nowhere to hide.
I sprint.
A laugh floats after me, and fear slides down my spine. I reach the exit doors. There are three sets of double doors, all metal, and I slam into the first one, compressing the metal bar. My whole body rattles with the impact as the door doesn’t even budge .
“No, no, no.” I go to the next with the same result. The third set is the same. That’s not even fucking legal .
Which means it’s a setup.
Footsteps squeak on the linoleum, and I spin around.
He’s coming at me almost lazily, his hands in his pockets. There’s no part of his skin that’s visible, but my mind can’t seem to comprehend anything other than the mask.
I know what it feels like close up. The hot breath that comes out of that smile.
I keep running, this time looking for the door back down to the locker rooms. But the glass doors that go down there are locked, too. I only spend a minute trying to get them open before I move on.
Run faster .
I push myself and fly around a corner, coming up on the main entrance. There’s no way these doors are locked.
I slam into someone.
Hands grab at me, and I look up into the fucking bloody clown mask.
I scream and launch myself backward, falling on my ass. I scuttle away and hop back to my feet. Tears burn the backs of my eyes at how stupid this is. That I can’t seem to find my way out of a paper bag, that everything has been set like a perfect trap to close me in.
Footsteps again, following me at a steady pace that grinds in my ears. It’s a message. I’m the prey, and there’s no way out.
My capture is inevitable.
I veer up a section’s ramp and take the stairs down, darting through a row and stopping.
At least here, I can see . My stomach rolls, threatening to heave, and I force myself to take long, slow breaths. I brush my hair out of my face.
He appears at the top of my section and comes down the steps.
Those tears that were burning before prick at my eyes. My vision blurs, and I furiously blink them away. I turn to run and fucking slip .
I go down hard, my forearms catching me before my face slams into the concrete steps. My shoelace is undone. I roll on my back and grip the seat, but it’s too late.
He’s on me.
I scream when he grabs my ankle. He drags me into him, kneeling and pinning my leg between the back of a seat—the next row down’s seat—and forces my other up. I’m wearing leggings. Comfortable leggings that suddenly seem like a terrible idea, because there’s nothing. No protection, no dulling of sensation.
I’m on my period . I want to yell it at him, but I can’t.
Every touch, his fingers digging into my legs, the way he positions me and bats away my hands with his gloved ones, sends spikes of terror through me.
My voice doesn’t work.
The last time I pleaded, he wrapped a rope around my neck and laughed as I barely clung to consciousness. I push at his hands, try to slap and strike him, but he doesn’t even react besides to dodge the ones that could hurt him. He lets the blows to his arms and legs mean nothing, but when I sit up and reach for his mask, he grips my throat with surprising speed.
He shoves me flat, leaning over me.
The eyes on the mask are black and soulless. I can’t look at them. This mask has had a starring role in my nightmares, and I’m petrified into sudden stillness.
He undoes his pants with one hand.
I can’t watch. My gaze floats to the ceiling.
He didn’t get this far last time.
No words will come out. It’s like he stole my voice, and as much as I try to scream or speak—there’s nothing but a vague whistling exhale.
My throat aches from the inside out, reminding me of the trauma. At the bruises that are finally fading, leaving just a few easy-to-hide splotches behind.
Will I fight him after?
When his guard drops?
I miss him pull a knife.
There’s a bite of pain at the inside of my thigh, and I cry out. The rip that follows?—
Oh God, he didn’t even try to pull the leggings down. He just made himself an entrance. Something cold and sharp touches my pussy. I flinch, but he doesn’t rip the crotch of my panties. No—he tugs at the string of my tampon, though. He huffs when it slides out, dropping it beside his knee.
He knows. He knows and he doesn’t care.
My eyes won’t fucking close, but I refuse to look at him. I refuse to give him that satisfaction. Instead, I count the pipes twisting along the ceiling, the wires that go to the screens over the ice.
He puts himself at my entrance, his fingers spreading my lips. He grunts again when he lines up, and his fingers on my throat tighten.
When he leans over me, blocking my view of the ceiling, I focus on the underside of the chairs. At my hand next to my face, which doesn’t even twitch. My fingers aren’t curled into a fist. They’re limp.
Am I already dead?
He drags his mask along my jaw, and it may as well be a dagger flaying me open.
I sink down into myself, willing myself to make a quick retreat. To pull back the feeling between my legs, to ball my emotions up in a tight ball. I used to do this while afraid and alone, crying in the dead of night for my mother to return. When I knew that there was no way I could go to school with a puffy, tearstained face and bloodshot eyes.
He moves. Sinks a little into me. Just as he calls, “Where’d your fight go, doll?”
My concentration breaks, thrusting me right back into the present. My skin erupts in chills at the name. And the voice. And the fucking recognition.
Oliver.
His name releases some of the fear. I reach for his mask again, but his fingers tighten around my throat. I hadn’t even realized he was still holding it. But with my breath cut off, my eyes go wide.
His cock withdraws, then slides back in.
The period blood makes it easier.
His dark chuckle rumbles through his chest, and his fingers tighten more. I forget reaching for the mask and grip his wrist with both hands.
He has his other braced on the floor next to my head. All leverage. He pulls out and slams into me. My groan is cut off at my throat. I’m desperate for air, but he seems content to fuck me like this. His hips move, slapping against mine with every quick punch.
The lack of air becomes too much.
My eyes roll back.
Immediately, his fingers loosen. I surge back into awareness, and he rolls his hips.
He made me think I was going to get raped.
I still can’t look at the mask. I don’t know where his attention is, but he makes little noises every time he slides into me. His movements get jerkier the closer he gets to climax. He picks up speed and suddenly stops. His hips move slower, his body tensing.
After a long moment, he sits back on his heels. His hands go to his thighs, and the lack of touch allows me to breathe again.
I rise on my elbows and look at the damage to my leggings. There’s no fucking way I’m walking out of here like this. The hole is the size of a fucking dinner plate, and my panties—without the tampon, there’s nothing stopping the blood from spotting the thin strip of fabric. Soon enough, it’ll soak through.
The roller coaster of emotions that I just went through fucks with my head. I drop back down and cover my face with my hands. I will the heels of my palms to catch the sudden flood of tears. They don’t .
He’s still wearing the mask, and I… I go back to that numb place.
He runs a finger from my entrance up to my clit.
I ignore it. Him . My voice is still absent. I don’t trust myself to speak, because I’m barely holding on as it is. I can’t tell him to stop with my words.
Aren’t my actions enough?
The way he’s kneeling, my legs are still pinned open. The breath I draw in is shaky, as is the one I blow out. Everything inside me is quaking, my axis shifting and trying to orient with a new truth.
Not Bear.
Oliver.
He dips his fingers in me and then goes back to my clit, over and over until he finally stays where I would need it. If I was going to come, which I’m not.
I’m not turned on, I’m not going to orgasm.
I can’t even fucking look at him. Or anything. I won’t remove my hands until it’s safe, and there’s no safety here.
The hardest pill to swallow is that it’s my fault. I told Carter what had happened, yeah, but I also told him Oliver was to blame. Do I blame Oliver? To a degree. Do I think he told Andi to do it? Not so much. But Carter doesn’t see shades of gray—he sees right and wrong.
And that was wrong .
He’s still touching me.
It needs to stop.
I shift, trying to escape his fingers, but his other hand presses down on my abdomen. He doesn’t let me escape until I’m squirming for another reason.
“Don’t.” I thought my voice had abandoned me for good, but it comes out as a rasp now. “Just stop…”
He doesn’t.
Listening doesn’t seem to be his fucking strong suit today.
He drags it out of me slowly, the pulse of pleasure ugly as it winds through me. My back arches, trying to escape his touch, but he keeps me still. A finger goes inside me, and my muscles clench at it.
Everything hurts. I let out a low whine through my teeth.
The orgasm finally releases me, and I sag to the floor. He inches backward.
I lower my hands from my face.
Oliver’s mask is pushed up, revealing his face. His fucking blank expression. My anger is a simple flutter in my chest. I can’t summon more than a whisper of it.
Disbelief, maybe.
Horror that he’s so… he doesn’t care .
When he shifts back farther, allowing me to close my legs, I lash out. My foot slams into his chest, knocking him away.
I scramble backward until I hit something else.
“Easy, princess.” Hands catch me under my arms. Penn doesn’t lift me or make me stand. It’s more to steady me and stop my backward movement. “You got him.”
Oliver coughs.
“Don’t touch me.” I slap at Penn until he lets go, and I stand on wobbling legs. I whip around to face him and pale.
He has a mask on top of his head, too, and reality clicks into place.
“You stopped me from leaving through the main doors,” I accuse.
Betrayal .
I shove past him and rush up the stairs, saying a small prayer that this place is still empty. I get back to the section where I left my stuff. I shrug on my coat, which thankfully hits me at mid-thigh. Even though it covers me completely, I may as well be fucking naked from the waist down.
The drip of blood and cum out of me, smearing my upper thighs with every step, turns my stomach.
“I’m following you,” Penn announces when I’m back in the public hallway.
I walk briskly back to the main entrances, and I barely spare him a glance. Or rather, a look of utter disgust. Stopping just shy of the glass doors, I wheel around and jab my finger at him. “If either of you shows your face at my apartment, I’m going to cut off your balls and feed them to stray cats.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
I slam out the door without seeing another glimpse of Oliver.
Which is good, because I have a feeling he’s going to be starring in my nightmares next.