Chapter Forty-Five
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
BONNIE
It’s her.
It’s her .
“Bonnie—”
“Do not come any closer to me,” I snap, hands jerking. “Don’t you fucking… Don’t touch me. How could—it was you! ”
I’m shaking, numb with rage, with fear, with so much fucking pain .
It’s her.
It’s always been her.
“Bonnie, I can explain,” Gemma begs.
“I thought I was the shitty person here,” I cry. “I thought our relationship was a me problem. I thought I was the fucked up one, the one who didn’t deserve you. All this time… All this time— ”
“I know you’re angry—”
“Oh, yeah, you think?!” I ask, gun waving.
“Please stop waving the gun,” she says. “We have to get out of this room. We can talk about this at my place—”
“I trusted you.”
I can’t latch onto anything she’s saying. I can’t comprehend what she’s talking about.
“I thought you were a good person. I thought you were someone I could confide in,” I go on.
“I am someone you can trust, but I never claimed to be a good person,” Gemma argues.
“No, you just led me on. You used me to your benefit.”
“I never used you,” she almost shouts. “We can talk about this at my place. Please, Bonnie. We have to go! ”
“No, I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not… All this time, it was you. You were in my room. You were touching me—oh my god, you fucking touched me .”
My stomach bottoms out at the realization.
“Bonnie, please .”
“No, you don’t get to beg,” I say, my rage starting to break. “You don’t get to make excuses.”
I can hardly breathe for the racing thoughts, for every memory pouring out, every realization that it wasn’t just some stranger.
It was her.
God, it was her .
“It was you at the club,” I say. “You in my hotel rooms. You at the studio, sending me messages, pretending you knew nothing about the phone calls, the texts, the… You made me relive all of that shit,” I register.
Her chest sinks. “Bonnie, I couldn’t… How was I supposed to tell you?” she asks. “ When was I supposed to tell you?”
“I don’t know, maybe when the first call came in?” I say, recalling how terrified I was… how I wondered if my stalker was just as scared. “I needed you. You were the only person who was there that night. There was something… if I had known—”
“You would have hated me anyway,” she says.
My chest begins to fall, except then I remember another incident that had me just as scared.
“You sent me that girl’s fingernails ,” I say, jerking the gun at her face again.
Gemma’s eyes narrow as if that single sentence took her from pleading to rage. Her arms drop to her waist, feet shifting.
“If you only knew half of the shit I’ve done to keep you safe, Bonnie Miller,” she says in a slow, dangerous voice. “Every time someone tried to get to you, the things I’ve done even recently with your assailants… Yeah, I sent you her fingernails. She drugged you. She drugged you and tried to get you to leave with her while you couldn’t even fucking walk straight enough to get out of the goddamn bar,” she goes on, voice rising. “She could have been kidnapping you for all I knew. I was the one who carried you out of there. I was the one who got you safely back on your bus. That woman is lucky I didn’t cut her fucking throat like all the others.”
I pause at the claim, my throat dry. I’m wracking my brain trying to remember more than glimpses of that night. Yet, just like so many nights that year, I can’t.
Wait .
“Others?” I ask hesitantly.
Her lashes lift, our eyes meet, and I cave at the look in them.
“Never mind, I don’t want to know,” I manage. “That girl didn’t drug me. You’re lying. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gemma gawks. “You know she did,” she argues. “I sent you her fingernails in the hopes it would scare you enough that you’d think twice, maybe even stop, that you’d be so terrified of what I might do next that you’d—”
“That I’d what? ” I say through repressed tears. “That I’d leave the tour? Stop finding joy in—”
“ The bottom of a fucking bottle ,” Gemma practically growls.
My mouth snaps closed, nostrils flaring. “You don’t get to throw that in my fucking face,” I snap.
“No, right now, I don’t want to throw anything in your face because we have to go ,” she says, grabbing my bag. “You can scream. Yell. Shout. Hit me. Hate me. I don’t care. As long as you do it out of this room.”
“No,” I argue.
“Bonnie, we will do this the hard way if we need to,” she warns.
“Really? What, are you going to chloroform me? Pick me up? Carry me out of here? Tell people I passed out?”
Gemma’s brow lifts, and I realize that’s exactly what she would do.
My expression falters, eyes squinting. “ Seriously?! Who are you right now?”
“I’m still me,” she says.
“Are you sure? Because you don’t—”
“I will do whatever I have to do to keep you safe,” she interjects. “And right now, that means getting you out of this apartment before—”
Three knocks sound on the door.
My heart drops, head simultaneously whipping toward the noise.
“Fuck.” Gemma grabs my hand without waiting for a reply and practically throws us into the walk-in closet. I stumble slightly when she closes the door.
“What, are we going to hide?” I ask, voice on edge. “How do you know it’s them? It could be anyone.”
She quickly flips the light switch down, leaving only the glare from the windows across my bedroom to illuminate a fraction of the space under the door. I open my mouth to protest again and demand she answer me, but she whips her phone out. The screen light flares across our faces. She taps on a couple of apps and icons, then presses her ear against the door as she peers down at what appears to be a camera feed.
“ You have a camera in my hallway? !” I realize.
Gemma scoffs. “You’re in for a big surprise once we get to my apartment,” she mumbles, zooming in.
“Is that band-issued protection or special for me?”
“Which would you prefer?”
“Do you have a whole stalker wall of monitors with cameras watching me?” I ask.
Gemma’s eyes roll in my direction. She gives me a look, and my gaze narrows.
I wrap my arms around my chest and purse my lips at her. “Here I thought you might be original,” I say sarcastically.
“And I thought you’d be smart enough to listen to me when I said your life is in danger, we have to go, and yet… here we are. Hiding in a closet while your assailant knocks on the door like he’s Mr. Nice Guy just here to borrow a cup of sugar.”
I glare and step as closely as I can to her without touching her arm, and when I see the person on the screen, I huff.
“That’s just my neighbor,” I say, recognizing him. “Trevor… something. He was a creep the other day, but—”
“He spoke to you?” Gemma interjects, her eyes wide.
I back up a fraction, wary of her tone. “Ah… yeah. It was—” Shit, when was that? “I don’t know, a week ago? Two weeks? He invited me over for a poker game.”
“And you didn’t tell me because…”
My face hardens. “Because he’s just my neighbor,” I snap. “Was I supposed to tell you about every encounter ever? What about your team? Why is he a surprise? Didn’t you guys do background checks on the people in this building? Why are you being weird?”
“That’s not the person on the lease,” she argues. “Bonnie, that isn’t just some innocent asshole.”
I shake my head and make for the closet door because I don’t know how many more of her lies I can take. “I’m just going to tell him to kick rocks—what the hell?”
She braces herself in front of the door as I reach for the handle, and I shudder at the darkness in her eyes.
“What?” I repeat.
Her chest falls. “He isn’t just your fucking neighbor,” she seethes. “He’s friends with Rad. He’s one of the guys who raped you on Halloween. And I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s the person who attacked you at Radio Eleven.”
I think my feet are on the ceiling.
I stiffen, sure that I didn’t hear her right. “What?” I ask in disbelief. “ What?! Are you—are fucking kidding me right now? That guy?! ”
However, Gemma is barely paying me any attention. She’s peering around my closet as if she’s looking for something, her gaze finally snagging on my accessories drawers.
“Fucking figures he would talk to you,” she mumbles as she opens them and grabs out some of my spiked bracelets. “Asshole. Just like Rad. I swear they were spawned from the same rotting garbage heap—Where is your stun gun? Pepper spray?”
That’s the second time she’s mentioned Rad in the last minute, and I catch it.
“Bottom drawer under the mirror—What the fuck does this have to do with Rad?” I ask, confused. “Why do you keep saying his name?”
Her wide eyes soften into what I can only describe as panic and fear, and I like it even less than her previous expression.
“You don’t… Shit .”
“I don’t what?” I ask as my heart begins to throb against my eardrums. “What else don’t I know?”
She pauses as if she doesn’t want to tell me. The seconds she’s silent curdles my insides.
I tighten my fist around the gun and lift it once again in her direction.
“Tell me what Rad has to do with all of this,” I warn past the lump back in my throat.
Tell me why there’s sudden dread in the pit of my stomach.
Tell me why the picture in my head is getting clearer, why the voice is starting to sound like his.
Her tongue swipes over her lips, and she sets the phone and the spike bracelets on the shelf. “Rad was there that night. On Halloween,” she says slowly, eyes meeting mine. “He was in the blue gamer mask. He’s friends with Trevor, Lance, and Patrick. He’s one of the four who…”
Say it.
Just say it.
She hesitates. I swallow as the images begin seeping in, the sound of his voice, the blond of his hair… And as tears prick the corners of my eyes, I cock the gun back because I don’t know what the hell else to do.
Gemma flinches, hands raising at her sides again.
“ Say it ,” I hiss through clenched teeth, my heart firing rapidly. “Say what he did to me.”
The video of Trevor finally getting his knife properly into the lock is nothing more than a blur by Gemma’s head. There’s only Gemma and I in this room, in this universe. Only us and the few words I need her to say out loud.
Saying it aloud makes it real.
Speaking it gives me back a fraction of the power I lost.
Because if I know…
“Bonnie, Rad raped you.”
The front door rips open.
I don’t have time to take in the information, to discern the chill cracking down my spine. I don’t have a second to even out my rising blood pressure or think straight.
Rad…
A cry hiccups in my throat. My knees give as if the weight suddenly became too much. Gemma rushes across the space. Her arm loops under my ass just in time to help me stay upright instead of crashing on the ground, her other hand going across my mouth.
“Knock, knock… Anyone home?”
There’s a knot in the pit of my stomach that feels like it’s going to rip me in half. His voice triggers and sharpens memories I’ve buried, memories I blocked against myself.
Just like the other night, I can see myself lying on the floor of the nightclub again. The faces of my attackers are clearing, the haze that had always been there now dissipating.
“We’ll make you feel good—”
The pressure of Gemma’s thumb swiping a tear from under my eye makes me blink. I’m thrust back into the present with her, pressed against the closet shelving in the dark as Trevor enters my apartment.
“Come out, come out, little fairy,” I hear him say.
My body quakes at the sound, reacting viscerally. Gemma shakes her head slightly, pleading with me to stay quiet. She keeps her hand over my mouth, her arm around my waist.
“I know you’re still here,” he goes on. “Is your friend here, too?”
My fingers curl around my gun. Tears swell in my eyes. A rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt pierces the fear daring to surface. I’m trembling, breath rattling against her palm.
“I have you,” Gemma breathes, the noise barely audible despite the stiffness in the room. “Let me handle this.”
I move my head a fraction, displaying my resistance. Her jaw ticks, and she slowly releases my mouth.
“I want him dead,” I hiss.
“I know, baby.” Gemma leans in. I’m taken aback when her lips press softly to mine, yet for a beat, I forget I’m supposed to be pissed at her. My heart sinks to my knees. My mind goes entirely blank. Maybe we die together in this embrace. Maybe the outside world can’t get to us here—
Cold steel clicks around my wrist.
My eyes snap open. I jerk my arm, causing the drawer I’m suddenly handcuffed to hit me in the ass.
Son of a bitch.
Sneaky little—
“I hate you,” I say through clenched teeth.
“You can keep the gun,” she whispers before stepping out of my grasp.
I glare as she pushes the spiked bracelets around her wrists, the chokers wrapping around her knuckles.
“I should shoot you with it,” I grunt quietly.
“Are you hiding from me?” I can hear Trevor asking, his voice amused. “I just want to talk.”
Still, I’m more pissed at Gemma for wanting to keep me out of this.
“You can shoot me if you still want to when we get out of here,” she whispers, entering my space again.
She leans in and kisses my jaw, and it prompts the memory of every other time she’s kissed me in the exact same taunting manner. I pathetically lean into it, unable to stop myself no matter how pissed I am at her. I am mad at her. I’m so fucking angry . There were so many times she could have told me who she was, all the tears we shared, the touches, the kisses, the ease and vulnerability between us…
I can’t let it go.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” I hear Trevor say.
She catches my cheek with her hand. The spikes graze my skin, and I suck in a breath as our eyes meet.
“I love you, Bonnie Miller,” she whispers.
And I’m a goddamn wreck at the declaration.
“I’ve always loved you,” she goes on. “You make me the worst and best version of myself all at once. And I have zero intention of ever letting you go.”
“Sounds like I need a restraining order,” I hiss.
She huffs, the corner of her lip flickering upward. “Go ahead. You can watch as I set it on fire.”
My teeth set, nostrils flaring. I don’t like that she’s saying this now. She could have waited until we were safe somewhere, not right before she’s going to throw herself into danger to protect me.
“You don’t get to tell me you love me as if you might not get the chance to say it again, then run out to take on some asshole,” I say with a nod to the door. “I’m not done being mad at you.”
“Then there’s my incentive to live a little longer.” She kisses my forehead this time, and when she steps out of my grasp and disappears into the darkness, I shudder at the way the ringing silence swells around me.
“Hm… if I was a stupid little woman… where might I hide…”
My insides flip, reality slowly setting in.
He’s in my apartment.
There’s a rapist in my apartment.