Chapter Forty-Six
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
BONNIE
“ Gemma ,” I hiss, wondering how the hell she evaporated like that. “ Gemma! ”
“Could it be door number… one?”
I flinch even though I know he’s not at this door yet.
“Gemma!”
“Hmm…”
I can see his shadow cutting through the light under my door as he walks around my room. I grip the gun tighter, hiding it and the fact that I’m strapped to this drawer behind my back. There’s no stopping him from opening the door, from finding me.
And how the hell did Gemma disappear like that?!
“A bag… Going somewhere, drummer girl?” He chuckles. “Maybe to your friends’ studio? Your guards think they have it covered. They think they have you surrounded. Little mistakes…”
The more he speaks, the clearer I remember him. The more I can see him in that blurry vision, neon strobe lights flickering over his face.
He pauses in front of the closet door. I stiffen, heartbeat thrusting against my eardrums.
“What’s behind door number two?” he asks.
I brace myself, feet set, ready for the fucker to show his face. The knob twists. Motion catches my eye in the shadows.
Gemma.
The door opens wide. Light floods the closet.
And I don’t have a second to completely take in his figure before Gemma lunges out of the darkness.
“Ah— SHIT! ”
An electric pulse zaps Trevor’s neck. Pepper spray hits his eyes. He jerks and grabs his face, stumbling out of the threshold and tripping backward on the boots I left out. Gemma grabs him by the head before he can hit the ground. Hands on his shoulders, her knee meets his face. Her boot strikes his stomach. He doubles over, but she whips him around, straightens him with a squeeze of her fingers in his collar, and delivers a spike-covered blow from her fist to his spine. The crack makes me shudder, and Trevor…
He screams .
Holy shit.
Did she just snap his fucking spine?!
The noise is violent. Ear-splitting. It sends a chill down my spine that doesn’t allow me to look away from the scene. He falls to his knees, then to his stomach. His face is red, eyes bloodshot, tears and snot suddenly shedding uncontrollably down his face.
“ You stupid bitch! ” he sobs. “What did you do?! What did you—”
His legs are limp. He presses his palms to the ground, deplorably digging his nails into my rug as he attempts to crawl away from her.
“Nothing you don’t deserve,” Gemma says, and the tone of her voice seems so far away.
I need to see this.
I take a step out and yank at my secured wrist, opening the drawer as far as I can. It hits something in the underside of the drawer, keeping it from coming out the entire way.
Yank. Pull. Jerk.
I feel like I’m about to drag the entire wall down.
Why won’t this fucking drawer budge?!
“Wait—stop—”
The sound of Trevor’s pleas perks my ears. I turn to see Gemma grab him by his hair and lift his torso off the ground. He grunts and yells, hands flying around hers.
Mother-goddammit-fuck—
There’s a key in the handcuff.
Gemma left the key.
I hear Trevor scream again as I quickly unlock my restraint, and when the cold steel drops away from my wrist, I nearly trip scrambling to run into the next room.
Though, maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to witness this.
Gemma is dragging Trevor by his hair across the straightaway from my bedroom to the living room. The bottom half of his body is flaccid, gliding across the floor. There’s something about her easy, confident stride—one boot effortlessly crossing front of the other—that halts me in my tracks. She isn’t bending, hauling, or appearing as if his muscular form is any weight to her.
I gulp when she eventually stops by the television stand.
He’s still yelling, still blubbering incoherently, when she picks up a pair of my shorts from the floor and balls them into his mouth. The cotton muffles him slightly, allowing her to move him without the constant screeching.
I watch in awe as she unravels the spiked choker from her hand, pulls his arms behind his back, and secures his wrists. She turns him over onto his back with her foot, bends down, and hauls his torso up so that he’s sitting upright against the console.
It’s all I can do to stand in the bedroom doorway and gawk.
Because despite the red eyes, the bloody nose, and the swelling lip, I know.
It’s him.
One look and I can see him in that lumberjack costume at the bar. I can hear him asking me to take a drink. I can see him standing by the wall as they pushed me around their circle. I see him leaning over my own paralyzed body on the floor, hear the mutter of his laugh, his voice telling his friends how much he’s going to think about my lying there again—
Fury laces my veins.
Pain pierces my gut.
I’m in a trance, unable to entirely take a breath as I peer down at the worthless specimen before me.
The girl I was lying on that grimy floor is pounding on my chest. She’s screaming to be set free, to move and speak and shout without a muzzle or restraint, without drugs coursing through her veins that leave her in a void.
This is what it means to feel everything.
This pain… this restless agony… this grief and anger for the girl who couldn’t fight.
None of them deserve my forgiveness or mercy.
Tears streak down Trevor’s face, his head shaking as he tries and fails to speak. I white-knuckle the gun’s handle.
Gemma rips the shorts out of his mouth so viciously that he gags. “Beg,” she says to him
He groans, his head hitting the console. “The hell did you do to me?” he asks. “I can’t feel my fucking legs—”
“Neither could I,” I say.
Gemma’s head twists my way as if she didn’t expect me. Trevor’s lips snap shut, his chest heaving, nostrils flaring.
The words were barely audible for the dryness in my mouth. I clear my throat and sniff back my tears, heartache accelerating as I take a couple of steps forward.
“I couldn’t feel my legs either,” I go on. “I couldn’t feel my arms. I couldn’t feel my hands.”
Trevor doesn’t speak.
“Do you know what I did feel?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer, and I raise the gun.
My entire body begins to tremble. “Do you know what it’s like to scream, yet no one hears you?” I ask deliberately. “Do you know how it feels to tell someone to stop, and they don’t? No…. Stop… Wait…” I stare at him, my head tilting. I’m in a trance, fixated on every breath he struggles to take.
“Did you think you’d walk in here and finish me?” I ask. “Did you think I’d beg you to stop, or were you hoping for a fight to get off to when you left?”
He spits blood from his mouth onto the floor. “You’re just the bait,” he says, eyes drifting to Gemma. “She’s the one we want.”
“Cute,” Gemma says. She squats in front of him. “And now the bait gets to decide how she wants you to die.”
I shift from foot to foot, eyes fluttering at Gemma’s words, as distant as they seem.
“Whatever made you think you deserved my voice?” I ask him. “What made you think it was okay to hurt me?”
Trevor grinds his teeth, obviously choosing his words. “You’re insignificant,” he says. “A whore who needed to learn her place—”
Gemma fist collides with his cheek.
“Ow—fuck—you bitch!” he exclaims. “What does it matter what I call her? I’ll be dead soon anyway, right?”
What does it matter if I hurt her?
What does it matter—
The same words I said to my mother rip through me.
“It fucking matters,” I spit, tear trickling down my cheek. “It matters because I’m not insignificant. I was someone . I didn’t deserve to be assaulted just because you thought no one would care about me after. I didn’t deserve to be raped by the four of you just because I knew how to play drums. He was the one who overdosed on that kit. He lost that job through no one’s fault but his own. He thought he deserved women’s bodies just because he was a musician. No one owes anyone their body. You don’t get to just take something that isn’t yours. And you took… you took me . You snatched my safety away. I shouldn’t have to look over my shoulder to go to the fucking bathroom like I do now.”
Trevor stares blankly. I’d rather him look angry or sad— anything except indifferent.
“Tell me you regret it,” I demand.
His jaw tenses again, gaze moving to the window. I watch his throat bob, and when he looks at me again, there’s a glassiness in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he says, voice sticking. “I regret that I didn’t finish this the other night, so I’d have my money. I regret letting my friends get their dicks inside of you first. I wish I’d come more over your tits than I did. I wish I’d choked you. I wish I’d videoed how much of a fucking pathetic slut you—”
Crack .
Trevor’s words die mid-sentence, his life evaporating with it.
Gemma is standing halfway behind him. She’s taking her hands off of his now drooping head—his neck snapped.
It’s over within a blink.
Trevor is dead.
And Gemma just killed him with her bare fucking hands.
I lose it.
The gun hits the ground. I double over, breaking and shuddering as the noise of his neck snapping echoes over and over in my ears.
“Whoa—Shh… shh… I have you, Bonnie.”
Gemma catches me as I start to fall forward. Her arms loop around me. She pulls me into her lap and braces her hand on my cheek. I can’t push her away.
Crack .
“Hey—hey, hey, Bonnie. Look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at me—look— Bonnie! ”
My mouth closes, eyes jerking to hers. Her chest falls as she strokes my cheek, jaw trembling. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I have you. I have you. Don’t look at him.”
I throw my arms around her neck without thinking and hug her close as the adrenaline of what just happened surges through me.
I have you.
I have you.
“It’s okay. Breathe for me, Bon,” she says. “Breathe. We have to get out of here.”
I pull back again, eyes darting to her lips as her thumb smudges another tear. I don’t know what she’s saying. Her mouth is moving. Her instruction is an echo. A quaking breath leaves me, my mouth opening and closing an inch from hers. She presses both of her hands to my cheeks this time, thumb sneaking beneath my jaw to tilt my head back.
“Are you okay?” I finally hear her ask.
I swallow. “No,” I manage.
Gemma’s tongue swipes across her lips. “Okay,” she says with a heavy sigh. “Can you walk?”
“I…”
Gemma shifts and offers me her hands. “Stand up. Do not look behind you. Okay? Eyes on me.”
She grabs the gun from the ground and shoves it in the back of her pants. I do as she says—keeping my eyes on her as much as I can because the last fucking thing I want to see right now is the dead body in my living room.
I barely recall her grabbing my bag, Zeb’s hoodie over the back of the barstool, or my phone.
I’m in a daze as she takes my hand and drags me into the hallway, only pausing to lock the door behind us.
“Baby, put these on,” she says, handing me a pair of sneakers.
However, I’m staring at the next door down from me.
He was living there the entire time.
He was right there.
Right there.
And now, he’s—
“ Bonnie .”
I blink back to the present, at Gemma shoving sneakers into my hands. Her tone takes me aback. It splashes reality on my face.
I have you.
And I’m once again reminded of who she really is.
I snatch the sneakers out of her hands and shove them on my feet, glaring at her the whole time.
“When were you going to tell me you were so casual about mur—” I quickly look around us. “ Murder! ” I mouth.
“That’s not what that was,” she says, pulling her hood up. “That was doing society a favor.”
“And how many other favors have you taken care of?”
She doesn’t answer as she stretches out the neck of the hoodie that was just draped over her arm, then holds it up to pull over my head. I don’t hesitate to bow my head and allow her to put the hoodie on, even taking advantage of her holding out the arms to help me get dressed.
“I don’t think you want the answer to that,” she eventually says, her eyes moving down the hall. “Not tonight.”
“No? When then?” I ask as I straighten the hem. Gemma tucks my hair back and pulls the hood up over my head. She steps back to look me over, and as she does, her eyes darken, creating a squirming pit in my stomach that is only making my anger at her more and more feral.
“Was anyone coming by today?” she asks.
“Just you,” I snap.
Because she isn’t distracting me that easily—no matter how much I’d love for her to shut up my rambling right now.
“What other secrets are you hiding?” I ask, ignoring her darkened gaze. “What else are you—”
The elevator dings. Gemma’s eyes widen toward it. I don’t know what or who she’s expecting, but she takes my hand and pulls me in the opposite direction.
I can’t get my thoughts straight. I’m angry, relieved, scared, aroused. She’s keeping her cool through this, checking on me every few seconds, making sure I’m not about trip over my own shoelaces or collapse with the fact that we’re running down the stairwell after very randomly murdering one of the guys who attacked me.
After telling me that she’s my stalker.
The pressure of her hand on mine doesn’t make me want to pull away. It makes me want to curl into her grasp. I’m running on pure adrenaline. I know I’m not thinking straight. I know to protect me my mind is making up what it has to.
But I’m pretty sure Gemma Thomas is the reason I’m alive.
I can feel the realization dilate my blood vessels and massage my anxiety.
Fuck the noise.
Fuck how angry I am at her, for the betrayal swarming through me.
Fuck all of that.
I need her.
At the next landing, I tug on her hand. She turns with narrowed eyes, obvious concern in her features. She opens her mouth to speak, but I yank her into me, press my hands to her cheeks, and kiss her hard.
The moment our lips meet, her panic dissipates. She shoves me into the wall without hesitation. I’m pinned against her, my mind numbing by the millisecond. And when she grabs me by the throat, I surrender.
Oh fuck, yes .
Rage and adrenaline pulses through us both. The kiss is feral and angry, desperate and terrified. Gemma hikes my leg around her waist, nails clawing at my thigh. We’re everywhere all at once. Scratching. Squeezing. Groping. Stroking. It’s harsh and wild. Every nip and bite and scrape is rougher than the last. We’re one fucked up, toxic mass of shit created to feed on one another’s fears, made to heal the worst parts of each other.
Made to take on the world hand-in-hand.
She kisses the corner of my lip, my jaw, my throat—each one leaving little nips behind that make my mouth sag, my body roll. Fuck, Gemma .
It’s her.
It’s always been her.
It’s always been her.
“I’m so fucking pissed at you right now,” I manage, mouth open against her cheek, reluctant whimpers leaving me that I have no control over. “You lied to me. You pretended to be jealous of her.”
She squeezes my thigh so hard I feel the skin break beneath her nail. “I was jealous,” she says before drawing my skin into her mouth. “I was jealous of the way you thought about her. The hold she had on you that I never would.”
“I bet you were gleeful when I said your name the other night, then,” I say, and I feel her lips curl against my throat, her other hand kneading my ass in the most cataclysmic way.
“Ecstatic,” she breathes. She kisses up my jaw until she reaches my lips, her tongue parting them with ease.
Shit, this is numbing.
“I told you I was hurting you,” she rasps.
“ Hurt me harder ,” I whisper.
I want her to destroy me.
I don’t need her to beg on her knees or plead her case. I don’t need her to tell me how sorry she is for betraying me or to beseech my forgiveness. I don’t need to see her tears or hear how she regrets it. I don’t want her to regret anything we’ve been through.
I want to hear how she loved every second she was hurting me, how she clung to the satisfying way it ripped her to shreds to see me in that pain. How each time we were together, she was falling for me as hard as I was falling for her. That in the shadows, she savored my cries, collected my tears, even celebrated my pain…
I want to know how she plans on making up for the time we could have had this sick, twisted, fucked up thing we are together.
And I want to know how she’s going to make sure it never stops.
She kisses me again, engulfing my soul entirely with her fervor, and when we part, I lean forward in an anguished attempt to kiss her again.
“We have to get to my place,” she says.
Fuck .
“This isn’t over,” I tell her. “When we get to that apartment…” I carefully pull the gun out of the back of her pants and press it to the soft space under her jaw, making her eyes flutter.
“Bonnie.”
“I’m not done with you…” I lean forward, tongue dragging across her cheek. “And I get to keep the gun until I’ve decided if I forgive you or not,” I say in her ear.
Gemma visibly quivers, temple brushing against mine. “That might take a while once you hear everything.”
“Really? Why? Are there so many bodies that—”
She encloses her hand over my mouth, head tilting in a warning manner. “Shh…” she says, chin hitting her shoulder.
There’s movement on the stairwell above us. I don’t know what she’s thinking. Are there are more people involved in this than just the ones who attacked me?
“Give me the gun,” she says quietly. “I will give it back to you the moment we get to my apartment, and you can continue punishing me the way you need to. But seeing as we need to get to the elevator of the other building right now, and that means going through the lobby , I need you to give me the gun.”
I chew on my tongue. “I’m not done with you,” I say, reluctantly handing it over.
She huffs, lips flinching upward at the corners. “I hope not,” she says as she hides it somewhere under her hoodie. “Nonetheless, there’s nowhere to hide a gun in these tiny ass shorts,” she adds, grabbing my ass.
I gasp, the force jerking me to my toes, and when she places a lingering kiss on my jaw, it takes all of my strength to comply with her words and not fuck her in this hall.
“Let’s go.”