Chapter 9 Confession 18
? Arden ?
A scream ripped from me. The hallway tilted.
The world lost its edges. One second Thorne was there as unmovable as gravity, and the next there was red spreading beneath my hands and the sick, impossible realization that my palms were pressed where his chest was permanently still.
I remember thinking, absurdly, that I’d done something wrong.
That if I pressed harder, if I said the right thing, the moment would rewind and fix itself.
I shoved the door open, stepped inside and everything in me went very, very still. Rafe covered the hall beyond, and I hated how small I immediately felt, how exposed. I swallowed hard, my jaw locking as I slowly swung the gun around, hearing the shift in the corner.
Halden sat in the same chair he used to when he watched Buyers rape me, casual as he smoked his cigar. His eyes were dull and dark as he looked me over clinically, cataloging what his asset had become. “I thought that was you under all that makeup,” he said.
Maybe I should’ve dragged it out, made a bigger deal of it, savored the moment, but I still had Thorne’s blood tacked under my nails, drying around my wrists, and—I screeched and rushed him, taking him to the ground, my fist slamming into his mouth. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
He started laughing.
Thorne.
Tears burned hot and immediate, my throat tearing open as I screamed again, the sound scraping out of me as my fists came down over and over and over on Halden’s face, skin giving, bone shifting.
I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. My hands moved like they weren’t mine anymore, like I’d finally been reduced to the most honest version of myself, snot dripping down my lip, blood slicking my knuckles, my vision tunneling until all that existed was impact and noise and the echoing truth beating against the inside of my skull: Thorne is dead. Thorne is dead. Thorne is dead.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I swear I heard a gun go off, a sharp, concussive bang that didn’t come from the room but from inside my head, like something misfired behind my eyes, and for a split second I was certain that was it, that I’d feel the bullet tear through me and everything would go white and merciful.
But the pain never came. Instead the world began to tilt, angles sliding out of place, the floor drifting too far away, my body suddenly heavy and distant, like it was being gently disconnected from me piece by piece.
My fingers fumbled until they found my lighter by muscle memory alone, the small click of the flame sounding enormous in the silence that followed, and I lit Halden’s tie.
Stay awake, I begged myself dimly, because watching him burn felt like the only anchor left to me, the only proof that time was still moving forward.
Fire took him fast, his body catching like it had been waiting for it, flames racing greedily over fabric and flesh, and the smell hit me next, melted skin curling as I slid down the opposite wall, my knees giving out.
My thoughts slowed to a syrupy drag, images bleeding into one another without order or logic, and somewhere beyond the crackle of fire and the ringing in my good ear, I swear I heard Thorne’s voice, not as memory but as presence, knocking from the other side of Death, calling out to me the way he always did when I drifted too far.
You’re okay, little flame. I got you. The words looped and echoed, and I pressed my head back against the wall, eyes glassy, body slack.
Distantly, I felt the bomb detonate, but I didn’t care. I preferred the edge of death now. It was the closest I could get to Thorne.