Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
The truck rumbles beneath me, rattling my most recent injuries. They’d sure been thorough in pushing my body to its limits as punishment for killing their friend. This bench hurts, my voice a scratchy shadow of what it should be. If nothing’s broken it will be a miracle.
The knowledge that we are heading to another location should be terrifying but at this point it barely registers. The novelty of horror has worn off. Now that it’s expected, the fear feels flimsy. It’s just what life has become.
All I can think about is Bo, forcing myself to picture the moment over and over on repeat. His face, those beautiful eyes widening as he realized he’s been shot. One of the only people who has ever cared for me, and there was nothing I could do to save him.
This pain is crushing. Part of me wishes the man sitting across from me in the back of this old truck would raise his gun and shoot me right between the eyes.
Bo should never have even been here and my hatred for Eric multiplies for ruining both Bo’s childhood and now stealing his adulthood as well.
It should have been me.
Tears might be falling, my vision blurring, but my skin feels numb. My hands are cuffed to a metal bar jutting out from the side of the truck so I couldn’t wipe them if I wanted.
“Thinking about your friend?” the stranger asks. His mask covers everything but his eyes but I see the smile in them still. His words are meant to aggravate my loss.
A rifle is slung across his chest and I hate that men like him have found a corner of the world where they can live out their worst desires.
Every single guard I’ve crossed paths with is a worthless man, hellbent on hurting people weaker than them to make themselves feel superior.
Guarding a place of horrors so that their own sick pleasures could continue.
Just one fucking monster after the next, so many that it makes you wonder if anyone good remains.
How many men do we come across during our lives without knowing that they are predators? Smiling in our faces and wishing they could take what they want from our bodies. I’ve been married to one and believed in the mask he wore undoubtedly.
But it really, truly pisses me off that he dares bring up Bo, who is ten times the man he will ever amount to.
“He said he’ll kill you all. I can't wait to watch,” I say listlessly.
“Unlikely, considering the shape he was in when I last saw him.” He smirks and a flash of fury sends my foot shooting up into his balls. An easy target to reach since he insisted on sitting there with his legs splayed, oozing confidence that he shouldn’t have and will never deserve.
He grunts, folding over and his pain makes me smile until he leans up and backhands me across the face. I barely feel it though and claim victory in my head when he scoots a little farther down the bench, out of my reach.
Another location. My hope at Noah being able to save us dwindles, especially if they continue to shuffle us around endlessly.
Part of me feels like he wouldn’t give up, he’d do anything to find me.
But my head has started whispering something different as the hours away from him slip by.
What he’d be getting back is not the same person.
Someone used. Risking his family to save the shred of me that remains is… not smart. It’s not worth it.
As the someday leader of Mercy, it’s his training to think of his men first. I wouldn’t even blame him if he put their safety before mine.
The thought had struck first in that initial assault, when whatever man in my mouth had finished and shoved my face down into the mess on the floor.
Bo had been beside himself, raging against his restraints until he earned his own punishment, but my mind had started to shut down at that point.
If I couldn’t bear what had happened, how could I expect anyone else to?
Who could look at this ruined face after everything that had happened, and still see an angel?
I feel like the opposite.
The truck stops after what feels like an hour and I hear movement outside the truck. The back doors fling open and the shock of vivid green becomes visible. Evergreen trees and their beds of soft, drying needles, surround the area we’ve parked in.
A birdbath, bird feeders. A dead vine with pumpkin skeletons rotting on the ground.
Mine, the same ones that I had planted last summer.
This is my fucking yard. My house.
I’m back home.
A man steps into the back and puts the key into my handcuffs, which rouses me from the deep shock of finding that I’ve come full circle.
No. I resist as soon as he tries to tug me toward the yard. I don’t want to be in this god forsaken truck but the thought of being inside this house again, with Eric, is worse.
I’m suddenly transported back to the woman I was before. Hopelessly devoted to my husband, washing his clothes, keeping his house clean. Waiting so patiently for the positive test that would mean my life could start.
He was a liar, a man made only of deception. Because Eric was not the sweet, reverent husband I’d somehow imagined him to be. He was conniving, deceiving. He’d been the cause of Lily’s death.
And he’d just stood there—had helped remove my underwear—so I could be…
My mind cuts the thought off and I’m pulled out of the truck. I’m dragged across the rocks of my driveway, where I’d taken the time to maintain a line of Burning Bushes because Eric had once said offhand that he liked them.
When it becomes clear I’m going to fight like hell not to go back into this house, I'm simply tossed once more over this man's shoulder, my hair falling into my face as we go up the steps of the porch. The same porch I’d sat with Molly on so many afternoons. Alone, waiting for Eric to come home.
Everything looks drenched in desperation now that I’m back. Now that I know more.
Now that I know love.
Now that I’ve had Noah.
His face, his voice, his hands are so clear in my head at that moment that my heart throbs in what feels like an actual, physical heartbreak. We’d barely gotten any time together. I’d just barely broken the surface of living and I want it back desperately.
I’m carried over the threshold into the dark house and I start to scream as the door is pushed shut.
Slam. The dollhouse is locked again. I’m stuck inside.
The man carrying me up the stairs pauses nervously when my yells melt into broken laughter. Nothing’s funny but I’m swinging so wildly from pain to numb that I can’t keep up.
We pass the guest room, where the beds are still made as if I’d just finished cleaning them.
Next comes the bedroom I used to share with Eric, and the hall light cuts a wedge across it, illuminating my dresser.
The bed comes into view next, and right at the foot of it sits the same animal crate that had been mine at the last building.
The laughter dies on my lips as I realize I’ll be locked in a cage at the foot of Eric's bed. He hasn’t shown himself yet, but I’m sure he’ll make an appearance soon. What he’ll do with me then is anyone’s bet.
“Didn’t have time to bar the windows, so this will have to do for now,” the man says.
I just barely manage to shoot him a look of disgust before he tosses me to the floor.
A large hand grips my hair, leaving me no choice but to let him guide me into the cage.
The door is slammed shut and locked behind me and he walks out of the room, closing that door as well.
This feels impossibly worse. Bo’s not here now, I’m alone for the first time and I underestimated how much strength his presence gave me.
Everything aches and exhaustion drags me down until I’m curled in on myself, knees tucked to my chest. It seems like every time shock sets in, it leaves a bone deep deadness when it recedes. I’m so tired.
The familiar creaks of the old house lull me into nightmares of dark spaces, and blood trails that lead nowhere.