Chapter 8 #2
I don’t understand.
My teeth scrape against my lips as my mind races through every possible escape before an abrupt ringing cleaves through the room, the echo ricocheting around the walls hard enough to make me flinch.
A flash of cold white light spears across my vision, razor-wire bright.
My phone.
Every thought scatters.
I tear my gaze away from it, only then realizing Blair has gone quiet.
She pushes herself upright, tossing Dax’s phone aside as a sharp gasp catches in her throat. Her eyes remain fixed on the harsh glare from the chair beside the ropes where I’d left my phone.
“What is that?” she whispers.
A noose wraps around my throat.
Drawn toward the table, she falters momentarily, mascara streaking the apples of her cheeks, her hair hanging in matted tangles around her shoulders. Once she’s close, she bends low enough to jerk the chair backward, its legs shrieking across the floor, burying Dax’s intermittent moan.
Her fingers hang over my phone for a second before curling around it. Moisture drains from my mouth as the moment stretches. Helplessly, I watch her thumb sweep across the screen. Although I don’t know what message has surfaced, I know exactly what pulls her mouth into a scowl.
Spinning hot on her heel, she charges back to Dax. “Why is there a picture of you next to that girl on this phone?” she screams. “Have you been lying to me this entire time? You…you animal!”
Her face crumbles as she throws my phone onto his heaving stomach.
He isn’t going to make it.
Dropping to her knees, she doesn’t bat an eye at the blood soaking the floor around her, grinding her knees deeper into it as she lunges for Dax, snatching a fistful of his jacket and shaking him. “Why is her phone here? Where is she? What did you do to her?”
Spittle spatters across his horrified, pained face.
He croaks again, his lack of coherence sending her nails deeper into his skin until she tears a sharper cry from him, his eyes screwing shut.
It’s not enough. Still clutching his head, she slams it against the floorboards before gouging at his eyes.
“You’ve done something awful to her, haven’t you? ”
His screams rattle the walls. The inner lining of my chest.
More of Dax’s blood gushes through her fingers and down her arms, the wet squelch turning my stomach as his shouts dissolve into ragged rasps and groans, the last of his vitality bleeding away.
A glint catches on a shard of glass beside his leg, his hand trembling violently around it.
My teeth sink into the insides of my cheeks until metal floods my tongue as I watch him struggle to lift it, stunned there’s enough will left in him to try.
Blair’s too far gone in her desperate shouts, scraping her nails further into his wounds until another broken cry escapes him.
“You monster!” she hurls at him, intent on finishing him off. The shard crawls higher in Dax’s fist, every inch wrung from what little strength he has left, until one final burst sends it into the side of her neck.
She goes mute.
Her hands abandon their battered assault to seize the jagged glass, ripping it free in one swift motion as her breath stutters. Blood jets from her neck, spreading across the already drenched floor. Heavy smoke banks at the top of the stairs, snagging my gaze upward.
My chest coils tight.
The cigarette.
A grisly procession of possibilities invades my mind, their bodies blackened beyond recognition, flesh fused to the floorboards until nothing remains but scorched skin and bone. My skin prickles as my stomach revolts.
I force the images down and look to Manson. His back is still turned, his attention tethered to the violence unfolding before him.
Instinct takes over. Now. This is my chance to run while he’s still distracted.
I turn so fast the room pitches sideways, and bolt.
Manson shouts after me, but I don’t turn. Don’t let his voice slow me down. I reach the front door, rip it open, and race into the chilling air, my vision muddling as I cross the slick grass and vanish into a thicket of spindly trees. Stinging nettles lash my arms and legs.
I don’t know where I’m going. Just that I need to keep moving.
Strips of moonlight are the only markers guiding me deeper into the tangled dark. I push blindly onward until the woods fall away, exposing a narrow stretch of open grass.
I halt.
Ahead, the ditch lies exactly where I remember it. Denial digs into me, brutal and immediate, mangling every thought that dares lead me closer to the truth.
It couldn’t be. It isn’t.
Needles puncture the backs of my eyes, yet uncertainty breeds a treacherous flicker of hope. Every warning in me gnaws louder, urging me to turn around before I see what’s waiting at the bottom.
I don’t listen.
Inch by inch, I surrender the ground between us, each reluctant advance making the lie harder to sustain.
The wind howls. Cold envelops me, burrowing into my bones. I swallow, grit my teeth, and lean forward, shoulders wound tight as I force myself to peer into the ditch.
Devastation sunders my chest.
There I am.
My lifeless body.
A strangled sob breaks from me as I sink to my knees, palms striking the damp earth. My fingers rake into the softened soil, curling around fistfuls of it as my body begins to shake.
The tears come down harder now, blurring the corpse below until its features lose their shape, allowing me to retreat into the fragile delusion that I could be wrong. That the body lying beneath me isn’t mine.
Behind me, leaves rustle.
I freeze.
Then I feel him.
My neck prickles. The fine hairs rise.
“It’s over now,” he says softly, his footsteps drawing closer. “No more running.”
A shudder rips through me. I keep my eyes trained on the ditch, too afraid to turn around. “What do you want from me?”
“What I’ve always wanted.”
He’s closer now.
Every trace of his earlier panic has vanished, his unnerving composure slipping back into place. A quiet finality threads his words, steeped in absolute assurance.
My stomach hollows. I’m frozen, yet somehow plummeting.
An endless descent.
He crouches behind me, threading an arm across my middle and closing the last sliver of distance between us until he has me flush to his chest. I’m afraid to blink. Afraid to move as pressure crowds my ribcage, threatening to split me open.
“For us to be together,” he whispers against my ear. His free hand collects the hair from my face, tucking it back with unbearable tenderness. “Nobody will ever get between us again, Stacy.”
The foreign name rings through me, momentarily drowning out everything else.
“I promise,” he murmurs, still smoothing my hair. His voice sounds increasingly remote. “I’ll keep you safe. It won’t be like before.”
Thunder rolls somewhere beyond the trees. A cold drop lands on my cheek, mingling with the tears already tracking my face. Another follows. Then another.
Within seconds, rain pelts the ground around us, flattening the grass and darkening the leaves beneath my knees. Neither of us moves. Lightning flashes, catching on rainwater sluicing over the body at the bottom.
Manson covers my eyes, shielding me from the view. His mouth grazes the back of my neck, pressing a slow kiss into my skin. His lips travel higher, trembling as they linger beneath my ear.
“You’re safe now,” he whispers, cinching his arm tighter around my waist. “I’ll never let anything come between us again.”
The End