Chapter 3
DREAD
Aping on my phone jerks me out of the restless sleep I forced myself into.
Only thirty minutes after Rogue confirmed Reverie came back from her shift, he sent another text recounting how she damn near lost her mind when she discovered the mutilated dummy—even more so when they faked her arrest and then cuffed her to the flagpole for extra measure.
Three hours have passed since, and I haven’t been able to settle. My bed is incredibly fucking comfortable, so there’s no excuse for the restlessness clinging to my bones.
I slap my hand over the phone on my bedside table, the bright light piercing my eyes.
Squinting, I find a deluge of texts waiting for me.
I get them all fucking day, and it doesn’t matter how many times I change my number, it somehow always gets leaked.
Which is why I’m terrible about checking them and often avoid them.
Most are from other students inviting me to parties or girls asking to hang out. However, one from my lawyer, Mark, catches my eye. He sent it earlier today, and I’d forgotten about it.
Mark: I’m here if you need to talk.
I don’t have the capacity to contemplate that message right now, so I find the most recent text from Severen.
Severen: Blizzard hit. She’s probably turning blue by now.
Reading those words is like taking a shot of heroin, except I’m high on satisfaction. As tempted as I am to leave her out there until her lungs finally freeze, I couldn’t possibly live without her. If she dies, I have no one to take my endless wrath out on, and that just won’t fucking do.
Me: I’ll get her.
I have the other set of keys to her cuffs. I didn’t intend to use them for another few hours, but admittedly, I didn’t bother to check the forecast.
Oops, I guess.
Sighing, I flip on the lamp on my nightstand and quickly get dressed in thick sweatpants and a hoodie.
I swipe the car keys from next to the lamp as I head out the door to make the short drive to her dorm.
There’s a niggling feeling in my bones urging me to pick up the pace, but I keep my steps steady and casual.
She deserves to feel worse. So much worse.
That impenetrable cold forming icicles on every one of her nerves—it’s a feeling I’ve carried with me since I sat on my couch, staring at the window for hours, waiting for my mom to come home. Except she never did.
Because she was dead, and when those FBI agents showed up at my doorstep instead to tell me and my grandmother that she wasn't coming home, I vowed to make the D’Amours pay.
When I arrive at her dorm, I park in the lot, squinting toward the courtyard.
In the span of the two-minute drive here, the blizzard worsened tenfold.
Heavy sheets of snow fall from the sky, making it hard to see more than ten feet ahead.
The top of the flagpole peeks out from the storm, the fabric violently flapping against the dark sky, only for the bottom half to disappear into the white blanket.
I swing open the door, the chill like a punch to the face.
The wind rages like a hungry beast, slithering beneath my hoodie and prodding at my bones with sharp teeth.
Cursing beneath my breath, I jog toward the flagpole, her small body coming into view only when I’m nearly on top of her.
A thick layer of snow already coats her form, turning nearly the entirety of her body bone white.
She tucked her knees beneath her chin and slid her thick coat over them, only the bottom half of her legs popping out from beneath the fabric.
I know it does little to protect her from the elements.
One sleeve is empty, her arm cradled against her stomach inside the coat, while she presses the hand chained to the pole as firmly against her side as possible—which isn’t much.
She trembles so intensely, she almost appears still. However, even the howling wind isn’t loud enough to completely shadow the clicking of her chattering teeth.
Ignoring how fucking freezing I am, I cock my head, observing her closely while I sort through the emotions churning inside me at the sight of her.
My chest tightens uncomfortably, and a burning sensation simmers in my stomach.
That restlessness still clings to my bones, making it feel as if I need to…
just move. The longer I stand here, the more it intensifies.
Grinding my teeth, I coax the satisfaction back to the forefront, and it’s the only one I bother to acknowledge from thereon as I bend at the knees and blow on the side of her head.
Reverie jerks, as if I roused her from sleep.
She stirs for a beat and then slowly turns her head toward me, though she doesn't open her eyes quite yet. Her thin, dirty blonde bangs fall away from her forehead, offering a rare view of her entire face. I take a moment to study her closely, ignoring the urge to wrap my fingers around her throat. Long, thick lashes fan across her pale, moonlit cheeks, mingling with the light dusting of freckles that span across the bridge of her nose. A dainty gold hoop pierces her left nostril, and another with little diamonds on it loops through her septum, pointing toward her cracked, full lips. Pale blue tints her skin, and her mouth has taken on a purple hue. They’re usually a deep, rosy pink, but I think I like the look of death on her more.
It's so fucking pretty, and it’s unfortunate it can’t stay.
Her eyes crack open, vacant and lethargic, only to fall shut again when I come into view.
She says nothing. Only turns her head back in and curls into herself deeper. Truthfully, I don’t think she processed it’s me before her or what’s happening.
Funny that even subconsciously, she finds the frigid weather more inviting than my presence.
That’d hurt if I gave a fuck.
Slipping the key out of my pocket, I insert it into the small hole in the cuff.
The metal falls away from the pole, but I quickly grab it and use it to tug her arm out from between her body so I can unlock the cuff around her wrist, too.
That seems to jerk her into full consciousness.
She snaps upright, flailing no more gracefully than a newborn fawn while I tuck the cuffs into my hoodie pocket.
Her wide eyes land on me before derision instantly twists her features. She scoots away from me, though her movements are sluggish.
“Get away from me,” she slurs, the words barely distinguishable.
There she is.
I missed that look.
“How many people watched my friends drag you out of your dorm tonight? And not a single one came to check on you? Help you?”
Even with the blizzard swirling around us, the black sky darkens her unusual copper brown eyes, yet I can see the emotion flash across them as clearly as a comet. Fury.
If I were to ignore her tar-like insides, I could acknowledge she’s fucking beautiful—and somehow, she’s prettiest when she wants to kill me. But it’s damn near impossible to care when all I can focus on is how badly I want to kill her.
The spawn of the man who murdered my mother, and who offered nothing but unwavering support for him, despite my pleading for her and her mother, Regina, to believe me.
They never fucking did.
But I suppose they felt they didn’t have to when the copycat murderer popped up, further cementing me as the boy who put away the wrong man.
It drove me fucking insane watching them feel so validated. Even to this day, I can’t put into words what that did to me—knowing what I saw and fighting tooth and nail to get people to believe me, only for a fucking copycat to further make me look like a liar.
Special Agents Barry Jones and Jeff Lakes publicly insisted they are two different murderers, but it didn’t matter, to the D’Amours or the world. The investigators lost their credibility, and everyone made up their minds—Kellan Sharpe is a fucking liar.
How Barry can stand to have a close relationship with Reverie and treat her as his daughter, I’ll never understand.
They keep their relationship out of the public eye, so they don’t know I’m aware of it.
I suspect he’s forgiven her because she was so young and went along with whatever Regina wanted, and I could understand that, too.
However, to this day, Reverie still refuses to acknowledge Lionel as the real Locksmith, just like she refuses to acknowledge his victims or their families.
She’s never even acknowledged what her family did to me, and that, more than anything, is what enrages me.
As kids, I was the one who lost everything, yet it was her who got everything.
After Lionel went to prison, she and Regina lived with the public sympathizing over her father’s wrongful imprisonment while lavishing them with food, gifts, and unwavering support.
After the copycat emerged, they went on TV for several interviews, boasting that they were right—I put away the wrong man.
All the while, I sat alone in a cold, dark house, listening to the soft sounds of my grandmother weeping, and eating the bland hot dogs and ramen noodles her abysmal social security check barely afforded.
I was ridiculed and bullied endlessly, both online and in school.
People vandalized my home, sent death threats, and spread awful rumors about my mother and me.
Katherine Sharpe stopped being a victim of the Locksmith and became the woman who failed as a mother.
Reverie was the poor girl without her daddy.
I was the evil boy who put him away.
But Reverie will eventually get her father back.
My mom will never come home.
And I hate her for that.
However, at Hollow Canyon, the roles have finally reversed.
Whether or not the students here believe me doesn’t even matter.
They’re too starstruck to call me a liar, and they condemn Reverie simply because I do.
I’m sure, deep down, many of them still believe Lionel to be innocent, but they’ll never say, and I don’t care to be believed anymore.
I just want her to suffer.