29. Kennedy
“Tell me you love me, Kennedy. Tell me that everything you did was a mistake. That you didn’t let him touch you. Tell me that you belong to me.”
Fucking Royal.
His voice makes me sick, but I can’t open my eyes to see exactly what is happening around me or where we are. I can smell him, though. The same expensive cologne he insists on wearing so that everyone knows he is powerful.
While I sit there, trying to figure out exactly what is happening, there are a couple of things that become painfully obvious. The first of which is that he wants to break me. Just like he did before. And the second is that I can’t even move my fingers. When his hand grabs my face, squeezing my cheeks together so painfully I think I’ll cry, I hope for the peace of oblivion. If he knocks me out again, I won’t feel what he does to my body. What I know he plans on doing, because he’s done it a hundred different times before. My lungs already ache with the memory, but faced with the imminent threat, the pain jumps into hyperdrive.
Breathe.
I have to force myself to calm down. I have to deny him the joy he’ll get from hurting me. Royal might kill me, but he won’t win.
He can’t break me. Not anymore.
Impossible as it seems when I face the reality of my situation, my body starts to drift away, back to the warm embrace the darkness around me offers. The oblivion I so desperately need.
“Not so fast, Kennedy.”
I’m moving. He carries me, the smell of his disgusting cologne surrounding me like an old friend, and I want to gag. My throat won’t respond, so the bile sits in my stomach, waiting for a chance to revolt.
“You don’t get to miss this,” he hisses. “You don’t get to sleep through the pain you have to feel. The lies you have to confront. You know what you have to do. Take your punishment like a good girl, and maybe I’ll keep you around. Maybe I’ll give you back your life.”
He drops me in water, and I still can’t open my eyes.
Cold.
Whatever he used to knock me out had been powerful. I can’t even struggle when he shoves my head under the ice-cold water. I can’t pull away when he starts wrapping his hand in my hair and holds me down under the water so that my entire face is submerged. I can barely even feel the water on my skin, soaking through my clothes.
I know the game. I know exactly what he wants me to do. How I can survive for a few seconds longer. Hold my breath until it burns, until I can’t focus or think of anything but my next taste of fresh air. Then thrash and move and show him how powerful he is. Give him that and let him control whether I live or die. Only then will he let me up for those great gasping breaths that I need to pull into my lungs.
But I’m done playing the game.
Even drugged and unable to fully understand what is happening or even move, I know it is over. Royal is going to kill me and I can’t do anything about it. Not with my body refusing to listen to my attempts to move. The only thing working in my favor is my brain. My ability to control how I die. A death I won’t give him.
Stupid girl.
I should have had the escort. I should have let someone follow me home. So many shoulds.
I hope Linc doesn’t find my body.
It would destroy him to have to see me that way. Him and my dad. They shouldn’t have to bury another loved one. Hopefully Royal will hide my body and make it impossible to know what happened to me. Maybe he’ll build a lie around how I ran away from my life, seeking a change. Maybe they’ll believe him, and no one else will die. Maybe I can live on in their memories.
Royal shakes me under the water, trying to determine if I’m unconscious or not. I haven’t moved a single muscle, even though I want to.
I don’t move. I don’t try to save myself by giving Royal what he wants. I don’t try to push away or breathe the water that will make me choke and give him a reaction. Instead, I find the strength to open my eyes, and I stare at the monster he has turned into through the shifting water. Black, beady eyes meet mine, full of rage and arousal.
But I still don’t play his twisted little game.
Royal doesn’t get that part of me. Not anymore. He doesn’t control me. He never will.
I’m going to die.
And I’m going to win.
Thirty seconds pass in the blink of an eye, then more tick by as he holds me under the water. My chest is on fire as the need for air tries to overpower my will to win, but I don’t move. Even if he lets go of me, I won’t move. My fingertips are going numb, the lack of oxygen cutting off the circulation and adding even more pain to my already overwhelmed body. Still, I can feel needles pricking the tips of my toes and my legs, so whatever he gave me must be wearing off.
I smile.
I might be dying, yeah, but I smile just the same. I smile for all the pain I know he can’t inflict on me anymore. I smile because Royal may have gotten away with what he did to Mallory, but there isn’t a chance in Hell that he’ll get away with killing me.
I may die, but he’ll finally pay the price for his actions.
When my vision starts to go black, I know I finally win. I may have killed myself by his hands, but I win and there is nothing Royal can do about it. I welcome death like an old friend, smiling the entire time.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Cassie is there, screaming in my face even though I can’t see her.
“Winning.” I laugh and answer the hallucination.
“Do you know how stupid everyone is? First, Casper gets fucking shot because of me. Then you go and decide to be a hero. Seriously, Kennedy. What the hell is wrong with our family? Are you trying to die? Play the fucking game and let him think he’s winning. That’s how you win. You lull him into a sense of security, and then you cut his head off with the machete you hid under his bed but never had the courage to use. He won’t get to the baseball bat he used to hit you with in time. Take him by surprise and really win.”
Her face appears above mine, visible this time, and when I feel the rapid weight on my chest, I know that someone is giving me CPR, trying to bring me back to life.
“You’re not gonna die yet.” Her face twists; her eyes aren’t the same blue they always were. When I gasp for air, she is gone and in her place is Royal, staring down at me on the floor of the bathroom, performing CPR and saving my life so he can try to take it all over again. “You don’t deserve to die yet. You don’t deserve that peace, you stupid whore.”
I stare at the ceiling, recognizing the watermarks in the corners. The bathroom where he repeatedly beat me. Where he tried to kill me. Where he destroyed my spirit.
“You’re not done yet, Kennedy.” He wraps a hand around my neck and squeezes. “You haven’t given me what I want.”
I refuse to say a word, even though I know what he wants. I won’t give him anything more than an expressionless face to take out his anger on. I won’t say the words. He doesn’t even deserve the lie, no matter what my hallucination of Cassie says.
His pale face appears right above mine in a macabre imitation of the way Linc offers his comfort.
“I’m going to kill you, Kennedy. And when I do, there won’t be anyone to put me in prison. There won’t be anyone to stop me from doing this to your sister. To Parker.”
I laugh, despite myself, as my fingers and toes start to tingle with the drugs wearing off.
“You’re going to prison, Royal. And you’re going to die there.” The exclamation bursts from my lungs, from the dark and twisted part of my soul that Royal created every single time he raised his hand against me.
“Shut up!” He slaps me with the palm of his hand, just like he used to.
While it stings, just like every other time he hit me, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it used to.
He wouldn’t break me.
I hear Cassie, right there beside me, laughing like she used to do when we were kids.
“Don’t let him win, Kenny. Buy some time. You know what to do. You’re not alone.”
Royal raises his hand to strike again, and I laugh at him. Intensely, humorlessly, and begging for a fight.
“Go ahead, Royal. Hit me. But you’re too late. I gave the police everything.”
He freezes, his hand in midair, and panic lights up his face like the Fourth of July.
“What?” He tries to sound intimidating but fails.
“You heard me.” I push myself up off the floor, taking every inch that I can. “You’re going to lose. Recordings, my clothes, everything you touched that is covered in my blood. From the night you went too far, Royal. They’ve got it all.”
When he hits me again harder, and with his fist, my head hits the side of the tub and an audible crack fills the air.
“If I’m going down, I’m going to take your lifeless body with me, Kennedy.”
“Good luck with that.” My words are slurred, but there is no doubt he heard them.
The kick to my spine is proof of that.
Maybe when I wake up again, I’ll be able to move my hands and feet enough to get away.
To get the machete.