26. Chapter 26
Skye
W hat followed were the longest hours of Skye’s life, including the numerous times her parents made her retake the ACT, trying to improve her already impressive score each time.
When her stepmother came in and demanded her clothes, Skye refused. But Gayle threatened to send Dylan to retrieve them, and Skye shuddered, the thought of that man’s hands and eyes on her body too much to contend with. That she’d ever been with him was enough to make her sick.
She had handed over her leggings and t-shirt, her lip quivering as Gayle forced her into that wedding dress.
If given the time and resources, Skye could have come up with a different escape plan.
Her descent down the side of the house had started smoothly enough.
The knot held, which had been her biggest concern.
But when she made it halfway down, her arms and legs burned with strain.
Based on the way her muscles pulled and burned, she doubted she’d be able to move much the next day.
Thick red bands stood out against her palms from where she had wrapped the fabric tightly around them.
As Skye followed Rabble into the hallway, she held on tightly to his arm so he couldn’t vanish with her hope.
She tucked herself close to his back, stepping lightly where he stepped, her muscles quivering with the need to bolt.
Skye attuned herself to every twitch Rabble made as he led her slowly down the hall, stopping to listen often and searching the area with practiced eyes.
Rationally, she understood the extra time he took mattered, but that didn’t stop her nerves from thrumming violently.
Impatience overrode her, and she stepped from behind Rabble, desperation fueling her movements.
She closed the space between her old room and the stairs in record time, her steps light and silent on the cream carpet.
Her gaze flew back to where Rabble now stood, only a few inches behind her.
“I know you want to leave, Skye, and I will get you out,” he said with whispered conviction, “but you’ve got to stay with me. I can’t lose you again.”
His voice cracked, breaking through the sound of her hammering heart and settling against her panicked psyche like a temporary balm.
She closed her eyes and inhaled Rabble’s scent, ingrained in the threads of his shirt covering her body.
Though it did little to hide her lower half, it was more than she had before and ten million times better than that wedding dress.
Skye took another breath, then another, until she opened her eyes and nodded, falling back behind Rabble as they slowly descended the stairs.
Rabble stopped at the base of the stairs, his body going taut like a bow string waiting to snap.
Voices sounded from nearby, likely from the den where Gayle held court with her subjects.
Rabble backed Skye into the wall and crept forward.
The urge to grasp Rabble’s arm and keep him from continuing forward pounded through her.
“Wait,” her whispered plea barely sounded aloud, yet Rabble turned his head slightly toward her, letting her know she had his attention.
“Dylan…” Skye grimaced at his name, tasting the acid of it on her tongue. “He said he’d kill you. He said—”
Rabble’s answering murmur did little to calm her nerves. “He’s been neutralized.”
What the hell did that mean?
Voices reached them again. Skye recognized Gayle’s, and her blood ran cold. She didn’t know who the other voice belonged to, but if they spoke so casually with Gayle, she doubted their strength of character.
“Oh, she’ll be ready any minute now.” Gayle’s southern Missouri dialect sounded lilting, almost musical. “And Dylan should be back shortly. He’s chatting with someone at the door.”
Disgust barreled through Skye. She might vomit. Or punch something. Possibly both.
The seconds ticked by unbearably slow as Gayle and the mystery man spoke of inconsequential topics—the weather, the upcoming parade, the statistics for the local sports teams. Each passing moment settled like a stone on Skye’s laboring heart, and she considered the toll this entire experience had taken on her body.
She could concern herself with that later though. She just needed out of this damn house.
“Shall we go see what’s keeping Dylan?” Gayle’s syrupy sweet tone held a sharp, irritated edge. Anyone else may not have noticed it, but Skye had heard that same tone time and time again.
Footsteps grew distant as Gayle led her guest toward the front door.
Rabble refused to move for a minute, his body remaining poised for a threat while shielding Skye’s body with his own.
At long last, he grasped her hand lightly in his and pulled her along, through the dining room and toward the massive kitchen near the back of the house.
He paused before entering, his eyes roaming over the stainless-steel appliances.
“Do you know if anyone else is in the house, Skye?” Rabble muttered, refusing to take his eyes from their roving for even a moment.
Skye worried at her bottom lip. Several years had passed since she’d lived at her parent’s house, but… “The maids would have gone home already. Marsha, their cook, may still be here, but this late at night?”
Skye snuck up on tiptoe, cramming herself in front of Rabble to see through the small plastic bubble near the top of the swinging door. He grumbled, but otherwise remained silent. The appliances gleamed in the dim light over the stove microwave, illuminating the spotless surfaces and quiet kitchen.
“I think Marsha’s gone home,” Skye said.
“Let’s go.” Rabble pushed them through the door as silently as he could.
Freedom, called to her from just feet away, pulsing through Skye like a rhythmic call.
She hurried after Rabble, her gaze focused solely on the dark night visible through the glass panes on the back door.
Darting for it, Skye burst into the night air before Rabble could stop her.
Skye took in a great gasp of air, gulping it down like a person lost in the desert and longing for water.
Her relief lasted all of thirty seconds before shrieking rent the air and she froze again, her muscles tensing with that freeze instinct that grated at her nerves.
As he had inside, Rabble led her in their charge around the house, toward the awful noise that rose in pitch and vigor.
Skye stumbled to a stop behind Rabble, her mouth popping open as her jaw dropped and she clutched Rabble’s arm.
Skye barely noticed the still warm stones against the bottoms of her tender feet, the heat collected during the sunny day dissipating slowly with the cooler night.
She didn’t register Rabble, beyond knowing with certainty that he had not and would not leave her side for as long as she stood still and processed the scene before her.
Dylan lay curled on his side on the grassy lawn, moaning pitifully.
Staring down at him, Skye’s utter distain for that cowardly worm rose again, her disgust choking her.
Another man, one she didn’t recognize, sat in false calm on the front stoop, his fingers linked behind his head as if he were about to recline back and watch television.
While his face appeared passive, sweat stains soaked through his button-down shirt.
Nearby, her stepmother lay face down on the lawn, screeching like an angry hen.
Her scrawny arms splayed out to the sides and she kept flapping her hands like she could take flight.
The twins, practically growling, loomed like avenging angels over Gayle and Dylan.
In the distance, the lone siren of the on-duty police officer sounded, growing closer with each second, the light of its siren breaking through the dark.
Through it all, Skye felt far away, like she viewed the entire surreal situation through a distant lens. And yet she was also painfully aware of every moment passing by, of the warm summer night breeze on her bare thighs, of the dirty violated feeling from having her choices stripped from her.
Obscenities filled the air, startling Skye, and she couldn’t help but seek out the source of such profanity, her head tilting as she listened past the rushing white noise that hindered her hearing.
Those words came from the last place she expected, spewing like venom from the lips of Gayle, southern hospitality personified.
The sudden need to chuckle surged through Skye until it bubbled up and out of her, and she tucked her hand in front of her mouth as if to stifle the sound.
The damage had already been done though.
Gayle turned her vitriol on Skye and Rabble. “You!” she hissed.
Skye shivered at the sound of pure hatred in her stepmother’s voice. She didn’t understand where the woman’s intense feelings came from. She and Gayle had never had a normal mother-daughter relationship, she assumed, but did she really deserve this level of loathing?
Whatever Gayle continued to shout faded into the sound of the approaching siren as the officer on duty pulled into the drive, the flashing blue and red strobe lights doing nothing to alleviate the headache pounding in Skye’s temples.
Instead of a deputy, Sheriff Joe Armanan stepped out of his patrol cruiser, his black cowboy hat pulled low on his head.
He took in the scene with wariness, his baby-blue eyes narrowing on the key players and their respective positions in the yard.
Before the sheriff could get a word out, Max Wellington’s Mercedes-Benz whipped into the drive, the suspension protesting his failure to slow down as he left the road and came onto the gravel of the driveway.
His breaks squalled, the sound grating on Skye’s nerves and surprising her.
Max had a special place in his life for his car.
That he would abuse it so didn’t set right with her.
He exited his car in a hurry, leaving the door hanging open behind him.