14. Fourteen
Fourteen
Liam
She’s here. Covering her mouth with her hand, pleading with herself not to scream. Surprised, sweetheart?
For a second, my brain refuses to process the possibility that I had conjured her, like some sick part of me had dragged her into this garage out of thin air. The recoil snaps up my arm, but I barely feel it. I barely feel anything, especially since Joe died. That part of me extinguished with him.
What I feel right now though, is Sara, and that alone surprises me. It’s a damn shame that I don’t enjoy surprises, even wrapped in a deadly temptress like her. Black magic.
I hate her for burning through me like she holds a cigarette’s ember pressed to my skin, slow and deliberate. The real problem? I’d probably fucking enjoy it.
She shows up at my doorstep thinking she has any right. Surely, she isn't lost? Church is the other way into the village, and if she needs God, she will not find Him here. She better drop to her knees and pray for an escape from the hell she invited herself into.
Welcome baby girl.
Wide brown eyes, half-hidden in the door's crack, frozen but fixed on me; I’d know the shape of that stare even in the dark.
Her chest rises, fast, heaving, her attention flickering between me and the now corpse bleeding out behind me.
Her lips part on a gasp she doesn’t even know she makes, the soundless kind that tears straight into me, branding me worse than any bullet ever has because the sight of her panic makes me want to drink it.
She is finally seeing it, that I am a dangerous man, and fuck if I’d try to convince her otherwise.
I had already shown her enough cracks, enough jagged reflections of the broken mirror I was.
If she’s dumb enough to cut herself for some sordid hope that I have a heart, she’s better off watching herself bleed dry.
I have a heart, sure, but it beats for anything but her.
Joe’s last ride was the rot that she left behind like an aftertaste.
She carved holes in my brother’s chest, and I hate her for that.
For still standing here breathing, while he isn’t.
And looking like sin and innocence all at once, she could kill just from how beautiful she is, but all I see is the reason I buried my twin, and that makes her the ugliest soul alive.
Her body jolts like a startled fawn when the file in my hand slips from my grip, landing on the floor, but she doesn’t move.
Just stands there, shaking at the irony of fate.
Despite how much I can’t stand the girl, she doesn’t belong in this world, not with Damien pacing behind me, and not with me in the same room smelling her trepidation.
A low voice breaks the silence.
“You want me to take care of her?” Damien asks, lighting a cigarette, his dark eyes toward her, casual, like he’s offering to take out the trash. Smoke curls from his mouth, tattoos shifting over his knuckles as he flexes the lighter in his palm.
“No.” My answer is a snarl before I can tether it.
Damien arches a brow, leaning back into the shadows, waiting.
I snap my gaze back to Sara before he can read too much into this, whatever this is.
Mine.
I can’t stop myself from moving, a few quick steps and she shudders when the door bangs back, her whole body is like a trapped bird and she has no idea what kind of pitfall she got herself into, especially one where I’d have to make sure she stays quiet.
Her gaping eyes lock on mine, glassy with the fear of me, and for once, it’s something we both can agree on. I move the door but she bolts, running for her damn pretty little life.
The sun scorches her exposed shoulders, barely covered by thin tank top straps, catching in her long dark brown hair as it streams wild behind her.
She always comes across as fragile. Always wearing black, warding off her own demons, who I know she is used to running away from, but with the newfound glint of terror as she looks back to see how far I am behind her, I am the demon chasing her this time to keep her quiet.
She tears up the hill of our street, layers of trees on each side with the road narrowing itself. Even the best truck drivers get claustrophobic as it strangles the hill in vicious switchbacks, ancient stone walls closing in like a trap on both sides.
Her hands hold against the stones as she stumbles, a car nearly shredding her alive and her body slams, her hair whipping violently in the car's wake. Those wild eyes find mine, a prey recognizing her predator, and something primal ignites in her and launches forward.
She runs herself straight into Sainte-Anne; the bells tolling above her from the top of the hill, each one echoing our footsteps.
The chapel perches high, its Provencal stone worn by centuries. People built this place to thank a saint for sparing them from the plague, and I am thanking God for bringing her to me on these grounds. No Saint will be sparing her today.
The air is different up here, it’s thick with pine and cypress, sea wind threading through branches that creak overhead and shadows of eerie shapes over us.
I move slower but more intentionally than she does, quieter than the breeze. I let her think she has a chance. Counting each heartbeat in my head until she breaks, until the weight of my unseen presence becomes too much and robs her of her senses.
“Sara, you can’t hide from me.” I howl out with a hide and seek playful voice that would make anyone’s hair stand up. Her silhouette is barely visible against the tree trunks.
A twig snaps sharp beneath her weight. Her head jerks up, tears in her eyes, and I see the moment she realizes she’s given herself away.
A delicious sight of fear mixed with somber curiosity I know she won’t admit even to herself.
She stumbles forward as if the ground is collapsing under her, straight past the chapel, straight into the tangle of trees that spills down the far slope.
I don’t chase. She’ll realize soon enough her only choice is to run back to me, that facing her fears is by going through them. Through me.
Although for someone born here, she sure doesn’t have a good sense of direction for leading herself up here. The abandoned house that everyone in the village can’t shut up about.
It crouches at the edge of the path, its yard a sprawl of weeds and unkempt walls.
Ivy strangles the shutters, half the windows shattered, and the gate sags open.
Sara shoves through them, vanishing into the yard until the front door swallows her, and for a heartbeat I almost let it end there.
Let her choke on the stench of dust and rot.
Maybe that would teach her something, but my feet move after her. Fuck.
The inside of the house is in ruins. A velvet chair sags in the corner, the chandelier above halfway hanging, ready to kill someone.
Sunlight knives through broken windows, cutting the dark into stripes of sunlight with specks of dust dancing around in a gloomy quietness, even quieter since I’ve been here; nothing had changed.
Five years ago, a cry for help had diverted my jog into this abandoned house.
Finding a young girl, beaten and God knows what else they did to her.
She had said her father had done that to her and deserted her.
The rage I felt was indescribable. I knew what it was like to be haunted by the one person who should keep you safe, and the look in her eyes as I led her to safety, stayed with me. Ultimately defining my life’s purpose.
Now Sara is here, stumbling, moving like a ghost, skin pale under the light, another body the house has swallowed.
She darts left, and I cringe at the eerie children's drawings on the small wooden table half molded into the surface.
She bolts again when I enter the room, desperately opening another door behind her to escape me, and it occurs to me she fears me more than these actual walls, a fear that even I find debatable. I swear she has a death wish.
I step closer, feeling the pulse in my neck heightening, strands of her hair disappearing after her, when her scream cracks through the house. I round the doorway in time to see her slip and catch herself hard against the floor as her foot splashes into something wet.
As my haunting figure prowls closer to her every inch, she moves backward, shaking like a leaf, but the air changes.
Bewildered, she looks at her hands, a puzzled stare mixed with anguished pain, slick, shining wet… her clothes are damp at the hems where she splashed through the puddle, little dark stains spreading like ink. She’s terrified. As she should be.
“Liam, please don’t hurt me!” Her voice is sharp, frantic.
I move closer, inspecting her, and I freeze. I grab the first piece of cloth I see on the floor and grab her hands and wipe them clean.
“Take them off.” I hiss, as I rub her hands.
She blinks, confused. “What?”
“Your clothes,” I snap, now towering over her. “Take them off. Now.”
Her chest heaves, shaking her head as if I’ve lost my mind. “No! Why—what are you—Get away from me, Liam, please. Stop!”
My eyes lock onto the sheen coating on her skin. I know that smell, faint but an unmistakable metallic and acrid scent, and my gut tightens. The fabric at her hip hisses, a faint curl of smoke rising where the liquid has soaked through.
I grab the hem of her shirt, yank it off her, and the shock on her face is downright poetic.
“It’s acid, Sara.” My tone turns rough. “You fell into acid. Do you want it eating through your skin next?”
The color drains from her face. Her mouth opens to argue, to deny, but the fiber at her strap gives a brief twitch, and I don’t wait for her approval.
All I can see is the slow spread of chemical burns, licking closer to her skin.
I might be a bastard, but I’m not evil enough for her flesh to get eaten alive.