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I moved to the tree, picturing it was Sawyer’s face. Red flashed in my vision, and I didn’t care how tired my body felt or how bruised and banged up it was. I hit the tree, digging my knuckles into the bark. Didn’t even wince. Again and again, over and over. Both hands, eventually.
Time didn’t matter. Time could’ve sped up or slowed down. I didn’t give a shit. Everything I cared about was ripped from me. I couldn’t be happy. I could never be happy. I was destined to be this miserable fuck-up until I died.
Why the hell couldn’t that be soon? Why not sooner rather than later? Why was I still here when the world had tried to kill me?
The tree became Brooklyn and I pounded away at it. If I’d snapped her neck by pushing her down the stairs, I didn’t care. So what if my fingerprints were on her? Didn’t matter. My life sucked anyway.
My life was as good as over.
Travis shouldn’t have been there. If he wasn’t there, bad things would’ve happened, but I could’ve lived with it. I could’ve survived and proved that bitch wrong, but now I knew. I knew for a fact what Travis was.
Just like him.
Just like Ray.
Travis was tattooed and pretty, but in the end he was just as psycho as Ray. I suppose I knew it, deep down, after he’d tried to chain me up in his room to punish me, but I’d hoped that I was wrong. That he was a lesser evil.
As it turned out tonight, there was no such thing as a lesser evil.
Sawyer and Kelsey…out of everyone she could’ve chosen at that party to sleep with, it had to be him? I mean, why the ever-loving fuck was he even there? This was a Stanton party. Surely he didn’t come just for Brooklyn…but he was high, on whatever drug he liked. He wasn’t the king of good decisions—hadn’t I thought that before? None of this should surprise me. Not one single bit.
And yet I was. I was stunned, hurt, and angry. Shocked that my life could get so shitty so quickly, hurt that I’d let myself start to care for that dickhead prick, and angry that Brooklyn thought the best way at getting back at me was to hit me with her fucking car.
Well, the joke was officially on her, wasn’t it? If she wasn’t dead, she knew what I was capable of. And if she was dead…then what? What would I do if I killed someone? I…no. No, she had to be alive. She had to. I wasn’t going to revert back to that horrible place.
I wasn’t. I wasn’t.
But I was.
My mind lost itself in flashbacks, and I stopped hitting the tree. My hands burned, my knuckles and fingers especially. I dropped my gaze to my hands, spotting numerous places where the skin had broken and peeled back. Blood. So much blood, everywhere. All over the tree, along my hands and my fingers, dripping down my arm and dropping to the grass.
My hands started to shake as I stared down at them. I didn’t remember hitting the tree that much. Did I? Did I blackout? Did I let the anger take over and let it steer the ship that was my body? I didn’t know.
I watched the blood ooze from the wounds, flexing my fingers. Was it bad that I couldn’t feel the pain? I was numb from the night already; my body couldn’t take any more pain, be it physical or mental or…
“There she is,” a low voice spoke, chilling me to my core. My broken, shattered core.
The trembling in my hands only intensified as I turned to view the car that had just pulled up, parking along the street near me. I nearly choked on the air as I watched my ex get out of the car. If the world spun before, it threatened to switch its tilt as he moved around the hood of the car and gave me a smile that made my gut heat up and twist in the worst way.
Ray Ruiz, my thirty-five-year-old ex. The Midtown Strangler. He was here, and he was looking at me like he’d just struck gold.
I was stupid. Ray never would’ve hit me with his car. That would’ve damaged me. He much preferred mental torture and payback. Hitting me with a car was a spur of the moment thing, something a drunk girl did while following me. Stabbing Will and hurting Declan? That was deliberate, planned. Much more his style.
One didn’t become a serial killer on accident, hence the serial part.
“Amorcito,” he used his favorite pet name for me, his hands stuck in his jeans. His face had a bit of brown scruff, his hair cut short. His normally tan skin looked a bit pale, considering. But his eyes…oh, his eyes were still the most beautiful shade of jade. “How’s my girl doing?”
My girl. I wasn’t his girl anymore.
I opened my mouth, about to deny him, but no sounds came out. I was motionless as he strolled over to me, his feet drawing him through the grass and right to my side. He was at least a foot taller than me, very handsome for his age. Mature. And even now, he radiated an aura of danger…and I found myself leaning toward him like a starving beggar needing her next hot meal.
He reached for my face, touching my cheek in a way that was tender yet laced with danger. Anything Ray touched was infused with danger, even me. Ray had a hand in the girl I was now, and I was stupid to pretend otherwise. He’d made me who I was. I pretended to be strong because of him, and now—now what did I have?
Nothing. I had nothing. There was nothing to keep me here, not really.
“As beautiful as always,” Ray whispered, his gaze falling to my hands. “Come with me. Let me take care of you, let me do what I should’ve done before.” An ominous tone lingered, and I knew I couldn’t trust him.
But, really, could I trust anyone around here? Any of these guys? No, no I couldn’t. Hell, I couldn’t even trust my best friend. I literally had no one, no one to turn to, no one to trust. I was alone, and I didn’t want to be.
