by Hazel Grace
“You need to sit down,” Reagan insists, her hand finding my forearm. “You’re bleeding. What the hell happened?”
“I’m so sorry, Emric.” It’s Stormi muttering somewhere behind me, probably in the same spot I left her.
I shake my head.
No, I can’t be wrong.
I have so much working against her.
Hesitantly, I turn around, not ready to face the woman that I may have hurt for no fucking reason.
When I meet Stormi’s sullen features, picking at her fingers and waiting for me to react, I feel as though someone just K.O.’ed me.
My lips separate, but no words leave them.
What do I say, I’m sorry?
And even now, with everything being said, I’m still not fully convinced. Reagan was trying to regain her breath after her attack, how would she hear all of that underwater?
Or maybe I’m just paranoid as hell.
“Who the fuck is Emric?” My eyes bolt shut at Reagan’s inquiry. One I never wanted to explain to her.
Fuck.
The possibilities of my running into the woman who I allegedly tried to kill is almost laughable.
Until it really wasn’t.
Emric scared the living crap out of me when he stormed into her kitchen with so much rage plastered on his face I believed he would finally succeed and throttle me against the white marble countertop.
They wanted to speak alone; I understand that, but I want to go home. Reagan set me up in a spare bedroom and promised on her son’s life that she’d take me back in the morning.
It’s not soon enough.
My anxiety has reached its peak. I’m not fully sold on Emric believing his sister when she explained that I wasn’t the woman who attacked her.
Also, I stabbed a man.
Mind you, it was my attacker, but still…I pierced metal through someone’s flesh to save my own life while being in a situation that I should’ve never been in.
Sensing my unease about being in the same area with her brother, she graciously escorted me to a room painted in sky blue. It reminded me of the beach with canvases depicting waves, and large bodies of water surrounded by colorful trees. A full-sized bed was perfectly made with a matching comforter set and a bouquet of sunflowers sitting on a bedside table.
It was cozy…if I wanted to be here.
Reagan’s kindness didn’t pry away the fact that Emric was still downstairs, and he had his own truths to spill.
Talk about calling the kettle black in this circumstance.
His name is Marty. And, from the sounds of his and Reagan’s yelling, it seems like he’s been living a double life without his sister’s knowing.
I'd love to gloat that I wasn't the villain here; however, my stomach is in knots, and I'm burning up all over.
They went at it for what seemed to be hours before silence would fall, and they’d start up again. I attempted to watch TV to drown their voices out, but their shouting always led me back towards the door with the mention of my name in tow.
I can't face Emric again, it's all I can focus on. I want to find Dad, pack my things, and get out of town.
Numerous ideas and different places rummage through my brain for what seems to be like forever. I'm not sure when I fell asleep or what state I last thought about last, but the alarm clock beside me says it's after three in the morning. The house is deathly quiet except for the gentle breeze that hits the window every few minutes, and I weigh out my options.
Not that there are many.
I obviously don’t know Reagan, or how close she is to her brother. This could be a game like good cop, bad cop, awaiting for me to spill out the secrets they both want.
I could find a road, hopefully someone would drive down it and give me a ride. It's not a safe option, but anything is better than waiting on Emric to make another violent decision.
Then there are the cars outside. If I'm fortunate enough, I could turn up a pair of keys and take off. That's if I don't wake up the whole house; hopefully, they aren't light sleepers.
Granted, I have to try.
No other alternatives are forming in my brain, and I am in the middle of nowhere from what I remember when Emric drove us here.
Swinging my legs over the bed, I pad over to the door, inhaling a slow and deep breath.
I got this. I survived this long.
The doorknob turns without a sound as I unhurriedly pull, not wanting to mess up by making an unwanted squeaking noise. I hold my next breath, on edge with having to break out of another somewhat prison that I literally stepped into.
Nice and easy.
Stepping cautiously into the dark hallway, I peer to my left just before a full-figured body shoots up from the floor and in my direction. I let out a yelp before a warm palm closes over my mouth, a familiar scent clogging my nostrils and propelling me back into a state of panic.
"Don't wake everyone up, sweetheart," Emric whispers as he moves us back into the room and closes my door slowly behind him with his foot. "My sister will get pissed if you wake up Huck."
That same rippling uprise of fear slams through my skeleton. My stomach coils harder than before, and I can feel more beads of sweat trickling down my forehead.
He’s really going to kill me in his sister’s house?
“Stop shaking.” He brushes his thumb over my cheek, coaxing me to listen to him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
A violent convulsion rocks my body as he stands still in front of me, probably with the same knife I stuck him with or a gun with a silencer.
Quick and easy.
He could roll me up in a bedsheet and carry me out of here to bury me in the woods.
“Stormi.” My name off his lips is a caress of comfort. It sweeps across my whole body and tries to soothe me.
I shove it back.
It’s fake.
He’s not a good man. Emric is manipulative and cruel. Heartless in every sense of the feeling and word.
Another brush of my cheek and Emric loosens his grip over my mouth then lets me go.
He let me go.
Taking a step away, I watch him rake a hand down the side of his face that’s mostly hidden from the dark.
“I think I owe you an apology,” he mutters.
A strangled groan rumbles in my chest because he’s indebted for more than that.
His vicinity is sending crippling anxiety through my bones. My head pounds in earnest to get me to run, somehow sprint out of this house because this might be my only chance to be free of him.
"Sweetheart." His nickname for me is a calm wave through the air. It's as though everything that happened to me thus far was a dream, and he's trying to wake me up.
Except it’s not.
My leg that he thrusted his blade in still pulsates in pain. The wound to my side that he caused is tender. I can even feel the slicing of my skin from when he dragged his metal weapon along my cheek.
And my lungs still feel like they’re holding water from all the times he tried to drown me.
"What do...you want?" I ask, allowing more space between us, so it gives me a faster clue if he tries to make a sudden move.
“A few things,” he conveys matter-of-factly. “But, first, I wanted to check your wounds.”
My nostrils flare, and I shake my head. "No."
He releases a heavy sigh as if he’s surprised. “If I had a dollar for every time...I just want to make sure they’re not infected. We haven’t cleaned them in—”
"Why were you on the floor?" The room falls quiet, and I already know the answer. I'm not sure why I asked. "You were seeing if I was going to escape."
He cuts into my space with a single step. “Were you?”
I draw back again because the truth is a suicide answer, and I'm not giving him anything else against me to work with.
A slight surge of anger ramming through my veins that he’d believe I was stupid enough not to try and that he still wouldn’t let me.
&nb
sp; Emric lets out a soft tsking sound, and I can see him rattle his head back and forth. "I'll tell you one thing, sweetheart, you got balls. You're miles away from the closest town...and if you haven't noticed, it's night."
In the dark, my nerves shout that they don't like him hovering in it where we can't see his hands or eyes. The moonlight brings a broad beam through the windows, but he doesn't fall within its realm of luminance.
Probably on purpose.
He sticks to the shadows where it's safe to hide his next move and any facial expressions he may display, leaving me in the unknown.
Uneasiness wraps around my frame. We’re alone again, something I never wanted to be again.
“Can you please leave?” I wrap my arms around my chest. “I’m tired.”
"Where were you going?" I open my mouth to tell him I was going to go pee, but he takes one of those menacing steps, and I quickly erase it.
This man almost killed me multiple times.
Why he thinks I’m okay when I’m within an arms’ length reach of him—he’s insane.
“I just need two minutes,” he ventures further. “I want to check your stomach and your leg.” Another step. “And your chin.”
“I’m fine,” I deadpan. “I just want to go home.”
“Don’t believe you, but—”
“Shocker,” I blurt, then quickly wish I hadn’t.
He is a ticking time bomb that can explode at any minute, and I don’t wish to be any more collateral damage.
There is nothing he can do or say, and no way he can entice me that will make me ever forgive him.
He nods, as though to understand why, and looks around the room. “I’d take you to a hospital, but I can’t.”
“Why?”
He pulls his gaze back to me. “Why do you think?”
“You can leave now.”
“Is that the first lie you’ve told me? That you’re fine?” Another step and my heart thrashes in my ribcage.
Our conversations were all so one-sided because I couldn’t get a word in, and I’m not going to try now. He was always so quick to cut me off. His insistence on finding Reagan’s attacker was so potent that nothing I said made a difference. It blinded him with resentment, and now, the only thing I can understand is why.
Because it was his sister.
It still doesn’t sway me towards giving him any atonement.
“Listen, sweetheart, you hate me, I get it. But—”
“Do you?”
God, just because he didn’t harm you the first time doesn’t mean to keep going.
“I do, believe me.” Then he steps into the light—all of him. His dark facial hair, the strong jawline and, even though I can’t see his eyes, they're pinning me to the floor. “More than you’ll ever know.”
“Sorry if I don’t...sweetheart." He chuckles at my snarky remark, and I hear it rumble in his chest. However, my face twists that he believes that this is all fun and games.
My body lurches back as he takes another step in my direction, and the scream that wants to rip from my lips is on the ready just waiting for him to charge me.
“Let me get a look,” he voices. “And I promise I’ll leave.”
“Your promises are nothing to me.”
“Well, they are the most important to me so—” His broad shoulders shrug. “—sucks to be you.”
I don’t respond because, again, nothing I say to him will make him listen unless they are answers to who’s behind his sister’s attempted assassination.
He motions impatiently with his hand. “Alright, brat, lift your shirt and—”
“No.”
“Stormi,” he warns. “If you bleed out on my sister’s bed, I’ll have hell to deal with.”
I lift my own shoulders. “Sucks to be you.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “If I move, are you going to scream?” I nod. “You’re asking for it.” Not sure what that means, but don’t care to know.
”I can get looked at tomorrow when I go back. It’ll—”
“Yeah...about that.” His hand goes to rub the back of his neck. “There’s been a change of plans.”
I swing my head for the hundredth time during this conversation.
“Sorry, sweetheart.”
“I am going home.”
“You don’t have a home.”
His cold fact hits my gut, and I cringe in response to it. He need not know what I plan on doing. In fact, I hope he never finds out because I’m disappearing after this.
I just need to Google someone that can help me change my name and get me the documentation I need.
“You don’t have a bank account,” he continues. “You don’t own the house you’re living in, your piece of shit dad does and—”
“What does that have to do with you? You’ve done enough to me.”
“I want to help you, but—” This time, I tread in his direction. The scream I want to break free from my lips is about to blow from pure frustration.
"You can help me by walking out of this room. I want you to leave me alone. I never want you to shadow my doorstep again. Your sister promised to—"
“Those men will find you again, and God knows what they wanted. Somehow, you’re in this.”
"No—" I reach up to rub my right temple. "—I'm taking off. I'm not your problem. And I'm never coming—" Emric is chest to chest with me, bumping me a little with his flat torso, and my lips snap shut.
My stomach twists tighter. I don’t feel good. I’m hot, have been since I ran desperately into this house, and I’ve been sweating ever since.
“You’re going to, what?” Emric’s tone is light, but it’s a ploy. A game. He’s a master manipulator, and I’m the target.
“It’s none of—”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t pull the ‘none of your business’ line with me. I’ve heard the shit so often in my lifetime with Reagan that I’m not going to deal with it when it comes to you.”
I force my chin to rise. It’s time to show him I’m not the weak little girl he picked up during a screwed up situation. “It’s true.”
“I’ll decide on what I make my problem.”
How many different ways can you tell someone to leave you alone?
"And making sure you don't bleed to death is one. You're coming back with me in the morning after Reagan makes you breakfast. You're going to stay until I have this figured out."
“I will not be stay—”
“If you do—” He leans closer, smelling of weed and liquor. “—and do it like a good girl, I’ll get you documentation to change your identity. I will give you compensation for the trouble I put you through to start a fresh life. Whether you like it or not, sweetheart, you were in this the moment I yanked you from that shithole you were camped up in. And if you go out there now, you’re a walking neon sign for those men to come back and swoop you up. And I can’t save you.”
“You didn’t save me—”
“Oh...yes, I did.” He straightens, and his lips curl into a smile.
Does he honestly think that when he flipped over the truck I was in that he became my knight in shining armor?
Maybe in his psychotic head, he does, but not in my world. He’ll never be anything but my tormentor.
The man who shoved water down my mouth and up my nose with a cloth over my head.
The one who stabbed me in the thigh.
The one who kissed me to keep me with him when I was done fighting for my life.
“I don’t want to stay with you,” I reply. “I’ll settle with your sister.”
He shakes his head as his fingers graze my stomach and the hem of my shirt while his eyes fall downward. “Can’t.”
“Why?” I can’t move. His touch is sending shock waves of static through my body, and, for the first time, I’m not entirely terrified of him.
Or it’s that I’m so exhausted and nauseated that it doesn’t register my emotions.
"I don't want Huck to get attached to you. He'
s five, and he's impressionable." He voices it as though it'd be the worst thing in the world. Like I'm some crazy lunatic in this house now. "And Reagan is...dealing with a lot."
I open my mouth to tell him I don’t care, but I’m already inconveniencing her by being here. But it’s not my fault.
It’s his.
My shirt inches higher, and Emric’s eyes search my face to see if I‘m going to crank out for someone to help me.
I would if he didn't just tell me what he did.
A small child is sleeping in this house.
“We need to get another bandage on this and clean it.” His fingertips don’t stop grazing around where he treated my gunshot wound, and it sends goosebumps trailing down my spine and arms.
“I can do it,” I mutter, hating the sight of blood but despising his touch even more.
“You don’t like blood,” he responds as though he can read my mind. “You freak out every time you see it.”
I want to ask him how he knows that, but he probably studies me more than I noticed.
“Stormi, I—” An ear-piercing scream sounds outside my bedroom, and Emric is already sprinting for the door.
It echoes in my ears as he disappears through the opening, leaving me trembling in fear of what’s going on.
And if more demons are out to get, not only me but all of us.
Having Stormi sitting across from my sister at her dining room table is one of the most uncomfortable and awkward meals I’ve ever had.
The clinking of silverware against glass, the deafening silence ringing around the room, I find myself fighting to keep still.
What’s even more unnerving is that she heard my sister scream in the middle of the night from one of her nightmares. Fucked up part is that Wade told me that it was new. And it doesn’t get past me that Stormi might be the reason why.
Her presence here has shaken up the house more than it already was. Wade already hinted that he wanted to slam his fist in my face when he came home last night after Reagan half-ass ratted me out. Huck is beyond himself with wanting to know everything about her, and all I want to do is...no clue.
So many mixed emotions make their way through my body. Tequila and a glass are the only two things I can focus on without feeling any sort of regret. Emptied out a full pint of the golden liquid last night, but the aftermath of my hangover this morning is still nothing compared to the strain in the room.