by Lyla Payne
I’d run out of tasks that could be used to stall bedtime a little before two a.m. Exhaustion made my limbs heavy as I paused in the doorway to the living room, watching him for a moment. Tritt was so handsome. He’d stolen my heart on my fifteenth birthday when he’d left flowers in my locker and asked me to be his date for homecoming. He’d been a senior at the time, captain of the football team, the whole fucking cheesy nine yards. And he’d wanted me.
He’d been crowned homecoming king less than three weeks later and took my virginity the same night. Looking back, I often wondered if I’d really given it freely, but he’d convinced me I had, even if the memory remained fuzzy around the edges. In those early days, Tritt could convince me of anything. My parents had loved him. Everyone had loved him. Hell, I’d loved him, too.
I’d thought so, anyway.
“I’m tired, Tritt. I’m heading to bed.”
“Be there in a second.”
Maybe things would be normal. He could have forgotten about the whole thing with what’s-his-name or the fact that I hadn’t announced my attached status in the first five seconds of meeting someone.
Could have, but hadn’t.
My fingers twitched, shaking again as I changed into shorts and a tank top, not bothering with underwear. Tritt had ripped too many good pairs already.
The sight of his bulky frame in the doorway made me jump. “Oh. You scared me.”
The leer on his face said he’d meant to, but he made no reply. Instead, he used the bathroom and climbed into bed naked, beckoning me toward him after I’d brushed my teeth. Tritt didn’t stay over all that often. Even though he enjoyed reminding me that I belonged to him, he had no such notions of loyalty where his junk was concerned. Not that I cared how many other girls he slept with as long as we used condoms. It might make me a horrible person, but I prayed every night that he would find someone else he enjoyed torturing more than me.
He pulled me onto his lap when I tried to sit on the mattress next to him. The darkness in his face tangled with the manic snapping of his bright eyes shoved my throbbing heart into my throat. Fear landed in my stomach like a bowling ball made of snakes, and I struggled to breathe, to stay still. Fighting would only make it worse.
A heavy hand settled on my hip, squeezing hard. “You embarrassed me tonight, Dinah.”
“I…I’m sorry. I should have told that guy straight away that we’re together.” Humiliation burned, but not as hot as my terror. I’d given up insisting things weren’t my fault, weren’t as he saw them, a long time ago. It didn’t do any good, but apologizing sometimes worked.
His right eye twitched. “You know better. You’re mine, Dinah. Forever.”
I nodded, wincing as his hand slid up under my tank top and squeezed my breast. His thumb and forefinger pinched my nipple, twisting so hard I couldn’t help but cry out.
“These tits are mine.”
I bit my lip. He was acting crazier than usual, making me worry about what kind of drugs he’d taken when my back had been turned. He stopped abusing my boobs after the tears pooling in my eyes satisfied him. My body shuddered as he licked the salty tracks off my cheeks.
Tritt’s hand landed on my knee, sweeping upward until it slid under my shorts. He thrust two rough fingers inside me. “This dry-ass pussy is mine.”
He twisted the fingers as though trying to turn me on—something else he’d given up years ago. “All of its mine, Dinah. I’m going to make sure you never forget it again, not for a second.”
With that, he lifted me into his arms, nuzzling my neck in the sweetest way. Then he threw me so hard I flew off the bed, my back slamming into the wall. I landed in a heap on the floor.
My vision swam with spots of light, and black clouds rolled in from the periphery. The sound of Tritt’s footsteps smashing the carpet snapped me to attention, but not soon enough. His foot collided with my rib cage. Thick spiderwebs of pain cracked through my middle. I tried to scramble away, a sob tearing from my throat at the sharp stabs of agony that accompanied movement. It made it hard to breathe, little shards of glass jabbing into my lungs.
The dark bedroom turned Tritt into a shadow of a monster as he leaned down and grabbed a fistful of my hair. I crawled with him for a few feet, trying to alleviate the pressure, but then he jerked me backward, smacking my head and shoulders into the wall. Stars exploded and I gagged on vomit, curling into the fetal position. A full-length mirror that was propped in the corner fell down, shattering when it hit the footlocker at the base of my bed.
He kicked me again, so many times I lost count. All in my middle, where the bruises wouldn’t show. Sounds filled the room, like some kind of wounded animal on my friend Manda’s farm. Tritt paused in his attack long enough for me to realize the noises were coming from me.
It had never been this bad. Usually rough sex, maybe a punch to the ribs or bite marks on my breasts, but tonight it felt calculated, as though he had more in mind. The realization scared me in a brand-new way, instinct screaming that if I didn’t get away from him I might not survive.
I inched toward the door on my belly. He watched my slow, pained progress with a calm that drove the last shreds of hope from my heart, and before I made it halfway there, he aimed another kick at my ribs. They popped as he fell on top of me, one hand scrabbling for the band of my shorts and the other wrapped hard around my throat to cut off my scream.
The air in my lungs went stale. I gasped like a fish tossed on the bottom of a boat as nothing went in, nothing came out. His eyes bulged, filled with glee at my desperate terror, and he leaned down to shove his tongue in my mouth, leaving a wet trail of drool behind. He let up long enough for me to grab two breaths before he clamped down again. Stale, hot breath hit my face.
“I’m going to fuck you hard so you’ll never forget it until the day you die.” The manic flutter in his eyes increased. “I’ve always wondered if I could fuck someone to death. What do you say, Dinah? Want to see if it’s possible?”
I struggled underneath him, my fingernails digging into his back. They came away wet with sweat and blood, but he didn’t seem to notice. He let me take two more breaths, then shoved his knee between mine, prying my legs apart. My hands beat the carpet, body desperate for oxygen.
The pain that sliced through my right palm took a moment to register among the rest of the agony, then I remembered the broken glass. I groped for one that felt biggest, darkness closing in all around me. I closed my eyes and slammed the glass into his side. Warmth gushed over my hand and the pressure on my windpipe released. Air ripped into my lungs, painful like when blood flows back into a sleeping limb. I gasped and gagged, retching onto the carpet.
“You bitch.”
He came at me again, the shard of glass extracted from his bloody side and now aimed at me. I twisted away at the last moment, causing his wild swing to slice off some skin from my stomach but he missed doing mortal damage. My fingers found purchase on my bookcase. When I grabbed on, the shelves tumbled down face-first, spilling useless books and knickknacks on the floor. The wound in my side ripped and stung as Tritt grabbed another fistful of hair.
“Fucking hold still, you stupid slut. I’m going to slice your pretty little face off so no one else will ever want between your legs again.”
I sobbed, pulling against his grip, determined to make this as hard as possible for him but knowing this was the end. He was too strong. Whatever drugs he’d taken had shaken loose the sparse remnants of his sanity.
“For God’s sake, Dinah, do you know what time— What the hell?” Jeyne stood in the doorway, her gaping mouth illuminated by the moonlight sneaking through my curtains.
“Help,” I begged weakly, for once not caring what she thought of this situation or me. Tritt was going to kill me. Probably her now, too.
Tritt whirled, lunging for Jeyne. She moved quickly, like a cat, sidestepping him but bringing herself farther into the room, into harm’s way. He came at her again, and she swung her messenger bag, which
I knew from experience was full of science books and heavy as fuck. It caught him in the jaw and he spun into the windows. It could have been because of the alcohol or the drugs, or the blood loss from where I’d stabbed him, but Tritt lost his balance. He scrabbled at the gauzy curtains, yanking to try to right himself but only succeeding in pulling the cheap metal bar down on his head before tipping sideways to the floor.
His head met the corner of my grandfather’s WWII footlocker with a sick, squishy thud, then he rolled to the floor and didn’t move.
Jeyne dropped to her knees, her fingers curled into the shaggy carpet and her face devoid of color. I let the sobs pour out of me while I clutched my side, trying to staunch the blood. Every breath scraped my throat raw, stabbed my ribs into my lungs, and my back throbbed where it had hit the wall. My skull was a giant ball of agony. None of us moved for at least five minutes. Jeyne knelt, still shaking, but I couldn’t help her because I couldn’t help me. Even sitting perfectly still the pain made me want to scream.
“Do you have your phone?” I whispered, trying not to move even my lips.
She shook her head over and over, like she didn’t understand the question or maybe she wanted to dislodge the memory of the past ten minutes.
“Jeyne! We need to call the cops before he wakes up.”
This time her gaze jerked from Tritt’s motionless body to me, horror morphing her plain, pretty features into a Halloween mask. “He’s not breathing, Dinah. I think he’s d-dead.”
“What? Don’t be dumb. He…he just hit his head.” I started to move toward him, but the glass knives in my torso stopped me.
Or maybe it was fact that I didn’t want to go near him.
“I can’t check his pulse, Jeyne. Asshole cracked some ribs, I think, and I’m bleeding everywhere.” Her gaze flicked back to Tritt. “Please. We need to call the cops.”
Jeyne moved, inch by excruciating inch, with the kind of fear I’ve lived with for years etching lines on her face, until her trembling fingers found Tritt’s wrist. I held my breath as they lingered there, sure he’d leap up at any moment, and the way her hand jerked violently as it moved to his throat tells me similar worries danced through Jeyne’s mind.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as her dark gaze found my green one in the moonlight. “He’s dead, Dinah. We killed him.”
Then the entire room went black.
I woke up to a splash of cold water, sputtering and jerking as though running from a bad dream. Sharp stabs of pain in my middle wrenched loose a shriek from my throat and woke me fully. My eyes flew open to find Jeyne’s face hovering over me in the darkness.
Her eyes were dull. Lifeless. “You passed out.”
“What? Why?”
Then it all came back. The reason my insides felt like crushed glass. The secret behind the throbbing in my head, hand, and side. I risked a glance at the foot of my bed and blanched. Tritt was still lying there, a little bloody but looking as though he might be asleep. “Oh my God.”
Jeyne dropped next to me, leaning against the wall and pulling her knees into her chest. I managed to scoot over to her, grunting with every little movement. The touch of her leg against mine anchored me in reality. We stared at Tritt’s naked body. It felt strange taking comfort from her presence, but I did.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
The question didn’t sound normal coming out of her mouth, at least not directed toward me, but things were different now. In a heartbeat, our relationship had flipped. We had something to focus on besides making each other miserable.
Even so, I clung to my knee-jerk impatience. Refused to admit the reason we were being forced to change. “Yeah, I mean, I just killed my boyfriend. I’m awesome.”
Instead of shrinking away as usual, she scooted forward until I couldn’t avoid her gaze. Her eyes went invisible in the dark, her face like a skeleton’s, but the intensity radiating from her body made it clear this was not the mouse of a roommate I’d expected home an hour ago.
“I’m sorry.” The apology felt as weird coming from me as the concern had from her. “I’m pretty banged up, but I’ll live.”
She winced at my bad choice of words. “You’re bleeding. What about that?”
“I think it’s just a scratch.”
“Do you think any of the ribs punctured a lung? That’s dangerous.”
“You’re barely out of medical school, Jeyne,” I snapped, clinging to old habits. Normalcy. “Forgive me if I’m less than ready to take your advice.”
The entire scene flickered from complete and utter disbelief—like living in a movie—to our comfortable reality of sarcasm and sharply aimed barbs. Deep in my gut, I knew the way we had been was the fantasy now.
This was real. We’d killed Tritt.
We hadn’t meant to, but who knew if the cops would buy that? It was two against one, and Jeyne had no injuries. A sharp memory of a local cop in Muscatine—the one who had listened to me, photographed my injuries, promised to help me escape—laughing over my stupidity with Tritt dumped old fear atop these new ones. I ground my teeth, clenching my jaw tightly shut.
Not all cops are bad. Not all cops are bad.
But I’d tried so many times to get out, and everyone had slapped me in the face. This was never what I wanted, but it was hard not to see the glimmer of possibility in the horror of it all.
A wretched sob pulled my guts apart as Jeyne’s cold hand found mine on the floor. “Dinah. Keep it together.”
“Keep it together?” I shrieked, my sanity dangerously close to evaporating entirely. “How exactly should I do that?”
“Let’s go into the bathroom and get you cleaned up. We should at least stop the bleeding and bandage your side.”
I wanted to argue, but the fight dripped out of me, gathering on the floor in a puddle. Whole sentences melted before they could find a way from my mind to my mouth. Even the pain as Jeyne helped me to my feet felt far away. I was underwater trying to breathe. Attempting to walk on a silty, uneven riverbed littered with sharp shells and slippery moss.
She flicked on the light in the bathroom, her face as pale as a girl in a casket. My own reflection looked like something out of Fright Night. Black makeup ringed my eyes. Dark fingerprint bruises slashed across my pale throat. Blood was smeared all over my hands, and the realization that it wasn’t all mine sent me gagging into the sink.
The feel of Jeyne’s fingers tugging my hair away from my chin, back over my shoulders, and the weight of her hand on my back barely registered. My stomach emptied itself, and then I cupped cold water in my hands and splashed it on my face. When I could manage to stand up without hanging onto the counter for dear life, I gingerly lifted the edge of my ripped tank top.
The cut on my side still wept blood, but it didn’t looked as though it needed anything more than some peroxide and a big Band-Aid. I swatted Jeyne’s hands away when she reached over with a clean washrag, dropping my shirt back into place.
“Stop. What are we doing?” I took a deep breath and faced facts. “We have to call the cops.”
“Dinah…”
“The longer we put it off, the more suspicious it looks. And I don’t want to wash off any more evidence that he beat me up or whatever before they get here.” Tears started again, burning my throat and stinging my eyes.
I didn’t even know why I was crying. I hated Tritt. I’d dreamed of getting away from him for the past five years. But I hadn’t wanted him dead.
Had I?
Jeyne’s dark-brown eyes latched on to mine. They were full of things I’d never associated with my annoyingly meek roommate before—desperation and terror so palpable my palms broke out in a sweat.
Her voice floated like feathers on a summer breeze, and her words seemed to take forever to make sense. When they rearranged, they hit me like yet another punch to the gut.
“We can’t call the cops, Dinah. We have to get rid of him.”
Also by LYLA PAYNE
WHITMAN UNIVERSI
TY
Broken at Love
By Referral Only
Be My Downfall
Staying On Top
Living the Dream
Going for Broke (published in Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology)
LOWCOUNTRY MYSTERIES
Not Quite Dead
Not Quite Cold
Not Quite True
Quite Curious
Not Quite Gone
Quite Precarious (December 29th, 2015)
Mistletoe & Mr. Right
Sleigh Bells & Second Chances (October 6, 2015)
SECRETS DON’T MAKE FRIENDS
Secrets Don’t Make Friends (November 17th, 2015)
Young Adult Novels Written as TRISHA LEIGH
THE LAST YEAR
Whispers in Autumn
Winter Omens
Betrayals in Spring
Summer Ruins
THE CAVY FILES
Gypsy
Alliance
Buried (January 12th, 2016)
THE HISTORIANS
Return Once More (October 20th, 2015)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
You might think that by a fifteenth or sixteenth (omg I’ve lost count and am too lazy to look it up!) I would have thanked everyone there is to thank or just cut and paste these things, but you would be wrong! I never ceases to amaze me how different the process is for each book, front to back, and even when I’m thanking some of the same people they have each grown with me and my projects to the point where I’m no longer sure any of this would be possible if I lost a single one of them.
Eisley Jacobs and Iona Nicole, you continue to not only give me beautiful covers but support in a hundred different ways by delivering graphic or website genius at a moment’s notice.
Danielle Poiesz - if I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve published, that means I’ve lost count of how many books we’ve worked on together because it’s been nearly all of them. There’s nearly no one I would trust so implicitly with my characters, ideas, stories, and occasionally, my sanity. I am so thankful not only for your sound professional advice, but that we’ve become friends within this crazy process.