A droning buzz filled my ears, rising to a loud roar as I clawed at every bit of exposed skin I could reach. Beyond the roar of anger, I could hear otherworldly screeches, so inhuman and deranged-sounding they could only belong to some mythical creature hell-bent on destruction. With a start, I realized it was me making those wild noises, and I paused in my assault, stunned into immobility.
It was all the opening Joshua needed.
With a bellow, he seized me around my throat, his meaty hand all but wrapping around it completely. Using his grip on me, he drove me backward until my head connected sharply with the wall. I rolled my eyes to the left, catching sight of a particularly damning shot of Brandon and me tangled together. I made a noise between a gag and a groan.
“I asked you a question, Rosemary.” Joshua shook me once, hard enough to rattle bones, and slammed my head into the wall for a second time. “How do you like it?”
It was hard to speak around the grip he had on me, hard to squeeze the word past the lump his fist created in my throat, but I managed to croak a strangled, “Bastard.”
“Wrong answer!”
“Psycho.”
His fingers tightened, making me gurgle and claw uselessly at his hand, panic filling me as what little oxygen I still had was cut off.
“I loved you, you bitch!” he screamed in my face, spit flying, his face a splotchy, mottled red. He was crazed. It was there in his eyes. There was a ledge somewhere behind him but he’d taken a running leap, tumbled over it and was now free-falling into madness. “I fucking loved you!”
For a brief moment, the fight left me and my hands tearing at his went lax.
“What?” I forced out, pushed past his rough grip. “You what?”
“What, she says. Like you didn’t know. Like you didn’t know that I fucking loved you, that I loved you this whole time! This entire fucking time! I gave you everything. Not because I had to but because I loved you!”
I laughed once, hard as it was, without humor. It came out like a strangled sob. “You didn’t love me,” I managed to choke out, only barely. Only just. “You don’t even know me.”
Like lightning, he struck and slammed me into the wall for a third time, so hard that for a moment, stars fired off in front of my eyes. Maybe it was them that had told. Maybe they’d been the ones to spill all my secrets. Maybe the fault was in them, those crooked, cruel stars who had observed my and Brandon’s every movement like spies. I rolled my head to the side, the winking stars dancing along in my field of vision, and caught a glimpse again of Brandon and me.
Joshua followed my gaze and snarled.
“Of course I loved you. I’ve always loved you. Every single thing I’ve ever done, I’ve done because I loved you! And you went behind my back with him. You betrayed me.” He bent low to my face and if I would have had it in me, if I’d been capable, I would have spit. “You want that? You’d give up all this for that? For him? You have more sense than that. You’re better than that, Rosemary!”
“Rose,” I spat at him, turning back to glare. “My. Name. Is. Rose.” Each word was a struggle that I only just won.
He slapped me with his free hand.
It was such a shock, so unexpected that I gasped, which only succeeded in him tightening his grasp on my throat. Saliva pooled in my mouth as gray overtook the edges of my vision, threatening to move in and conquer it completely.
“I built your mom a house. I’ve kept your thieving, no-good brother employed. I’ve given you everything, everything, and you spit at it!”
Not yet. But I would. If I could.
I lashed out then. I don’t know what the catalyst was, aside from blind panic that this was the end and hearing him talking about my people that way. I kicked and clawed and gargled my rage because he gave but he took. He took so much. My truths. My life. Brandon. My brother. He’d taken everything and driven us to this moment where he had me trapped against the wall like some sort of monster that needed to be contained.
I was not the monster here.
I caught him off guard with my fight but it only lasted a minute. Any ground I gained was snatched back as he pinned me again, forcing me against the wall papered with my desperation and necessary lies.
“Where is your mother going, Rosemary?” he growled, his cheeks blotched with his anger. “I had the house watched. Did you think I wouldn’t? Did you honestly think you could pull anything over on me? Me? I could have them stopped right now. One call and I could have your entire family wiped off this earth and that house burned to the ground. So where is she going? What are you planning? I know you’re planning something and sending her somewhere, you conniving bitch!”
“Fuck you.”
“Later,” he promised and I felt my stomach turn in on itself with a painful twist. “What. Are. You. Planning?”
“Bite me, asshole.” All I had was an impression of flashing teeth and then my cheek was burning, throbbing, pulsating from the spot where he’d latched on and drew blood.
The bastard bit me. He actually bit me.
Something about that struck me as both ridiculous and hilarious and I threw my head back in the limited, confined space, and I laughed long and hard.
“You’re a psycho,” I gasped, laughter and that damned fist still around my throat choking me. “A megalomaniac psycho and I won’t tell you a damn thing.”
I fought for each word and they felt like victory. A short-term but hard-earned victory.
“Am I?” he murmured, which was somehow more disturbing than his yelling. “Or am I a man in love?” He leaned closer. So close that I could smell the aftershave on his skin and his breath that was both minty and sour. “We will be married.”
I laughed again, wilder this time, harder. It was more painful somehow.
“I mean it. We will be married and if you don’t—” He shrugged and grinned maniacally. “You may find that your brother has gone missing. Maybe even dear old Mama will meet her end in a tragic car accident as she attempts to flee.”
He said it like “mah-mah” and for some reason, in spite of bigger, more immediate things to be angry at, it irritated me. I had stars fading in and out in front of my eyes. My head was being shoved so hard into the wall that I was afraid that it would go through it. And I was aggravated by hearing a bastardized version of her name on his lips.
He grinned wider, all teeth, and stroked my arm with his free hand. “Don’t think your precious Brandon is safe either, while we’re on the subject.”
Jackson and Mama were enough to put a vise on my heart and squeeze. The added threat to Brandon was too much. I broke out in a cold sweat, fighting back the shivers that wanted to accompany it. My mouth opened and closed, working uselessly to form the words to express my horror.
“Yes,” Joshua murmured, a lion toying with his prey, clearly thrilled to see the defeat in my eyes just starting to sink in and well up. “So many lives. So many precious, fragile lives, all resting on your head. Tell me, is he worth it? Is he worth them?”
I didn’t answer. Not with words. Instead, I stared horrified, as if in a trance, as his words continued to sink deeper, their claws piercing into my lungs.
“You will marry me,” he continued, that poisonous, malicious smile never wavering. “You will marry me and you will put a stop to whatever is being planned, including this running-away foolishness, and we will be happy. So very happy. Do you understand?”
I nodded, throat thick with my defeat, my surrender, the faces of those whose fates rested on my obedience running through my mind on repeat. Inside, deep down, I wailed and thrashed. On the surface, I forced that same old calm mask over my features. I allowed Rosemary to surface and I put Rose away. Rose who had always been the beast I’d felt lurking. I stuffed her down to a place deep inside me, and fastened her with chains, and she ducked her head because she k
new she belonged there. That she had always belonged there, and we were foolish to ever think she could be let out.
* * *
It had been two days of silence, of not knowing what was going on in the outside world, of waiting and inward wailing and outward apathy. Days of me regretting my final words to Brandon and of Joshua gazing at me with eyes filled with his victory and me meeting them with a blank, indifferent stare of my own. He planned a hurried wedding, called up caterers and halls and a local pastor. The only satisfaction I got was in not contributing in the least. If it bothered him, my lack of care, if it grated on his nerves, he didn’t show it. My phone had been confiscated, so I had no way of knowing if anyone had even tried calling. If Brandon had correctly guessed something wasn’t right and had gone ahead with his plans to get Mama and Jackson out of town. I didn’t know if he’d even have bothered, with all that I’d said to him before I left. I could only hope he still had. That no matter what was happening here, Mama and Jackson were at least safe. I thought they might be, judging by the way Joshua would alternate between threatening their lives and retreating into his office, yelling into his phone to “find them.” The latter moments were the closest I came to smiling.
It was evening on the third day when Joshua came out of the office beaming. A shudder ran through me as he came to stand over where I sat on the sofa, positively vibrating with his exuberance. Something was up and it wasn’t good. Because Joshua was happiest when everything was in flames around him and he stood holding the matches and gasoline. Destruction was foreplay to him, and I’d never seen him so turned on.
He didn’t say a word, just stood there with that chilling grin on his face while I eyed him warily. The Lane, stretching and fully coming to life in the gathering dusk, filled the charged silence of the room. Then, like a crack of thunder, a knock suddenly pounded on the door. It sounded as if the person on the other side was more interested in splitting the steel with their bare fists than they were on getting an answer.
“Well, aren’t you going to answer it?” Joshua asked with an exaggerated pleasantness.
The knocking came again, impossibly louder this time. More persistent. It took real effort not to cringe from the noise. Because I knew. Maybe I’d always known he would come looking for me, wondering why I hadn’t shown up like I was supposed to. Maybe I’d been waiting for him this whole time, my knight in beaten-up leather jacket.
“Rosemary, answer the damned door,” Joshua commanded, his voice sharp enough to cut. It was the voice of the real Joshua. The one who spun dreams into garish nightmares and took an immense pleasure in doing so.
And, of course, like a coward, I obeyed him.
I clenched my eyes shut once my back was to him and under my breath, I muttered a prayer to saints once forgotten to me.
They weren’t listening. They never listened to me. They didn’t even listen to Mama and she was the one who’d believed so fiercely in them.
“Rosie! Babe! Open up! I need you to—”
Joshua suddenly shoved past, the smell of his cologne and aftershave lingering as if to taunt me. I cracked open my eyes in time to see him fling open the door, that snake-charming smile on his face, venom dripping from his voice as he exclaimed, “Why, Mr. Williams. What a pleasant surprise.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Brandon took a single step inside, his brows bumped together in a scowl. His eyes slid to mine then just beyond me to the wall of shame, where our story was told in one dirty, compromising picture after another. We had no alibis. No excuses. I watched the realization hit him like it had me only days before. There was no talking our way out of this one. No lies to tell to get around it, to grant us the ability to slip away unscathed. We could do nothing but weather the fallout and pray that we came out on the other side. And maybe, judging by the resolved look on his face, he had already decided that before he came. Maybe that was why he had come in the first place. Because losers didn’t fear a loss if they had nothing left to lose.
“Rose.” Brandon’s eyes sought mine and he held them over Joshua’s shoulder. “Babe, you okay?”
“Of course she is,” Joshua announced before I could respond, drawing Brandon’s attention back to him. “In fact, she’s thrilled. Aren’t you thrilled, Rosemary-dear?”
While he was speaking, I’d started moving back toward the expensive leather sofa, prepared to sink into it. I stopped in my tracks and stared at him, jaw dropping open of its own accord, as I realized where this was going.
Joshua wasn’t deterred by my lack of response. Instead, he plowed ahead as though I had replied one way or the other.
“Can I assume you’ve come to congratulate us on the upcoming nuptials?” he asked, grinning like a fox in a full chicken coop.
I sank down onto the sofa in a heap of heavy limbs, both ashamed and mortified.
Brandon’s confused gaze strayed to mine but I couldn’t respond, couldn’t give him anything. There was nothing to give. I didn’t want him to see this. I didn’t want him to know how easily I’d fallen, how quickly I’d thrown my hands up in surrender.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brandon asked, sparing Joshua a glance, a brief one full of both venom and confusion, a mixture that resulted in a puckered forehead and narrowed eyes. “Rose, what the hell is he talking about?”
Joshua—God, how I hated him, stronger than I’d ever hated anyone or anything before, white-hot and all-consuming—turned and strode the short distance to the side of the sofa where I sat like a stunned and angry statue. When his hand came to rest on my bare shoulder, I wanted to snap at it, to sink my teeth into his flesh and bite down until I tasted blood. I wanted to lock down like a rabid pit bull and shake the meaty appendage, snarling and growling my displeasure. And yet, I did nothing. I just sat there.
I was such a coward.
As if to prove that idea, as if it needed to be proved any more than the ring on my unwilling finger, Joshua’s hand tightened on my shoulder, his fingers biting. I bit back a wince as his voice came out as a throaty snarl.
“Also, it would be best if you didn’t speak to her, Mr. Williams. If you have anything to say to my fiancée, it can be said to me.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him indicate the wall behind us as his voice returned to a normal, conversational tone that didn’t at all fit the circumstances. “After all, there’re no secrets between us, are there?”
He let go of me then and I wanted to sigh with relief that the weight was gone, that he was moving away, but he was moving closer to Brandon and though I knew Brandon could hold his own, my heart still sped up at the sight of the unstable predator stalking toward him.
“And therein lies the problem, don’t you think?”
Brandon tensed, preparing himself for whatever Joshua would do.
“It seems as though we’ve been sharing our dear Rosemary and, while I don’t know about you, Mr. Williams, I have a problem with that. Luckily for Rosemary, I’ve agreed to turn a blind eye to her...wandering ways. I’ll make an honest woman out of her yet.”
I couldn’t see it, not with his back to me, but I could practically hear the cruel smile that tugged at his lips.
“And she will do it. I don’t know if you’ve realized this yet or not, Mr. Williams, but if you haven’t, allow me to be the first to inform you. Our Rosemary is a bit of a gold-digging slut.”
He was close enough at that point that Brandon’s fist, so quick, a blur of deadly movement, clipped him in the face. A crack resounded in the room and Joshua staggered back, his head snapping to the side from the force, just enough that I could make out the line of blood that dripped from the split in his lip.
He was smiling. Impossibly, against reason, he was smiling. Making that split stretch wider, causing the blood to run a little faster. I watched in morbid fascination as he wiped at it, examining it on his hand as it came away as
if it fascinated him as well.
“Oh, Mr. Williams. You shouldn’t have done that.”
The gun appeared in Joshua’s hand so quickly—really, where had he had it stowed?—that it was like a magician’s trick. And there I sat, like a fucking useless statue, watching as Joshua came forward and jammed it into the tender flesh beneath Brandon’s chin, causing it to indent as it bit and dug in. “I thought, perhaps, I might let you live,” he continued, almost conversationally. “Probably not, but there was a chance. Oh, but not now. Now you’ll be saying goodbye to far more than just our dearest Rosemary.”
As though I’d been released from a spell, I moved then.
Slowly at first, then more deliberate, I reached for the drawer of the end table to my left. For a treasure I’d caught glimpses of over the years that was hidden there. I disregarded the deaf saints, praying directly to Mama’s Jesus that it was still there, that it was waiting for me. I prayed that it wasn’t currently in Joshua’s hand, trained on Brandon. That he hadn’t slipped it out when he’d been standing next to me, somehow managing to get his hands on it with both Brandon and I being completely unaware.
I slid the drawer open, slowly, quietly, barely a whisper, and yet it sounded as loud as a deep rumble in the room full of harsh breaths and snarled words. My heart didn’t just pound, it banged violently, making my throat tight and causing my stomach to roll, yet my hand remained steady. Even while I waited with bated breath, anticipating a shout or warning that didn’t come, my hand remained steady and sure.
I almost laughed out loud out of relief.
There it was, perfect and black with a dull shine to it. It seemed to wink at me in the soft light from the lamp above it. It was nestled next to a book of Psalms of all things, like the dark salvation that it was.
I slid it out, checking to see if Joshua had noticed before turning my attention to the clip already loaded. I didn’t bother to see if it was full—knowing Joshua, it would be. He would never have a gun lying around that wasn’t fully loaded. It was just the type of person that he was. The weight confirmed this, heavy and comforting, and I almost laughed again. Simply because I was crazy.
Losing Streak (The Lane) Page 20