“There she is,” Ray spoke, practically gliding as he moved beside the line of guys. “My heart, my love. You know why we’re all here, don’t you?” His tone was laced with both adoration and animosity; he was not happy I’d gotten so close to these men.
I didn’t answer him, even though I knew the truth. Why we were here…it sure as hell wasn’t going to be pretty.
“You, amorcito, must choose.” Ray smiled, his teeth perfect and white. He wore the face of a killer, a madman, a psycho of epic proportions, and I’d fallen for every bit of it. I was stupid, and now I had to face the consequences of my choice. I ran from him, and now there was no running. No more hiding. It was far too late for that.
Ray wanted me to choose between these men, the ones who’d each claimed a part of my heart—the heart that had been absolutely shattered and broken when I found out just what kind of man he was.
I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out. I stood five feet in front of the male lineup, and yet I was motionless, unable to say anything. My hands shook at my sides, and I felt my heart beating rapidly in my chest, almost as if it wanted to break through my lungs and ribcage and run away from this scene.
I…I couldn’t choose.
Ray waited a few moments, watching me with those lively eyes, before turning to the first one, Will. In a quick jerk of a movement, he plunged the knife directly into Will’s abdomen, causing Will to cry out and slip from the chair.
“No!” I cried, but it was too late.
Ray kicked the chair back, letting Will’s feet hang just a foot above the ground. Will’s body moved for practically half a minute, the blood oozing from his knife wound slowly coating his entire stomach, until he stopped moving altogether.
Will was dead, and it was my fault.
“There,” Ray said, slapping Will’s motionless body with the blood-stained knife. “That should make your decision a bit easier, no?” He sounded innocent, as if he didn’t just stab Will and hang him. As if this was fun, just a game to him.
And, I supposed, it was. He didn’t care about these guys. He knew I did. This was to get back at me for what I did to him all that time ago.
Tears lined my eyes as he moved behind the row of guys, stopping when he stood behind Declan. “No,” I cried, the first tear finding its way free, cascading down my cheek for the worst reason possible.
I was going to watch every single one of them die.
Ray said nothing else as he yanked the chair back, causing Declan to fall, just as Will had. Unlike Will though, Declan had no other injury. He was able to focus on the strangulation happening. It wasn’t far enough of a drop to snap his neck. New, fresh tears formed when I watched Declan, my sweet, loveable roommate, die right next to his brother.
“Please,” I begged, falling to my knees. “Stop.”
Still standing behind them, his bloodied hand gripping the chair Travis stood on, Ray sent me a cold, chilling smile. With his other hand, the one holding onto the knife, he took hold of Sawyer’s chair, too. He waited until Declan’s body stopped writhing before he tore them out from under the two remaining guys.
I closed my eyes, unable to watch Travis and Sawyer die. Sawyer was a drunk mess, but he didn’t deserve this end, and Travis? Travis was…
A rough, strong hand grabbed my chin, squeezing hard, jerking my face up as tears fell from my eyes. “Look, Ash,” Ray’s voice entered my ears. His lips grazed my cheeks as he added, “Look at what you did to them.”
“No,” I muttered, but my eyes peeked open anyway.
Will, Declan, Travis, and Sawyer swung in a nonexistent breeze, their bodies still, their heads all hung low. They were nothing but corpses before me, and it was then I knew: Ray was right. This was my fault. They had all died because of me.
My vision of the swinging bodies was blocked out by Ray, who moved to kneel before me. The hand holding onto my jaw loosened but did not release me. Instead, it moved down to my neck. “Amorcito,” Ray whispered, “you were supposed to choose me.”
I met his eyes, eyes that I never wanted to see again, not after that day in the cabin. “I’m sorry,” I cried, breaking inside. This man could bring me to my knees and still make me feel like I had more to lose.
Ray cocked his head, staring at me for a few moments before placing his lips on my forehead. The touch of his mouth was warm, and I lost myself in it even though I knew I shouldn’t. This man was my greatest regret and my greatest weakness all rolled into one, the grim reaper, brought to life.
“I’ll see you again soon,” he whispered against my forehead.
A sharp, stinging pain erupted in my gut, and searing hot agony coursed through my body. As Ray withdrew himself from me, moving to stand before me, I looked down, finding his knife protruding from my gut. I fell over, my vision blacking out.
So this was it, huh? This was my end. Fitting. I’d die surrounded by the ones I should’ve saved by knowing better than to get close to them.
I woke up as I rolled out of my dream, instantly awake—probably because I was falling off the bed. I slammed onto the ground, my bruised body yelling at me, why’d you have to go and do that? Don’t you know I’m still recovering? Being hit by a fucking car ain’t exactly easy, you know.
My breath caught in the back of my throat as I felt a remnant pain in my stomach from the dream. I touched my gut, not feeling any knife or wound, no blood at all.
Declan’s sleepy voice came from his bed, “Ash? Ash, are you okay?” He was in the process of turning to see me, and once he saw me on the floor, he practically fell out of bed, though he was much smoother about it.
My nerves were on fire, my lungs desperately gasping for air that would not come. I heaved for air over and over, panic setting in. This was real, even though the dream wasn’t. Ray was here, somewhere, waiting for the perfect moment to strike again. What the fuck was I supposed to do?
How could I not fall apart?
Declan’s hand was warm on my lower back, and before I had the presence of mind to push him away, he was pulling me into his lap, holding me against his chest—bare, because he didn’t wear a shirt to bed. “Breathe,” he said, as if breathing was the easiest thing in the world. “Whatever it was, it was just a nightmare.”
Just a nightmare. It wouldn’t remain a nightmare, not if I didn’t cut myself off from my drugs of choice—my rich, beautiful, broken boys who were more like manly bullies than anything. The nightmare would become reality, and if it did, I would become nothing but an empty, hollow shell.
Declan’s chest was warm, comforting in ways I knew I shouldn’t like. But I did, and that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? My feelings were never my own. Ray wanted everything for himself. Me, my heart and my soul, and all the emotions that encompassed. Liking Declan, or any of the others, could only end in disaster. I was a fool for not realizing it sooner.
I closed my eyes, breathing in slowly through my nose, focusing on filling up my lungs. I held the breath in, even though it felt like I was asphyxiating from a lack of air, and after a few moments exhaled through my mouth. Relaxing when I felt like flipping the fuck out was one the hardest things I had to do.
It took me a long while, but eventually my breathing was under control. The panic attack faded away, leaving me nestled in Declan’s lap like I was some lap cat. One of my hands rested on his chest, my palm flat against his pectoral muscles. He wasn’t overly defined like Sawyer was, but there was not an ounce of fat anywhere on him. He was perfect crush material; any girl would’ve fallen for him, not just me.
“Declan,” I whispered his name, doing my best to disentangle myself from him. “I…” Through the darkness, we met eyes, and my gut twisted. Not in the knife-impaling way, but in the oh God, I really want to fuck him kind of way.
His fingertips brushed my cheek, and I let out the breathiest of sighs ever to escape me. My hand on his chest curled into a fist, and I knew I’d hate myself later for this, but I just couldn’t.
I c
ouldn’t do it.
“I have to go,” I said, pulling myself off him. I didn’t even grab shoes, but I did grab my skateboard. A bad idea to skate while my body still ached like a bitch, but at this point, I didn’t care about my well-being. I just wanted everyone else to be safe.
And they could be—they could be safe and happy…without me.
“Ash!” Declan called for me, but I was already out the door, dashing through the hall. “Ash, wait!”
I didn’t wait. I couldn’t wait, even though I could hardly see since the hallway’s lights were so bright. With my bare feet on the carpet, I drew myself to the elevator, needing…needing something I couldn’t name. It was only as I emerged into the night air that I realized what it was.
Peace.
I needed peace.
Chapter Eleven – Travis
It was unreasonably late—or early, depending on how you looked at it—when I got a call, which woke me from a dreamless sleep. My arm shot out from the blankets covering me, and I clumsily reached for my phone. I didn’t have a roommate to bother, but the ringtone sure as shit bothered me.
Who the hell…
My thoughts halted the moment I saw who it was. Declan. There was only one reason he would ever call me, let alone bother me in the middle of the night.
Ash.
I picked it up, slowly sitting up as I said, “What’s going on?”
“It’s Ash,” Declan said. “She woke up having a panic attack, and I tried to calm her down, but…” He trailed off, leading me to only assume where he was trying to go with this.
“But what?”
“But she’s gone. She took her skateboard and ran. She left her phone here. I don’t know what to do.” Declan sounded frantic, keying me into the fact that whatever he felt for Ash was real. He cared about her, and because he cared about her, he was calling me, to see if I could help, because he knew I felt the same.
That girl…she was going to be the death of me.
“Let me throw on some clothes, then I’ll call you back.” I hung up, heaving myself out of bed as I grabbed whatever lay on top in the dresser. A shirt and pants, shoes came next. With my key in my pocket I was out of the dorm in a minute, checking to make sure my door was locked before calling Declan back.
He answered on the first ring.
Before he could say anything, I said, “You and I are going to search the campus for her. She can’t have gone far.”
Declan muttered, “But with everything that’s happened…”
“I know,” I said. Things hadn’t been smooth and simple around here lately. “That’s why you’re going to stay on the line with me. If you see her, let me know. If you see anything else that looks fishy…”
Declan got the gist of it. “Okay, fine.” I heard the elevator ding. “Any idea where she’d go?”
I tried thinking of what Ash would do, but that was the problem with her. Ash was unpredictable. She’d obviously been through something in her past to make her like this, but what that was, I had no idea. She wasn’t like any girl I’d met before, and whereas at literally any other time I would praise her being different, right now it only made me irate.
Who the hell could predict where she’d go? I wanted to say she’d stay on campus, but even that I wasn’t sure. You’d think she’d want to stay in her dorm room whenever she could after being hit by a car, but apparently it didn’t faze her.
Ash was strong, but I knew that strength could only take her so far, only do so much. That strength just might be hiding a weakness, and I had to figure out what it was. Maybe then I’d get to the root of it all, find out why she’d flipped a switch at Declan and me in the hospital.
For now, Declan and I were on the same side.
“I don’t know,” I said once I reached the elevator. “I hope she stayed on campus.”
“And if she didn’t? If we can’t find her?” Declan’s voice grew frantic. “What if we find her, but it’s too late…if someone hit her on purpose, if they’re watching her—”
My free hand clenched into a fist at my side. “It won’t be too late.” I sounded confident, even though I truly wasn’t. If we were too late, if someone had gotten their hands on her first, then I would do what I had to do and take care of them, flex the skills I’d learned from the family.
“But if it is—” Declan just couldn’t let the depressing possibility go.
“It won’t be,” I firmly said, wishing I could hang up and end the conversation. I never had a vendetta against Declan, but he did get on my nerves sometimes. I could see why Sawyer wanted to dish it out to him. Although, his plan of revenge had been royally fucked up by one particular pink-tipped blonde.
I emerged outside, the night air crisp and cool. “I’ll check near the union. You check by your dorm and the science halls.”
“Got it.”
We said nothing else to each other as we went along. Hillcrest’s campus was almost eerie when it was past a certain time in the night. After midnight, the sidewalks were empty, no students to be seen. All the parties were held off-campus, too. Hillcrest wasn’t the place to go if you wanted party central. Too expensive for that.
It was just after three in the morning when Declan called me, so I knew morning would come soon. A few more hours of darkness before daylight sprouted and grew upon the world, and with any luck, Declan or I would find her before then.
If someone was after her, let them come. Let them try and hurt her again. I would take them down so fast they didn’t even know what was happening.
Alas, in order for me to do what the men in my family did best, I would have to know the truth. The whole truth. Ash would have to tell me everything, which I knew was going to be difficult for her. Whatever it was, she was used to keeping it nestled away, tucked inside of her so far lost in her mind she was able to act as if it didn’t exist. She was a good actress, far better than I ever believed she was.
But now I knew the truth. Ash was hiding something, and it was something big. Ash was no angel. Angels became demons the moment they stepped foot on Hillcrest, anyway. They lost their pretty white wings and learned to love the depravity the rich were so used to having. No one remained pure here.
Ash, though, had never been pure. She’d always hidden what made her tick, and now that the hour drew close, now that I was so very near figuring out what that was, I couldn’t help but be excited. I was dying to know what her past was, what made Ash so very different from everyone else I’d ever met.
It seemed, though, I wasn’t the only one with my eye on her—and I didn’t mean Declan, or even Sawyer. It was only now, practically a month after the fact, that I put two and two together. Someone had sent Sawyer a letter. Unmarked, no return address, slipped into the mail slot in the front door. Someone had been watching this whole time, and I was too wound up in Ash to look at the bigger picture here.
And the bigger picture said she was never alone. The bigger picture must involve someone else, but who? Could the same one who hit her have attacked Will? I didn’t so much care about Will, but if it was true, it proved that person was willing to go to any lengths to scare her, and that was the very opposite of okay.
I searched the north end of campus, and Declan searched the south side. We eventually converged in the quad, a big, open green area, full of sidewalks crisscrossing. I hung up the phone when I spotted him, and he did the same. We met each other, neither of us appearing too thrilled with the prospect of losing Ash.
It was quite possible we each went around her as she skated along, but with the silence of the night, we would’ve heard her if she was anywhere nearby.
“Anything?” Declan asked, and I shot him a dour look. If I found her, she’d be with me, wouldn’t she? Come on. He had to be smarter than that. Perhaps the fool was just hopeful, hoping I’d found her and tucked her away in my dorm room safely.
Yeah, I’d learned my lesson with that. Ash was not someone to be contained, ever, and it was steadily driving me nuts.
<
br /> “She might not be on campus,” I muttered, frowning to myself. Usually I wore an air of uncaring, of boredness, but Ash brought out emotions in me that hadn’t seen the light of day for years. She was nothing like Sabrina. Sabrina was just…fun. Her condition led me to think she was right for me, but she wasn’t.
Ash, though? Ash was right for me. Ash was meant to be mine. She inspired something within me I couldn’t even name.
It seemed she did the same to Declan, go fucking figure.
Declan shoved his hands in his pockets. He wore athletic shorts and a t-shirt, the wind rustling the tips of his brown hair as he glanced all around us, probably wishing Ash would suddenly pop up and find us. “If she’s not on campus, where would she go?”
That was the question of the night, wasn’t it?
Where, oh where would our little, precious Ash go? Where, oh where could she be?
And then it came to me. “I have an idea,” I said, glancing at him. “I hope I’m wrong.”
“Why?” Declan asked, ignorant to it.
Ash was not feeling strong right now, that much was clear, and I’d seen enough to know that the broken stuck together, even if logic said they shouldn’t. Sometimes logic had nothing to do with it.
Chapter Twelve – Ash
I skated around campus for a while, not knowing what the hell I was doing. Well, actually I knew exactly what I was doing. Spiraling. I was spiraling. A downward spiral I had no idea whether or not I’d ever escape from. Climbing out of this spiral seemed more impossible as the hours wore on. Even in my dreams I lost what little sanity I had left.
No one could blame me for spiraling, right? I mean, it made sense that I was losing grip on reality thanks to the reemergence of an ex I thought locked behind bars for the rest of his life. To live through what I lived through…it changed you, made you into someone else.
Something else.
Skank: A Dark College Bully Romance (Hillcrest University Book 3) Page 9