Page 82 of Shattered In Darkness

I shut the door, hands shaking as I lock it. I breathe, counting heartbeats, plotting. The window is too small, too high. Only one chance. I pee, I flush, run the water, keep my ear tuned to the hallway. When I open the door, I do it fast.

Brody’s just outside, arms folded. I throw my shoulder into him, as hard as I can. He stumbles, not expecting it, and I bolt.

Sprinting down the hall, my feet slide, my heart pounding. The front door is ahead. My only shot. I wrench it open, a blast of icy wind slamming me in the face. Snow is everywhere, thick and blinding, but it doesn’t matter. I run. My lungs seize. The snow is up to my ankles, wet and numbing, slicing into my skin. I’m in nothing but a t-shirt, pajama pants, bare feet shoved into shoes that I found in the basement.

The night is black, the world swallowed up. I run until my legs stop working, until the cold eats up all the feeling in my hands and feet. My body collapses into the white drift.

I curl up, shaking, teeth chattering so hard I think they’ll splinter. The darkness presses in, heavy and kind. I close my eyes. Let it end. Let the cold take me. Let me dissolve into the snow and never come back.

My ribs throb with blue cold, my ears roaring with static. My head is a hollow thing. My chest is empty but it hurts anyway. I wish it would stop. The night pins me down, palms my hair, shoves my face in the snow. I shudder. I want to sleep. I want to black out. I want oblivion.

I think about my mother. The sound she made, right before the end, more silence than scream. I bet the snow remembers it, too.

Brody’s voice is still in my head. Not a boy anymore. Not my boy. He says I ruined him. He says I was always made for the dark.

Maybe I am.

I stare at the sky until it goes gray at the edges. The cold isn’t cold anymore. It’s just… gone. I feel everything and nothing. My whole body hums with panic, but it can’t move. The cold is a better cage than Brody ever built.

I blink. There’s no sound. No cars, no footsteps, no shouting.

I think I’m fading. That’s all I ever wanted. To fade. To become a smear in the snow, a rumor.

Let the cold finish me. Let Marcus spin his lies about how I disappeared. Let Brody tear his own heart out searching for me. Let them choke on the aftermath of what they tried to make me into.

But the world won’t even give me that.

I hear him.

Footsteps thunder behind me, crunching through the drifts. Arms seize me. Hard, furious, hauling me up.

Brody’s voice, loud and angry. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Lola? You want to fucking die out here?” I thrash, weak, but he’s relentless. He throws me over his shoulder, not caring if I scream. “You want to freeze? You want to make this worse? You stupid, reckless—” His words are clipped, rage trembling in every syllable.

He drags me back inside, slamming the door behind us. The warmth is sudden and searing; my skin burns as the blood tries to return, needles stabbing under my flesh.

“You don’t get to run. Not from me. Not ever again. You have no idea what I’d do to keep you here, do you? If you try that again, I’ll make sure you don’t even get to see daylight, Lola. I’m done asking. You belong to me now. You hear me?”

His grip bruises, his eyes wild. I shiver, not from cold this time, but from the terrible certainty that there’s nowhere left to run. The snow melts off my skin, dripping down onto the tile. I stare at the puddle, wishing I could sink into it and disappear.

But Brody won’t let me fade. Not now. Not ever.

I choke on panic. The cold from outside is nothing compared to his grip. I must look pathetic. Shivering, wet hair, shirt sticking to my tits. He loves it. I see how he drinks me in, sick satisfaction on his face.

“You try that again, and I’ll chain you to the fucking wall,” Brody growls. “Try it and see. You’ll wish you’d just laid down and died in the snow.”

His hands are everywhere. Crushing my wrists. Shoving my shoulder. Pinning me in place with just a thumb to my throat, pressing the pulse so it jumps wild.

Fuck.

I’m hot and cold all at once. The panic, the shame. The want. Like he’s injecting it straight into my veins with every next cruel touch.

He drags me into the main room. Throws me toward the mattress. The impact numbs my legs. I stumble, barely able to stand. He doesn’t care. He paces. A caged thing. A storm about to break the fucking windows.

Slam.

His boot hits the chair. It topples, skittering across the floor. “Thought you could outsmart me?” he barks. “You thought I wouldn’t catch you?” There’s madness now, fracturing every word. “I always fucking find you, Lola. You belong to me. That’s the only truth left.”

I try to shrink in. As small as possible. Like I could disappear into the cracks of the floorboards. It doesn’t matter; his attention seeps through everything. Watching me. Mapping every twitch. He stalks to where I sit, hauls me up by the roots of my hair, and yanks my head back. My body loses all fight.