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“Don’t tell my baby what she needs to do. That is my job.”
I hurl my disgust at him. “Your job?” I look at Sadie, who’s letting Ray wrap an arm around her. “Sadie, listen to me. If you need a safe— “
“Rem, stop,” she says softly. “It’s better for both of us if you just go.”
“Go? And leave you with this ass wipe?”
Sadie won’t meet my eye and Ray is ready to fight.
“Get out of here, you little bum,” he growls, reaching for my backpack on the couch. “Go back to the streets where you came from.” He walks to the front door, swinging it open.
“Sadie, you’ve gotta come with me,” I say, looking at her. But she has crumbled in on herself. She hardly looks strong enough to stand on her own two feet, let alone stand up to this man.
Ray tosses my bag out the apartment door, and my hands are fists, ready to pounce. “I’ll call the goddamn cops,” he says. He pulls out his phone and punches in 911. He speaks in a cool, calculated voice, daring me to stop him. “Yep, there’s an intruder in my home. We need backup. Now.”
My eyes shake with incredulity. “You’re seriously demented,” I hiss, stepping as close as I can to his personal space. “Sadie deserves a hell of a lot better than you.”
“Like you’re one to talk, Sadie told me all about you,” he growls. He pushes me against the wall, not backing down. “She told me how you got kicked out of home after home,” he mocks. “How no one wanted you. How you’re nothing but a little skank.”
Ray is the kind of monster I know all too well. Sadie is his plaything and I hate it. I hate it so fucking bad. Sweet, kind, Sadie—she deserves more than the life she’s got.
More than a life with Ray.
The fire inside me rages, and I push back. Hard. My hands against his chest, refusing to let him win. Sadie screams as Ray is flung across the room, a loud crack from his neck as he hits the wall. I possess a strength I’ve never felt before—I just pushed a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man across a room. With the force of my hands alone.
Ray slides down the wall, crashing into a lamp, and the apartment shakes as he slumps to the ground.
Ray doesn’t make a sound. No gasping for breath. No shouts of fury. The floor of the apartment shakes as I step toward him, Sadie and I silently taking in what just happened. The pictures on the walls fall to the floor glass shattering, and dishes clanking as I step to Ray, leaning closer—terrified that what just happened was permanent.
“You killed him,” she whispers.
With shaky hands, I check his pulse, terrified that her words are true. He may be a horrible man… but death?
“Oh my god, he’s really dead…” Sadie is on her knees, her hands on his face, trying to check for signs life.
There are none.
I killed him.
I just fucking killed a man. With my bare hands.
The anger that had fueled me has left me drained.
No. No. No.
I may be many things—but a killer?
“Rem, what are we going to do?” she asks, pulling my face toward hers, fear flaming in her eyes. Tears stream down her cheeks and I know she is on the verge of falling apart.
“Listen, Sadie, it’s okay.”
“It’s not… he’s gone… the cops are coming and…” She has her hands on Ray’s cheeks, trying to process the fact that he is gone. “I thought I loved him… but he was so cruel.”
“I know, Sadie,” I say looking down at my hands. “I don’t know how I did that. It was like I was possessed.”
“You always did take care of me.”
“And now I need to go in order to protect you.”
“Where? Sadie’s eyes meet mine. “Rem, you have no one else.”
“I’ll be okay,” I tell her, but I’m scared. Scared of staying around and getting charged with murder. Trying not to hyperventilate, I nod, returning to survival mode once more. Hell, it’s the place I know the best. “I’ll keep running,” I tell her. “I don’t need you to lie for me. Say whatever you need to say to protect yourself, okay?”
“Rem, I won’t tell the cops anything.”
I know it is sweet to think so, to believe she can say some stranger crept into her home and killed her lover, but police will look at the evidence. They will trace me to her home. They will pin this murder on me.
“Do you have a tent?” I ask Sadie as I grab my backpack from the front steps. She nods a yes, already moving to the hall closet. “And I’m going to need that spaghetti dinner to go.”
A few minutes later, I have what I need and am saying goodbye. “You are going to be okay, Sadie,” I say, so badly wanting to console her. “I’m just sorry.”
