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“Then why do you have Rachel’s name tattooed on your fucking ribs?”
“Because I loved her,” he answers quickly.
“And…Amelia?” I sputter.
“I loved her,” he repeats.
“And Catherine?”
He just looks at me. He doesn’t feel the need to say anything at all now.
I hold the back of my hand to my mouth, trying to keep back the sob building in my throat, but it’s useless. It escapes me anyway, loud and awful. I can’t understand this. I can’t wrap my head around what I’m seeing.
“Why?” I whisper. “Why ismyname at the verytopof your list?”
“Sorrell. If you’ll just let me explain…”
I bolt for the door, unable to bear it a second longer. The confusion. The panic. The untenable agony, tearing me apart. It feels like death itself, roaring through my veins, channeling a pathway to the center of my chest, where it will wrap itself around my heart like barbed wire and fucking kill me.
I have to get away.
In the hallway.
Running toward the stairs.
Tripping, stumbling, falling.
Pain flashing through my knees.
Another hallway.
Another set of stairs.
“SORRELL, WAIT!”
I run.
I run so hard, I don’t even feel myself break.
17
SORRELL
I’m soakeddown to the skin.
My legs ache. My thighs burn. My lungs scream. I’m covered in mud.
I race down the hillside, barely able to keep myself upright. Some horrendous fear roars at the back of my mind, warning that if I stop running, a truly horrific fate will befall me, and I can’t reason myself out of that fear’s grasp. I feel as though I’m trapped inside an hourglass, sinking into the sand, which pours from one end to the other, too fast, and I’m scrambling at the sides of the glass, trying to keep myself from disappearing, to stop myself from being swallowed by the narrow gap, to stop myself from being unmade.
My skull is splintering apart.
I tear through the trees, careening blindly onward, not thinking about where I’m heading. It’s dark, and I’m freezing, and I can’t see where the fuck I’m going, but I don’t stop running. Eventually, I hit a road. I keep running.
I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life and I don’t know why.
I just keep running.
The night stretches on forever in front of me. I roll my ankles. I fall and get back up again. My hands are slick with blood, my palms torn open.
