AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s not true,” I reply, shaking my head from side to side. “You can’tjustnot care. Please, listen to me…don’t let him hurt me. You are completely out of touch with reality, mad with grief and resentment. You hate Tucker, I get that. But—”
“Just shut up. I’m not falling for your doe-eyed tricks. Thanks to you, Tucker’s gonna swoop in thinking he can save you. When he finds out you’re in danger, he’ll want to protect you. And while Sanchez takes care of you, I’ll take care of your man.”
“Dan, listen to me. Don’t do this! Don’t let your hatred blind you!”
He doesn’t listen to me, takes a step back, and crosses his arms over his chest. But his eyes are still as empty as ever.
“Debbie doesn’t—”
He squints, ready to attack me. “Don’t say her name,” he cuts me off. “Don’t say it! You have no right to do it!”
I try to calm down. I have to be quick, try to bring him back to reality. With trembling lips, I look him straight in the eye and say, “Tucker tried to protect her. You think he wasn’t hurt by her accident? By her death? She was his little sister! And he suffers for it every day. He feels responsible. You don’t know him, Dan. You’re blinded by your jealousy, by your resentment. Have you ever considered your own share of the responsibility? While Tucker was beating Matt for abusing his sister and she was running into a tree, where were you?!”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” he yells, pacing back and forth, rubbing his temples and forehead like a lunatic.
“Listen to me, I’m begging you. You’re better than this. Debbie wouldn’t have wanted this.”
At the mention of this name, he doesn’t move, as if hanging on my lips. He finally listens to me, without yelling at me to shut up this time.
“She loved you so much, and she loved her big brother so much. If she saw you today, how would she react? Don’t do this…please. Let me go. I don’t—”
The door suddenly opens. Sanchez enters, a small smile on his face. His pierced eyebrow shines softly in the weak moonlight. I was wrong about him. But now his mask has fallen off, and I see him for who he really is. And the more I observe his face and his features, the more I recognize in him his monster of a father.
“So, surprise, my pretty?”
“Don’t call me pretty. Don’t call me anything, asshole!”
He approaches, me and I don’t have time to think when his hand meets my cheekbone with a thud.
“Did you think that changing cities would make you untouchable? That I wouldn’t try to find the woman who killed my father? He was a monster, but I loved him.”
“Sanchez…she says your father killed her parents,” Dan begins, confused. “That’s not what you told me. You told me that she was the one who destroyed your father, her and her family, but I didn’t know that he had…that he had…killed and abused—”
“Cállate, shut up,” exclaims Sanchez. “Do you want to get back at Tucker or not?! Do you want to make him suffer?”
“Yes, but…”
“Then call him. Tell him his little bitch is here and we’re going to take care of her.”
Dan takes another breath, and his eyes meet mine.
“Don’t do it,” I whisper in his direction.
He doesn’t say anything, he just turns away and leaves the old cabin. Sanchez then turns to me, his attention focused on my face. He takes something out of his jacket. A gun!
“You should have been suspicious of me. After all, even your little sister looked smarter.”
“The day she met you, she told me she didn’t like you,” I challenge him despite my fear.
Sanchez lets out a little laugh. “You see? Very clever.”
Another thought comes to me suddenly. “It’s you who wrote the word ‘killer’ on my wall, wasn’t it? It was you who called me on that unknown number, who was watching me?”
“Bingo.”
He smiles at me a little more, and I inwardly pray for help. I don’t want Tucker to come because Dan would come after him…but a part of me is calling for him with all my might.
I need him.
