AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Normally, I’d throw him off me, but it’s oddly comforting. Like he’s helping me release something with the focused little pricks of his claws.
“What the hell have I gotten myself into, huh, buddy?” I ask.
My mind has been whirling since Gage left last night. Amanda was my older sister, and even thinking about her now, in past tense, is odd. But I guess I have for years. She got picked up by CPS when I was only sixteen. I was always the best at hiding when they came calling because the Westpoint House was my solace.
Until it became my nightmare.
To think of Gage with a gasoline can, lighting the house up with Amanda’s body inside, churns my stomach. My first instinct was that he was as much a victim as I was. A victim of his father, and his grandfather before him. He wanted into the family business, wanted to prove himself, and was handed a task that changed the trajectory of his entire life.
I’d looked for Amanda everywhere. Waited for the car to pull up when Dad got out of jail with her in the backseat. I’d begged him to go and get her. He’d always just ask me what the use of fighting was because he knew he couldn’t keep his nose clean.
Where Emery escaped that night unscathed and was comforted at night with a warm bed and all the money surrounding him to keep himself fed, I was out in the cold from then on. Especially when CPS would show up. It wasn’t until I figured out that they don’t lock the gym at school that I found a new solace after Westpoint burned.
My memory had been so spotty afterward that I walked around in a haze for weeks. The only thing that stuck with me was Emery’s eyes before darkness washed over me. It was all I had until I saw him a year ago on a television broadcast. What it was about, I can’t recall. I was locked onto his eyes. Ethereal blue and lethal. And that’s when bits and pieces trickled back to me. Snippets I wish would go away.
“Come on, let’s go to bed,” I tell Tigger, unable to spiral any longer. I’ll drive myself insane. I switched from wine at night to chamomile, and I also uninstalled the cameras that did me no good, changed my locks, hid the hide-a-key somewhere less obvious, and put-up wooden blinds on all my windows.
I spent the day fortifying my castle.
And then wondering if I’ll ever let Gage back inside it.
When he left last night, I spent thirty minutes wishing he’d come back. That he knew I needed him somehow, even if he’s so tangled up in this mess that he can’t see his way out. But then, anger had set in. Right on schedule.
Anger for Amanda. For my father, who never got to bury her and have her casket open. Men like Gage and his father don’t leave a trail. The cats follow me upstairs as I reel, emotions hot in my chest.
All the men in my life that don’t have four legs are the reason I ache, and I can’t ignore that fact. How can I ever trust Gage again? How can I ever trust anyone again? Only two nights ago, he was inside me. I stupidly thought it was the pivotal moment between us, and the foreshadowing for what was to come between us. That we were turning a corner, down the path where the sun was only just rising.
But I was wrong.
Half of this is my fault. Who lets their stalker this deep into their life? Someone with deep-rooted issues, that’s who.
I sigh, brushing my teeth and slipping into a hoodie and boy short underwear before sliding under the covers and clicking the light off on the bedside table. I shove my phone in my hoodie pocket. Because these days you never know when you’re going to need it.
Unbelievably, my lids grow heavy the longer I lie on my bed and listen to the off-kilter spin of the ceiling fan overhead. And I can only hope that what I see behind them is dark oblivion.
Instead of the eyes of a millionaire.
“Carina, come on. We have to get you up,” Conner pleads, tugging my pants up around my hips and fastening them.
But when I sit up, the room spins. My head is throbbing so hard, and my face feels like something is broken.
“I can’t,” I slur, shaking my head as I try to clear my vision.
“What? Why? Come on.”
He’s not listening. No one ever listens. But I also can’t seem to form words all that well. My movements are heavy, as if I’m underwater. Walking through fog is hard, especially when it won’t clear.
Conner tugs me toward the door, and I struggle to get out of his hold. “My stuff,” I get out.
He looks back at the bathtub as I try my best to get to it. Fighting sluggishness, I try to repack all my things. My body hurts, and my pants are soaked through with my blood. I already had my period, so I know while I was out something awful happened.
“Leave it, we have to go.”
I turn on him. “Of course, you wouldn’t understand. This is all I have, Conner.”
Something in him changes. His eyes grow concerned, but more concerned about what he’s trying to do, rather than helping me with my few belongings.
Smoke billows under the door, and I gasp.
