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She shrugs. “I would’ve found someone else to come with me. It’s not like I can’t find someone interested in me. I have half the men in Harlow wrapped around my finger.” She’s like a fucking snake.
I give her a pointed look. “Yeah, because that’s something to brag about,” I snap. She scowls at me, returning her hand to her own lap, and remains silent as we drive down the long road leading away from the mansion.
The trees are going to lose all their leaves in the coming days. Halloween is right around the corner and the Fall Festival is next weekend. I wonder if Wynn likes things like pumpkins and hot chocolate, cozy blankets and midnight moonlit dances.Of course she does. She’s an autumn soul.
“Did Wynn really bite you?”
Pulled from my daydreams, I sigh. “Did Lanston tell you that?” Yelina nods and eyes my arm like she wants me to show her the wound. “Yeah, she did.”
She glares out the window and crosses her arms. “You should’ve told on her. We can’t have deranged people like her in our program… not after last time.”
I clench my jaw and snap my head toward her. “Shut the fuck up, Yelina. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Her lip pouts out and she tries to move closer to me, touching my arm as if attempting to calm me down. I shake my arm but she only clings tighter.
“You have to talk about it, Liam. You haven’t been the same since coming back from the hospital.” She threads her arm through mine. Everything in my body is in overdrive. My heart’s racing with the traumatic memories she won’t leave in the grave and the car’s going too fast.
My eyes dart down to the speedometer.100 mph. Fuck.
I slam the brakes and the tires screech as the vehicle comes to an abrupt stop. Yelina screams and grabs onto the door handle like she’ll go flying through the windshield if she doesn’t.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” she screams and unbuckles her seatbelt. She steps outside and slams the door so hard it startles me.
My hands are trembling on the steering wheel. I hit the gas. I need to get the fuck away from her. I need pain, to feel, and to think of anything else excepthim.Anything except that dull, dark look in Wynn’s eyes that tells me she wants to die.
I peel away and gravel pelts Yelina. I watch in the rearview mirror as she stomps and throws her purse on the ground.
I don’t fucking care. She can throw as big of a fit as she wants. I don’t care.
Not about her.
The sun is setting and distant wildfires scorch the autumn sky with a bright-red fury. I want to be that angry. At anything. I want to be as alive as I felt when Wynn sank her teeth into my arm and I had so many emotions, I wasn’t sure what I was even feeling.
I drive until I reach Bakersville. The lampposts glow orange and the community is already starting to set up festivities. The hay bales are topped with pumpkins and leaves. Cornstalks and scarecrows line the main street with numbers beneath them for the competition.
As I drive through, people look up and gawk at my car, at me. I just want to be invisible right now. I don’t want anyone to see me. Is that so much to ask for? I try to duck as much as I can until I reach the outskirts of the town.
A few houses are out here, but other than that, it’s pretty empty.
I follow the long, winding road up to the lookout and stop in the center of an empty parking lot.
My car idles as I stare out across the small town, filled with people who probably don’t know Harlow Sanctum lies only a few miles outside its walls. I look out over the vast valley and try counting to ten like our counselors tell us to.
I try thinking of things that bring me relief other than cutting into myself.
But the pull is unbearable.
There’s been a hunting knife locked in my glove box since last November. It belonged to my eldest brother, Neil. I spin the knife in my hands. The black steel is clean and sharp. Sweat beads my forehead as I tell myself over and over to not do this.
Will Wynn be upset with me?
A sharp knock comes at the passenger-side door. When I look up to see who the fuck is out here this late at night, my bones chill.
His smile is crooked and all too familiar. My scars burn and my breath catches in my lungs. His eyes are as blue as my own, but altered, evil.
I will never escape him.
21
