Declan let out a sigh. “Trust me, Sawyer, Travis isn’t making it up. You messed up, and Ash is…she’s gone, and we’re trying to figure out how to get her back.” To Travis, he added, “You’re sure we can’t call the police?”
Under his breath, Travis whispered, “We don’t know the whole story. What if Ash…what if there’s more to her and Ray? If she…”
“Ray? Who the fuck is Ray?” I asked, wincing as my headache threatened to turn into a migraine. “You know what, I don’t care. Forget I asked.” I said nothing, not knowing what the fuck they were talking about, as I turned and carried myself back up the stairs. My head felt like a million pounds, and I really needed to lay down. I’d fight with those assholes later, once it didn’t hurt to talk.
Once it didn’t hurt to think…or be alive.
Chapter Five – Ash
Eventually I managed to get away from him and get in the shower. The satin slip was on the floor, and I stood, stark bare, in the newly-tiled shower, letting the warm water pelt my skin as if it could wash away all of the mistakes I’d made. And I’d made a lot. So many I couldn’t keep count anymore. Mistakes in my past, mistakes in my present. Just a whole bunch of mistakes all around, and I didn’t know how to stop making them. It was like I was stuck here, knowing I was fucking up, yet unable to do anything about it.
I was a victim of my own circumstances, of my own actions. Everything that happened to me, everything that will happen in the future, was all my fault. I didn’t owe it to Kelsey; I owed it to me and only me. A depressing thought, one that made me reach for the water handle and turn it more, making the water even hotter.
Perhaps, if I burned off the top layer of skin, I wouldn’t feel so dirty. So wrong.
I closed my eyes, tilting my head up to the water, letting the hot, scalding stream pelt over my face. Not only did I wish to wash away my mistakes, how horrible I felt, but also my memories. Out of everyone Kelsey could have slept with, out of every dick she could’ve used to try to get over her own man problems, she had to find one of mine.
Well, not that I owned any of the guys, but you know what I mean.
Mine, metaphorically. Mine, because I wanted it to be mine, wanted him to be mine, even though I shouldn’t.
Sawyer. Fucking Sawyer. I hated that guy so much, I did, really. No other guy had ever made me feel so awful in my life. Like I wasn’t good enough, like I was worthless. Sawyer had wanted to use me to his own advantage when it came to Declan, and when I told him I wasn’t playing the game he wanted, he revolted and took me down with him. The hair prank was stupid. Him telling me he was done hurt.
That night…when I ran from Declan, when I stumbled upon his house and found that he was out of his mind, my heart broke for him. Which was dumb, because he didn’t deserve sympathy from me, not after everything he did. Not after the girls he’d been with, including my best fucking friend.
But, even so, we all dealt with trauma differently, and there was no time frame for grief. He’d lost his sister, pushed away his friends, and now he had absolutely nothing. Sawyer was six feet under, in a hole he’d dug himself.
Hell, our holes were side by side, but they’d never be connected.
I knew it was only making it worse, me picturing that night, me remembering opening that bathroom door to see Sawyer balls-deep in Kelsey, but it was like I couldn’t help it. The thoughts came to me even though I was unwilling, dominating my mind, forced the thoughts to play on repeat. He was so out of it; did he even realize what he was doing? I’d never told him about Kelsey before, so there was no way he would’ve known who she was, but still. That didn’t make me feel any better. Sometimes mistakes hurt, whether they were purposeful or accidental.
And, anyway, it shouldn’t matter what cunt Sawyer stuck himself in. I shouldn’t care. Just because I had these stupid feelings for him didn’t automatically make him mine. I wasn’t like that. I knew, in my heart of hearts, he was free to sleep with whoever he wanted to sleep with, just as I was. Technically, me being with Ray wasn’t wrong.
No, it was. It was wrong for a different reason, because he was a psychopath. Because he was my ex. Because he was a fucking serial killer who was obsessed with me. He’d hurt Will and Declan, and who knew what else he’d do if I ever went back to them.
Besides, Sawyer said he was done with me, and he clearly meant it. How else could he lose himself like that? How else could he fuck anything with two legs and a pussy? God, I really hated thinking about it because deep down it hurt, cut like a knife—and I knew better than most girls how knives worked.
My head tilted down, and my eyelids lifted. I stared down at my hands in the water, picturing them covered in blood. I’d taken off the bandages; most of the wounds were starting to scab. If I would’ve stabbed Ray again, if I would’ve gone bananas and killed him in that cabin, would any of this be happening?
It was a moot point now. It didn’t matter, because Ray was here, and he was never going to let me go. Which, I hazarded to think, perhaps was a good thing. Clearly me being on my own only led to my misery. Misery regarding the rich Hillcrest students in my life…and confusion when it came to my feelings for them.
Other girls’ lives weren’t so complicated, so twisted and wrong. Other girls had simple lives and good families, steady boyfriends and good memories. Me? I grew up poor, working to help my mom pay the bills, my dad absent, save for when he tried to buy my love with expensive toys like videogame consoles—which I kept, because it seemed like a waste if I just threw them out. I grew up going to a school that used twenty-year-old textbooks that were literally falling apart and so outdated some of the information in them was wrong. The best thing in my life had been this scholarship to Hillcrest, but even that wasn’t as good as it initially appeared. It brought me here. I’d come full circle.
I didn’t know how long I stood there in the shower, but I heard the door creak open. Through the clear curtain, I could see Ray. He’d dressed, no longer naked, and he checked himself in the mirror.
I felt my jaw clench as I reached for the water to turn it off. I pulled the curtain aside, pretending not to notice the way Ray’s green eyes darted to me, eating me up like I was the finest piece of meat around. It wasn’t like my naked body was new to him. He’d seen me naked years ago, back when I was a few years underage.
“I’m running to the store,” he told me. “There are a few more things I want to grab before we leave.”
As I stepped out of the tub, I reached for a nearby towel, wrapping it around my body. “We’re leaving?” I tried not to sound too interested, but it was hard. It was hard because I was not in my own head right now. Now was not the time to lose myself, but me and common sense weren’t friends currently.
“You know we can’t stay here,” he told me, moving closer to me. Ray set his hands on my sides, his fingers bunching up the towel as he pulled me closer to him. “We have to go somewhere quiet, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where no one will find us.” He pressed his cheek against my forehead, his skin hot on mine. “Where we can be happy again.”
At this point, I honestly thought I’d never be happy. There’d be no light at the end of this tunnel. But I didn’t argue with him. I simply said, “Okay. Am I coming with you?” The only thing I’d worn in this house was that slip; I didn’t know what clothes I’d wear out of here. I didn’t know where my clothes from the party were.
“No, stay here. See if you can find any jewelry or anything that looks pricey that we can pawn off. We’ll need more cash.” One of Ray’s hands moved to my chin, forcing me to tilt my head to him, and he pressed his lips to mine.
I kissed him back, because what else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t fight this man. I’d tried, and look at where it got me. Nowhere. I made the lap only to find I was still on the same fucking racetrack I started out on.
I watched him go, inching into the hall after a while. When I heard the front door close, I stood there for a few minutes, wondering if Ray really tr
usted me. If he thought he had me. Sure, I’d come willingly, but leaving me here alone felt a little…stupid.
Almost like he was testing me.
Huh.
Would I be here when he got back, or would I try to run? Would I go along with his plan and search the house for valuables, or would I simply leave and try to find my way back to Hillcrest? Either way, my fingerprints were all over this house. It didn’t much matter what I did.
With the towel wrapped around me, I moved into the bedroom, searching the drawers. I was trying to find my clothes, see where he stashed them, but I couldn’t. Looked like an older couple, judging from the types of clothes I found.
Fuck. Maybe that slip wasn’t from this house. Maybe it was something Ray bought specifically for me. It fit too well otherwise. If it belonged to the woman of the house, it would’ve slipped right off me. I liked to think I was average, but in reality, I was a skinny fuck.
I had no choice but to redress myself in the slip.
With Ray gone, the house felt cold, empty. With Ray not here, it was easier for me to think, for me to realize just how fucked up this situation was. I couldn’t go off with Ray. Gallivanting across the United States with a man who’d been tried for multiple murders would surely only end with me either being killed when he tired of me, or arrested when the police found us and the bodies in our wake.
I liked to think, even though I made the occasional stupid decision, I had a better survival drive than that. I fought to live, and right now…right now I needed to nut the fuck up or shut up.
My bare feet took me downstairs, and with a quick peek in the attached garage, I saw the couple had another car. It wasn’t the car Ray had picked me up in; meaning there had to be keys in this house. If I found them, I could drive away.
He’d only find me again, though. I supposed we could get to that when we got to it.
I searched the kitchen from top to bottom, every single fucking cabinet. I searched the whole damn house for keys and couldn’t find any. I also noticed that I couldn’t find any shoes in the closets…and it made me wonder if Ray planned this all out. Leave me here with no shoes, no keys—what else could I do but stay here?
If there was one thing I was, it was stubborn. I showed weakness sometimes, it was true, but after everything I’d been through lately, I earned a few moments of weakness. Now, without Ray here, it was a hell of a lot easier to be strong.
The house yielded nothing, so I turned my sights to the garage next. I opened the door that led from the side of the kitchen to the garage, and I slowly flicked on the lights. The fluorescent bulbs hanging above flickered on, and I took a few steps toward the car.
The closer I got, the more I started to smell something awful. Something truly vile and nasty, a scent my nose had never before smelled, and yet even so, I knew what it was. There was only one thing this smell could be from, and as I went around the vehicle to its trunk, I had to hold my nose.
Opening it was a mistake. A big, huge, smelly mistake.
When I saw the stained, rolled-up carpet, when my eyes spotted greying heads sticking out of the carpet, I felt like vomiting. The smell was ten times worse, because it was coming from the car itself. These were the poor owners of this house; Ray had killed them and, judging by the smell, he’d killed them a while ago.
I harshly yanked on the trunk to close it, wanting to run out of the garage and forget what I saw, try not to upheave the food in my stomach, but I had to further investigate. This car, I suddenly realized, didn’t belong to the corpses. I neglected to notice when the light was off, but as I moved around it, I realized I’d seen it before. This was his car. Ray’s car.
He planned on ditching it here, I bet. By the time the police discovered it, by the time the police knew the car was his and that he’d done this, we’d be long gone, in another state, in the middle of nowhere, our only neighbors the Children of the Corn.
I saw a bag sitting on the front passenger’s seat, a hoodie draped across it. Still having to hold my nose, I went around the car and opened the door. Hell. Even the air inside the car smelled of rotting flesh too. It was literally the worst smell ever, and I really hoped I’d never have to smell it again after today.
Tossing the hoodie over my shoulder, I dug through the bag. Ray’s belongings, nothing really out of the ordinary. Some thick wads of cash, however the hell he got those. Criminals always had their ways of criminality, I guess. There was one thing that caught my eye, though—something I’d seen before, back in that cabin. Something I’d used.
My fingers curled around the leather handle, and I lifted it out of the bag, glinting the steel in the garage light.
The knife. The same fucking knife, its steel not-so-stainless right now, considering the fact that it was covered in dried maroon.
My gut settled into a pit, and I knew, without a doubt, that this was the same knife I’d stabbed Ray with, the knife Ray had used against Will and Declan. This knife held a lot of history, and as I stared at the dried blood on it, I couldn’t help but feel my anger start to grow.
Ray had hurt the people I cared about. He’d tried to kill Will, and he hurt Declan as a warning. I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Ray needed to learn there were consequences to every action, even his own.
I closed the car door and returned to the house. I threw the hoodie near the front door and walked into the kitchen, setting the stained, serrated knife on the countertop. If this was a test, I wasn’t going to fail it. I wasn’t going to run, and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to pass. No, for this particular test, I would do the one thing Ray never thought I would.
A gamble, what I had in mind, but a necessary one. Sometimes to beat a monster, you had to play dirty.
Chapter Six – Ash
There was no way I’d be able to take Ray on one-on-one. He was a lot stronger than me, and he’d had years of practice, kidnapping and killing girls. This dark game was new to me, but if he wanted to play, I would show him exactly what I showed Sawyer when I started at Hillcrest months ago.
I was no one’s pawn. I wasn’t even on the board. I might get weak sometimes, I might make the wrong move on occasion, but I was the player, and only I could say when I wanted to play and when I didn’t. No one could make me do anything I didn’t want to do.
This…this was a mistake. A mistake because I’d lost myself. Ray’s return had frightened me, startled me, shocked me into oblivion, and what happened in the basement, whether or not I killed Brooklyn, not to mention seeing Sawyer with Kelsey, it was all too much. Too much for my brain to handle, so I shut down.
Well, guess what? I booted back up. My brain was back, and even though more mistakes were made in this house, even though I did things I’d regret until the day I died, I wasn’t going to let Ray have the final say in where my life went.
No, that honor was mine and only mine. He would not tell me what to do, not again. Not anymore. I was my own person, and even though Ray made me wonder about myself, I was going to show him just how much of a bitch I was.
To fight fire, you had to come at it with something that would smother it, something that would stop the fire from being a fire. Fighting fire with fire only stoked the flames. No, you had to think, you had to plan. With no oxygen, there could be no fire. And so to beat this monster, I would take away what this monster desired most.
Me.
I’d take away me.
Without me, Ray would have nothing. Without me, Ray would be lost.
I sat in the kitchen, the stained knife less than a foot away from me. I couldn’t see the front door from where I sat, but he’d walk in and see me after a few moments. He’d see the knife. I wondered if Ray ever thought this was a possibility.
I couldn’t kill him, so killing myself, while it wasn’t the best option, was really the next logical step. The police had already shown they were not capable of handling Ray and his crimes. The police were useless. This was up to me, and how Ray reacted would decide whether or not I made it o
ut of this house alive.
I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t depressed or suicidal. I knew life had its ups and downs—recently a whole lot of downs for me—but that it always had the chance to get better. I was going to Hillcrest, and I’d get a kickass job afterward that paid out of the ass. I would help support my mom so she didn’t have to worry about money. Whether or not any of the guys were still in my life at that point was up for debate, but one thing at a time.
That said, if I had to die in this house, I was prepared to. I knew this was of my own doing, and I was prepared to face the consequences. Of course, I’d miss my life and the people in it. I knew my mom would be terribly shocked and sad to hear what happened. And Kelsey, she’d probably never forgive herself for doing what she did, but that was her own issue. I didn’t have to deal with her regret. Only mine.
The guys…oh, I’d miss them the most, I think. They’d each come to reside in a separate place in my heart, filling me up in a way no other boy—or man, for that matter—had done before. Declan was sweet, if a little fiery at times, and he was gentle and kind even when he was trying to push you away. Will was the protective older brother who would sacrifice his own feelings so his younger brother could be happy. Travis was both like Ray and not like him; I didn’t know quite what to make of him, but I knew I believed him when he told me he wouldn’t hurt me, even though he’d chained me up in his room. I also believed him when he said he didn’t kill Sabrina, even though that journal painted him in an awful light.
Sawyer…well, the jury was out on that bitch. Who the hell knew why I felt for him the way I did. If I could change my feelings for him, I would. Alas, that wasn’t how feelings worked. Things would be a lot simpler if they did, but that was not the way of the world, of the heart. I’d learned that the hard way.
The moment I heard Ray enter the house, I knew this was it. This was the final showdown, the final countdown, whatever. The be-all, end-all. The line in the sand that we would either cross or die on.
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