Natural Born Killers (Sick Boys Book 3)
Page 17
props open the door and holds the umbrella over my head as I look down into
the interior of the car. I roll my eyes at what I see and plop my wet ass down
on the towel covered passenger seat.
“See you in a few hours,” Brax says. “Drive safe.”
He shuts the door and Abel leans forward to crank up the heat. “There’s a
blanket in the back,” he offers.
“I don’t need it,” I reply.
“You’re gonna get sick,” he shoots back. I don’t have the energy to tell
him I already am. Sick of this shit. Sick of the lies and betrayals and sick of
fighting, of surviving.
I groan and shuffle around, reaching behind my seat and fumbling for the
damn blanket. If I refuse it again, I’m going to have to listen to him whine
about it the entire drive back to the house. Thankfully, it seems to do the trick
and he doesn’t say anything more as we drive the rest of the way home.
Spearwood passes out of view as we hit the highway. Abel turns on the
music and switches it over to some 90s rap radio station. Beat heavy spitfire
words are slung around the inner cab. All the while, I can’t seem to get the
image of Patricia’s face out of my mind. It switches back and forth between
how she was when I was a kid—not quite as dead as she was an hour ago—
and how she appeared when she screamed at me that it was all my fault my
father had died.
I chew on my lips, staring at the scenery outside, but seeing none of it.
The water dries from my skin, but my clothes remain clinging to me all the
way to the house. Song after song comes on. Abel switches the station a few
times, but almost always goes back to the first.
What if it’s my fault my father died? It’s not like I asked him to sacrifice
himself for me. It’s not like I even asked to be born. No one does.
By the time the headlights of Abel’s Mustang flash over the front of the
house, I’m more than ready to get the fuck out. The scent of gasoline, smoke,
and decay linger on my skin. He doesn’t bother pulling into the garage.
Instead, he stops in front of the door and cuts the engine. I get out and look
up. Though the rain has stopped, the clouds holding their tears still swirl
above.
“Ava?” Abel calls to me from the front door. I tear my eyes away and
move towards him as he holds the door open for me. I drop the blanket I
carried with me in the front hall, leaving it on the floor for someone else to
pick up. I could take it with me, but I just don’t have the energy. In fact,
staring at the stairs, I’m not even sure if I have the energy to climb them.
“Here,” Abel’s hand touches my back as he guides me through the lower
floors. I’ve lived here for weeks now, and yet, it feels so foreign in this
moment. “There’s a guest bathroom down here. You shower. Get warm. I’ll
go upstairs and grab you some clothes.”
I don’t argue or resist and when he pushes open a door revealing a large
interior bathroom, I go straight to the shower stall and strip. The door clicks
shut behind me, and I’m left alone.
My head bows under the onslaught of the water. It drips from my hair
into my eyes, falling from my lashes to the tile below until that tile begins to
blur in my vision. I feel empty inside. Numb. As if everything that makes me
me has withered away and died.
I stand under the shower spray until the water goes from burning hot to
freezing cold. Only then do I reach for the handles and turn it off to step out
into the bathroom. There’s a set of clothes sitting on the sink. I hadn’t even
heard Abel come back. Without touching them or the towel waiting for me, I
stride across the room, dripping wet and naked, until I’m standing in front of
the mirror. Pressing my palm flat to the surface, I swipe it across the glass
once, twice, three times until my face is revealed along with my upper body.
Black mascara runs down my cheeks, bleeding into my skin, making it look
like I’ve cried tears of darkness.
Even though my body is dripping wet, when I take my hand away from
the mirror, I notice there’s still some dried blood crusted under my nails from
where I stabbed Patricia. Dirt. Grime. Blood. Death. This is what I am.
Turning away from the image I present, I grab the towel set next to my
clothes and quickly dry myself before slipping into the oversized t-shirt,
underwear, and loose pajama shorts that had been left behind for me. The
skin of my back tightens and pulls as I move, but it doesn’t hurt. The wounds
from before have closed up rather well.
Am I supposed to feel like this? I wonder. What disturbs me most is the
complete and utter lack of emotion. I’m not sad. I’m not regretful. I’m not
even all that worried. I just killed a second person—my own mother—and I
don’t feel bad about it at all. That’s not normal. At least, that’s not what
we’re taught is normal. Killing should make a person feel bad, should make
them crazy, but is it crazy if killing makes me feel more stable than I’ve ever
felt in my life?
There’s a brief knock on the door and then Abel’s voice drifts through.
“Ava?” He sounds worried. “It’s been over an hour. Are you okay?”
I open the door and look up at his creased brows and frown. “I’m fine,” I
say, pushing past him. He follows me as I head down the hall. I pull up short
halfway through the living room and turn around to glare at him. “There’s no
need to follow me,” I tell him.
His lips press together and he looks like he wants to say something, but
whatever it is, he knows I won’t like it. He’s holding his tongue and I already
hate that, so there’s no point in keeping what he’s thinking from me. I turn
towards him fully and take several steps until I’m standing right in front of
him.
“Say it,” I order.
Crystal blue eyes widen and he takes a step back before looking to the
side. “We don’t have to talk about this tonight, Ava. Let’s just go get some
rest. Dean and Brax’ll be back in a few hours.”
“No.” I follow him, reaching up and gripping his chin—turning his head
so that he has to look at me again. “I want to hear what you have to say.”
His lips part and he speaks through bared and gritted teeth. “It’s … well, I
just wanted you to know that it’s okay,” he says. “If you’re upset. If you want
to cry or if you need … peace.”
“Peace?” I repeat, releasing him. “I got my peace. I don’t need anything
anymore.”
His eyes trail me as I move backwards. His expression doesn’t change.
“Okay,” he replies. “If you say so.”
A growl leaves my chest. “Don’t do that,” I snap.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Yes, you are,” I accuse. “I told you I’m fine and I am. Just because I’m
not falling down and sobbing over a mother who never gave a shit about me
dying doesn’t mean anything.”
To that, he doesn’t say a damn word. Instead, he continues to stare at me
with those hollow eyes of his. Irritation flares, the first true emotion since I
pulled the trigger and lit t
he flame that burned away my past and the last
connection I had to the girl I was in Plexton, Georgia.
“I’m not going to apologize for the monster I’ve become,” I tell him. “No
one’s ever fucking apologized for turning me into one—so why should I have
to?
“I never said you were a monster,” he says. “And I never said you had to
apologize for shit.”
I shake my head. “But you were thinking it.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he argues.
I can’t look at him so I spin away, staring down at my hands balling into
fists in front of me. The blood is still there. I should’ve dug it out while I was
in the shower. Let the flakes rinse down the drain and take away the last
vestiges of the earlier version of Avalon Manning that is no more.
That’s when I realize what this emotion filling me up is. I’d assumed it
was numbness—an emptiness—but it’s not. It’s anger. I’m so fucking angry
and it’s impossible to control it. I don’t want to be angry. It has no meaning
because there’s no one to unleash it on. I thought taking Patricia out of the
picture would help, but it hasn’t. All tonight had done was shine a light into a
dark corner of myself that I hadn’t noticed before.
I’ve been angry for a long time. It’s what caused me to go running to
Micki. It’s what started me down the path of loving adrenaline rushes.
Control. I was so out of fucking control, I was speeding down a dark road
with no end in sight.
"What's wrong with me?" I stand there and the question just falls out of
my mouth. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Abel sighs. "Nothing's wrong with you, Ava."
"Bullshit," I shoot back. He's wrong. He's not just wrong, he's so far off
base, he's in outer space. "I wanted to kill her," I say. “It felt right.” Her blood
on my hands. Her screams in my head. Even walking away, after the deed
had been done—it still felt right.
When I’d warned her that I would kill her, it hadn’t been a threat, but a
promise. It wasn’t something said in a heated moment of passion. It was
serious. And when I’d done it, when I’d pulled the trigger—shot out her legs,
watched as she crawled towards me, coughing and wheezing in pain—I
couldn’t even bear to look at the piece of shit that had brought me into this
world.
Some people were never meant to be parents.
My body burns at the reminder. I wanted to see the light go out of her
eyes and know that nothing will ever bring her back into my life again, and
now I have.
“I didn’t need her,” I find myself saying. “I’ve never needed her.”
“I know.” Abel’s voice reminds me that he’s there, that I’m not alone in
the room even when it feels like it’s not a room at all anymore. Everything is
spinning, tipping over and over on itself. I’ve stumbled into a new dimension
and the whole world doesn’t make sense anymore. Up is down and down is
up and right is left and left is right and I can’t fucking think without the
goddamn image of Patricia’s face in my head. Her stupid, fugly, dumb face.
Beautiful—yes, even she had been beautiful once. I’d seen old pictures. But
by the time I’d come along she was nothing more than a withered husk. A
dead woman in a skeletal body that just wouldn’t stop moving.
“I don’t need her.” This time when I say the words, they’re in the present
tense and that, somehow, makes what I’ve done even more real. I killed her. I
killed my mother. There’s no going back from that. What scares me, though,
isn’t the horrible action I’ve committed … it’s the fact that I’m not sorry. I’m
not sorry at all, and if given the chance, I would do it all over again. Maybe
I’d be less cruel. Maybe I wouldn’t. In the end, the result would still be the
same.
She would be in the ground, and I would be the person who put her there.
I pick up something off of a nearby surface—the wet bar—and I chuck it at
the wall. Glass shatters and that seems to set me off. I swipe everything off
the little countertop until it all crashes to the ground. Then, I spin and punch a
picture frame, cracking the glass and causing the damn thing to fall off the
wall. I pick up something else—not even seeing what it is—and I throw that,
too, as hard as I fucking can until the sound of its crash rings in my ears. I
lose my shit and the world fades away. I don’t remember everything I
destroy, but it isn’t until I’m standing in the middle of the room with a mess
all around that I realize what I’ve done.
“Avalon, it’s okay.” Abel approaches me slowly like I’m some sort of
wild animal. I spin, taking a step away from him as I raise my fists. Before I
can do anything, however, he presses me back into a wall and encircles me
with his arms. He hugs me against him and holds on even when I struggle.
"Stop it," I snap, fighting him. "Get off me!" I punch his ribs until he
grunts. I try to shift and break his hold, but he merely moves with me.
"Stop it, Ava," he says. "I'm not letting go. Just fucking let me hug you."
"I don't need a fucking hug!" I scream.
“Why not?” he has the gall to ask.
“Why not?” I repeat. Why? “Because killers don’t need hugs,” I tell him.
“You’re not just a killer, though, are you?” Abel asks. “You can be a
killer, but that doesn’t have to be all that you are. It’s not all that Dean is. Not
all that I am or Braxton for that matter.”
I freeze. Half of the time I forget that they’re not just regular college
students—albeit rich ones. They have— Abel has—already seen me kill
before this. They’ve even helped bury the body. At least, I assumed they did.
I’d forgotten all about Roger Murphy’s body until I realized, somewhere
along the road back to Eastpoint, it had disappeared and no one had come
asking questions. “You…” I whisper. It’s not a question, not a realization of
something I already knew—it’s just an acknowledgment that slips out.
“Yes, Ava,” Abel says. “Me.” He squeezes me even tighter. “And I need
a hug right now just as much as you do.”
I cover my face with my hands, but the words spill out. “I needed to kill
her,” I admit. “I wanted her dead. I wanted her to scream. I wanted her to beg
and cry and plead.” My voice chokes even as I get louder. She hadn’t done
any of that, though. She didn’t cry or beg for her life. Pain echoes up from
somewhere deep inside of me. Horrible and gnawing, like a wild beast left
out in the dark, starving, and now it’s woken up to consume me with its
wrathful hunger. “I wanted her to fucking hurt the way I hurt!" My voice
cracks and strangles in my throat.
"I know," Abel says. He squeezes me tighter and suddenly, his arms don't
feel constraining anymore. They feel like glue, like tape, like any fucking
thing in the world that's capable of holding me together. And they're the only
things keeping me from shattering across the floor.
“Why?” I demand. “Why—if she loved him, if she loved my dad—why
did she hate me? Why couldn’t she be any fucking stronger?” It’s
not fair.
My voice finally breaks and I go silent. I can't even hold myself up
anymore, but I don't have to worry because when my legs give out, I don't go
crashing down. Abel simply reaches down and lifts me up against his chest
and then carries me over to the couch. He sits me down and then crawls
behind me, holding me against his chest as he rocks me back and forth.
I’m not angry that she’s dead. I’m not even angry that I killed her. I’m
angry that she couldn’t have been better and now there will be no more
chances for her. She lost her potential to be a good mother a long time ago.
Now, it’s just solidified and there’s no going back.
Before, my heart was calm. Now, it's a fucking race horse galloping
against my ribcage, banging around and making everything hurt as it
threatens to crack me in half. A single tear escapes one eye and slides down
my cheek. I wipe it away without a second thought and am thankful when no
more follow. Abel mumbles something, pressing his face into my shoulder as
he tightens his grasp on me until it twinges. It takes me several long minutes
to realize he's muttering the same thing under his breath over and over again.
"You're okay," he says. "You're going to be okay. Nothing's going to hurt
you. You're not alone. I'm here." Over and over again.
You're okay. You're going to be okay. Nothing's going to hurt you. You're
not alone. I'm here.
Like a mantra. He repeats it like it’s something he’s told himself over and
over again. It hurts to hear because I start to wonder if anyone has ever done
this for him. I reach up and wrap my arms around him, holding on for dear
life. I don’t say anything and I don’t stop him from squeezing as hard as he
wants to, not even when it starts to ache.
Dean finds the two of us like that, the wreckage of my outburst scattered
across the floor. Vases are broken. Books are strewn about. Some of the
cushions on the chairs are ripped up and tipped over onto the floor. He takes
one look at me, staring at nothing on the floor and Abel at my back, clutching
onto me—holding me as if he’s terrified I’ll float away. Hell, I’m half
terrified he’s right. Maybe I will. Maybe that would be better.
When Dean bends down in front of us, there’s no accusation in his face.
No hostility or judgment or jealousy. Just sadness. He carefully pries Abel’s