Razorblade Kisses

by R. L. Griffin

  Razorblade Kisses

  Copyright © 2014 by R.L. Griffin

  Cover by Michelle Carroll from Silver Plum Creations

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the Publisher.

  Dedication

  This book is for all the survivors. It may not be pretty, or right, or keep you warm at night, but you survived. You should be proud of that fact alone. You may have had to do things you may not like to survive. Don’t look back with regret, but look forward with determination.

  Trigger Warning: Some books aren’t for everyone and I appreciate that. There are tough subjects in this book, including inferred rape and abuse of minors. While I don’t believe it is graphic, I did want to warn you if this is a trigger. If so, Emery’s story may not be the book for you. It’s not pretty, but it’s hers.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One Illusions

  Chapter Two Click, Click, Boom

  Chapter Three Tell Me a Secret

  Chapter Four Free Fall

  Chapter Five Inception

  Chapter Six Start with One Step

  Chapter Seven That’s a Gorgeous Gun

  Chapter Eight Change of Direction

  Chapter Nine New Person, Old Problems

  Chapter Ten Don’t Break Anything

  Chapter Eleven A First of Many

  Chapter Twelve Certainties

  Chapter Thirteen Bullshit Cherry

  Chapter Fourteen What’s my Name?

  Chapter Fifteen Nothing’s Easy

  Chapter Sixteen Unwanted Conversations

  Chapter Seventeen Exclusive

  Chapter Eighteen Try

  Chapter Nineteen Come to Light

  Chapter Twenty Where’s Scooby Doo When You Need Him?

  Chapter Twenty-One Inevitable

  Chapter Twenty-Two Survivor

  Chapter Twenty-Three He Takes Everything

  Chapter Twenty-Four Unsent Letters

  Chapter Twenty-Five It’s a Façade

  Chapter Twenty-Six Ivy Kills Everything

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Rise from the Ashes

  Chapter Twenty-Eight Layers and Scars and Graveyards

  Chapter Twenty-Nine Iron Man

  Chapter Thirty Solitary Confinement

  Chapter Thirty-One Cracks

  Chapter Thirty-Two Hell is Not a Proper Synonym

  Chapter Thirty-Three Ice Cream Can Make Anything Better

  Chapter Thirty-Four Tattoo

  Chapter Thirty-Five A Little Somethin’ Somethin’

  Chapter Thirty-Six You Can’t Save Them All

  Chapter Thirty-Seven Strategery

  Chapter Thirty-Eight Who Needs Willpower?

  Chapter Thirty-Nine Watch Out for That Dog

  Chapter Forty Beautiful Ruin

  Chapter Forty-One Bewitched

  Chapter Forty-Two Pretending

  Chapter Forty-Three Promises, Promises

  Chapter Forty-Four Dancing with the Lies we Tell

  Chapter Forty-Five Realization

  Chapter Forty-Six Normal?

  Chapter Forty-Seven Sometimes the Pain is Too Much

  Chapter Forty-Eight Slaying Old Dragons

  Chapter Forty-Nine The Rubble of Our Sins

  Chapter Fifty No Fight Left

  Chapter Fifty-One Make Me Wanna Die

  Chapter Fifty-Two Biding my Time

  Chapter Fifty-Three Back From the Dead

  Chapter Fifty-Four Apologies

  Chapter Fifty-Five Coming Home

  Epilogue Ten Years Later

  PROLOGUE

  Emery sat stock still on the cold cement bench a hundred yards away from the service, her face brittle and dry in the winter chill. The sky was gray to match the mood of those attending. She’d pulled her long blond hair up and shoved it under a hat she’d grabbed on her way out of the apartment. Her hoodie was big and bulky and helped her hide her identity from those standing at the graveside. There were over two hundred people at the service, but her eyes were trained on the casket. Revulsion and utter loathing climbed up her body and buried themselves in her brain.

  Her body and mind felt at war, the emotions she hadn’t let herself feel since she was thirteen on the verge of exploding. Rage, hate, fear, and desperation consumed her every thought. Her body was tense with the all-consuming anger that had been building for what seemed like her entire life. So full was her mind that any movement threatened to release a cacophony of cries from her mouth. Regret and foolishness took turns mocking her, punching her in the gut with their certainties. Certainties that she attempted to evade, but that ended here in the ground.

  It should be her. Her decisions caused this.

  She sat perfectly still, unblinking, re-building all her necessary walls. One crack, one movement, and it would all come flooding out. She was afraid once that happened she would drown. Emery’s stare didn’t waiver from the elegant box as it was lowered in the ground. Feeling the weight of a hand on hers, she knew she wasn’t alone anymore, at least not physically.

  The instant the casket disappeared into the opening in the earth, the silence was broken by her mother’s scream, followed by the most heart wrenching sob she’d ever heard.

  “WHY?!” The scream echoed through the cemetery and slapped Emery in the face with such force she thought she may fall off the bench. Her mother continued screaming, “WHY?!” as the first mound of dirt was shoveled onto Ashley. Emery squeezed her eyelids closed as her mother repeated the question over and over again. Emery knew why…

  Then she felt the hand grab hers and hold it tight. Words fought to escape her mouth, tears on the verge of tumbling out of her closed eyes. No. She wouldn’t let it out, not yet.

  Emery remained motionless, seeing nothing for what seemed like hours; the only thing she allowed herself to feel was the weight on her hand. She didn’t know how long she sat there with her eyes closed, not thinking or feeling, but when she opened them, everyone was gone. All that remained of the crowd of people were two men shoveling dirt onto her sister.

  She looked around for a few minutes before she jumped from the bench and sprinted the distance between where she’d observed the funeral and where her sister now rested. Sobs, cries, and screams flew out of her mouth. She was unable to hold them in and she collapsed at the side of the grave. The knees of her jeans were soaked through with the rain that saturated the ground. She’d reached her threshold of pain, her fill of misery. She was done.

  The men paused in their burying of her sister, dropped their heads to their chests, and left the graveside to give Emery privacy to mourn.

  “I’M SORRY!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, her hands clutching her sweatshirt. “I’m so fucking sorry, Ashley!” Her voice broke and she couldn’t breathe. “Oh my God...” Her sobs took over and all of her words were unintelligible. “PLEASE!” she pleaded and her chest racked with her cries. “I didn’t know... I didn’t know... I didn’t know.”

  Rachel was there, grabbing her hands to hold them again, pulling her into a tight hug, trying to hold her together. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered into her ear, holding Emery tighter. “It’s not.”

  “It is!” Emery yelled into the grave. “It’s my fault. This is all my fault,” she said to Rachel without moving her gaze off the three by eight foot hole in the ground. “I’m so sorry, Ash. Oh my God, how could this happe
n?” She looked over at Rachel’s tear soaked face, which she was sure matched her own. Mascara ran unceremoniously down Rachel’s face and dripped onto her Georgia State sweatshirt.

  “Emery, you weren’t here. You didn’t know.” Rachel picked up the hat that had fallen off Emery’s head in the run to see her sister and tried to put it back on her head. “You don’t want anyone to recognize you.”

  Tears fell continuously, the cuffs of Emery’s hoodie wet through by her attempts to wipe her face dry. Her chest felt like it was cracked open and pain was seeping out. Pain for Ashley, sorrow at the knowledge of what her sister must’ve been feeling, guilt that she should’ve done something, agony at her own circumstances, and most of all utter disgust for the man who had done this to both of them. Her sister was dead and she was living dead.

  Emery coughed and spit, trying to shake away the emotions. She couldn’t afford to be emotional. She needed to have all her wits about her.

  Rachel stood up and grabbed Emery’s hand to pull her up. “Come on.”

  Emery looked into the grave that held her thirteen-year-old sister, a girl who would never have a first date, never go to prom, and never know that Emery was going to make it up to her.

  Revenge was slowly taking over her emotions. She’d make him pay. Not for her, but for Ashley. This loss would be Emery’s undoing, she knew it. When Emery thought of the last minutes of Ashley’s life, her body shook with indignation. The fear, confusion, and abandonment Ashley must’ve felt was gasoline to a fire that was started when Emery was thirteen; she’d been tossing useless buckets of water on it for years.

  She pulled out a friendship bracelet Ashley made for her the night before she left Atlanta so long ago. It was pink and teal, Ashley’s favorite colors.

  “I wonder if these are still her favorite colors,” Emery asked aloud, her voice hoarse with emotion. Were, she corrected herself. She dropped the bracelet in the hole and began taking one step at a time away from the grave. She walked backwards, staring at it until the men resumed their jobs of filling the grave.

  She flinched every time she heard the hollow thud of dirt hitting the casket.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Illusions

  Emery’s mother was throwing her an absurdly huge Sweet Sixteen birthday party today. It was stupid. Her real birthday was three days ago. The party was at her house, complete with photo booth and jump castle for her “friends,” most of them getting either drunk or high before coming. As she walked by the jump castle—rented for her little sister’s friends, but a hit with everyone—she smiled her perfectly polite smile.

  “Hey, Emery come jump with us!” Jeff Higgins, a guy she’d attended school with her entire life, yelled.

  “Yeah, Emery, let us see what’s under that tight little dress of yours!” some asshole from school called out from the inflatable castle.

  “That’s the only way you’ll see under her dress, dipshit,” a faceless guy taunted.

  They all laughed, but her smile never wavered; never once did her mask slip as she shook her head. Perfectly polite Emery Shaw, that’s about all anyone could say about her. That’s all she was to them.

  On the inside, she was a complete void. She had no real friends at her school, but tons of superficial acquaintances. The party hadn’t been her idea. She let her mother dictate most things in her life and this ridiculous celebration was no exception. She just didn’t care—no, couldn’t care—about anything except surviving.

  Her sister was running around with some of her friends, chasing each other with glow sticks. A smile skated across Emery’s lips, but fell off immediately when she saw Phil’s gaze on her. Emery looked around to ensure no one was watching and shot him the bird, her stomach clenching at his gaze. The smirk stayed on his face as she started moving out of his line of sight.

  Ashley, Emery’s nine-year-old sister, stopped running and grabbed her hand. “Hey, Em, let’s go out front. You want to?”

  “Sure,” Emery agreed. She could never say no to her sister.

  Before they could disappear, her mother brought the birthday cake out.

  “Oh good God,” Emery muttered, still holding Ashley’s hand.

  “What?” Ashley protested. “It’s amazing! Look at the tiers! It looks just like a wedding cake.”

  “Ugh.” Emery shook her head. It did look like a wedding cake. The cake was a multiple level white chocolate cake adorned with strawberries. Everything was extravagant and exactly like her mother wanted. Emery didn’t even like white chocolate. Not that her mother asked.

  Doing precisely what she was expected to do, as always, she blew out the candles and made a wish. Please let me escape.

  The candles that covered the top tier of the cake glowed after she’d blown them out. As Emery took a bite of her cake, her mother signaled everyone to be quiet by tapping on her ever-present wine glass. The caterers passed out pieces to the guests.

  “People!” her mother called, demanding everyone’s attention. “I can’t believe I’m old enough to have a child that is turning sixteen.” She smiled tightly as she looked at Emery, a restless murmuring beginning in the crowd as people remarked on the taste of the dessert. “I’m so happy everyone has been able to enjoy our celebration for Emery’s Sweet Sixteen. I think there might be something special for my Emery out front,” she finished elegantly.

  The entire crowd took off toward the driveway, discarding cake and plates as they went. Emery smiled with what she hoped looked like excitement. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Phil take her mother’s hand and lean in to whisper something in her ear. A shudder racked her entire body.

  “Come on, Em!” Ashley yelled, pulling her to run with the crowd and shaking her out of her panic.

  “Emery!” her mother called from behind where Emery and Ashley were running. They both stopped and her mother draped a black Hermes scarf around Emery’s eyes.

  “Mom, do we really have to do this?” she asked, her question nothing more than a whisper. She clamped her mouth shut when she smelled him. Her stomach twisted and she tried to keep down the cake she’d just eaten.

  “Yes, Emery.”

  His voice caused fear to travel down her spine. She wondered if he could smell it.

  “Come on!” Ashley pulled her hand and Emery willingly let herself be dragged away from the fear that ate away at her soul.

  Fear was her constant companion. It drove her decisions, her withdrawal from life, and filled her nights. Those few minutes when she lay in her bed in the dark but before she tumbled weightlessly into sleep were the worst. The quiet filling her ears and the feeling of the world falling away almost caused panic attacks for her. She shook the fear away and came back to the here and now.

  She could hear everyone chattering away when she made her way to the driveway. She waited a moment before she tugged the blindfold off and pulled out a smile that usually worked.

  “Oh crap!” she said, hopefully filling with the appropriate level of glee. “I don’t even know what to say.” I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want to owe you anything. “I love it.” She even jumped up and down to convey her excitement.

  “Take me for a spin?” Ashley asked hopefully as she ran up to the two-door black BMW.

  Emery looked at her mother for confirmation. Her mother nodded, smiling absentmindedly. Emery had gotten her license earlier in the week; her mother had pulled her out of school on her actual birthday and taken her to get it. Something she was now grateful for, so at least now she could leave this house whenever she wanted.

  They climbed in and Emery turned on the radio, loud. Ashley opened the sunroof and Emery reversed down the driveway. I wish I could just drive away and never come back.

  “Earth to Emery,” Ashley said. “Your party is awesome. My friends are so jealous.”

  Emery put her hand on Ashley’s. “I’m glad you’re having fun.”

  “Aren’t you?” Ashley’s eyes clouded with confusion.

  Emery pulled out
a fake smile. “Of course.”

  “I mean, did you see that Jeff is here?” Ashley turned the music down as Emery circled the block.

  “Jeff Higgins?”

  “Yes. He’s so cute.”

  “Gross, Ashley. He’s my age.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean he isn’t cute,” Ashley refuted.

  They turned up the music and yelled the lyrics to a song by a boy band that was currently dominating the radio. They held their hands out the windows, their perfectly coifed hair flying in every direction. Emery drove around as long as she could, and by the time they pulled back into the driveway the party was dying out.

  As they made their way to the backyard, Emery grabbed her sister and walked with her arm draped around Ashley’s shoulder. Emery’s life was like watching a foreign film; she knew the right actions and laughed at the right places, but she had no idea what was really transpiring in front of her. Emery felt nothing and didn’t feel like anything was her own, but being numb was a happy retreat compared to being terrified all the time.

  Ashley turned the corner first. Emery heard his gravelly laugh before she saw him. His voice carried across the lawn, but her entire body reacted on its own and she froze in place. Ashley let go of Emery’s hand.

  “Hey, Jeff.” She heard the smile in her sister’s voice.

  “Hey, little Emery.” Jeff was a nice guy. He’d been in Emery’s class for years. His brown eyes sparkled as he looked at Emery.

  Everyone said Ashley was a spitting image of Emery, which caused an irrational twinge of loss and foreboding for Emery. She hoped Phil didn’t see that in her sister.

  Ashley’s blond curls disappeared into the crowd as she ran toward her friends. Jeff sidled up next to her because she still couldn’t get her legs to work. “Your car’s pretty hot, Em.”

  “Thanks.” She plastered on a fake smile and looked everywhere but at him.

  “You okay?” He laid a gentle hand on her arm and that broke her from her trance.

  She pulled her arm away from him like it was on fire, but her smile never dropped from her face. “Of course. I’m fine. I hope you enjoyed the party,” she said dismissively.