Chapter 1
I wasnumb the entire drive away from my house. I could feel nothing and I couldn’t even respond to anything the Kings said to me, it was as if I was underwater and the soundwaves from their voices didn’t reach my ears. I was drowning in the depths of my own shock in the back seat between Valen and Archer while Kingston drove. His driving was erratic and the way he white knuckle gripped the wheel let me know how stressed he was over this.
Valen and Archer were doing their best to keep me calm, but I wasn’t losing it. Not yet, anyways. I wasn’t even close to the edge of hysteria, not like I would have expected given the thing I’d just done.
But as we drove, it began to hit me. The image of Reg’s face sprang up in my mind and the gargling sound he made as he fell played over and over in my ears.
I’d done it. I shot him.
Valen put his arm around me and Archer slid his hand up and down my leg, settling on my knee. They did their best, but all of us were in shock. We were all reeling from what I’d done, and each one of us was planning our next move, trying to keep me ahead of the police and out of jail.
“Okay, I know we’re all fucked up over this,” Valen said at last. “But we have to talk about it. We can’t expect this to go away any time soon.”
“What should I do?” I asked, breaking out of the fog to confront my situation head on, like I should have been doing since we left my place. “I have to do something.”
“You could do us,” Archer said, raising his eyebrows at me suggestively.
“Dude!” Kingston and Valen exclaimed at the same time.
“Come on,” Kingston continued.
“Don’t be a fucking pig,” Valen said and cuffed his friend on the back of the head from his side of the seat.
But I wasn’t offended by it. I knew what Archer was trying to do, and I appreciated it. I laughed and said, “It’s okay, guys. He’s making me feel better by keeping my mind off what happened. So I don’t see the same thing in my head over and over again.”
It didn’t work, unfortunately. Now that I was out of the fog, I couldn’t help but replay the slow motion image of my mind clicking into place, realizing what Reg had been doing to me, and then the fear that he was going to start on Nat now that she was older, and the horror at how much it had changed me as a person.
And finally, me making my move.
It was like watching a stop motion replay in my head of me grabbing the gun and ending the torment. The horrors that had been forced upon me against my will. I felt sick every time I saw the bullet hit his flesh and pierce it with ease, with the simple movement of hot metal through ice.
And then the bullet explode out the back of him, bone and blood shattering and spraying across the dining table behind him.
Part of me could watch it in my inner eye with the cool detachment of my logical side. The side of myself that was normally in charge. The side that kept me hiding in the shadows and away from the attentions of anybody in my life or at school.
But the rest of me was raging with the energy of the surface of the ocean in the middle of a storm. Lightning flashes of fear shot across my mind, illuminating the hidden dark corners of memories. Things like being semi-conscious during Reg and Rick’s assaults on my body. The jeering laughing of men they brought over, and the pain and humiliation of the things they did to me.
I had known all along. That’s what disgusted me now about myself. I had known.
That had been the darkness that had followed me, that had been the source of the tension between Reg and I. That had been the weird feeling that had stalked me every time I was at home, that sensation I didn’t belong even under the same roof with my family.
So why had I taken his attention when we’d been alone? Why had I taken drinks from him and felt flattered by it? Why had I sought out his special affections when I’d known all along what he was doing?
How could I ever look at myself in the mirror again knowing these things about myself? The fact that I’d liked any part of what Reg had given me made me feel so sick to my stomach that I actually physically gagged. Even though he’d started when I was very young, I should have known better. I should have stood up to him at the very start instead of feeling good about finally getting him to myself.
We pulled into Archer’s driveway and got out, the Kings gathering around me to help me along. We started walking up the wide marble steps to the mansion and a sudden stabbing pain hit my ribs, just under my left breast. I felt a wave of nausea rolling beneath it, and I gasped as I doubled over, retching.
“Are you okay?” Valen asked as he ran his hand up and down my back. “Are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just can’t stop thinking about—”
I retched again and felt tears come at last. Hot, fat drops of pent up emotion. I wasn’t going to be able to stop the flood now, not this time.
It had come at last, and I was being forced to give into it.
“I killed him,” I exhaled with a shaky breath. “I shot him.”
“He deserved it, Evie,” Kingston said through gritted teeth. “He fucking deserved it. I would have done it myself if I’d known there was a gun in there.”