"She's dead, you fuck!" he yelled as he turned to face me, tears coursing down his cheeks. Then he noticed Milo, unmoving by his feet, and dropped to the floor, cradling the man's head to him. "Just do it," he rasped out as he looked back up, resignation making his shoulders slump as he clung to his forbidden lover.
He slumped down to rest on Milo's chest as I obliged his request then stepped over him to get to Shelby.
She was beat to shit and not breathing. But she did have a pulse, so I picked her up, racing for the exit and across the lawn with her in my arms. As I handed her off to the cousins waiting with the ambulance, I told them to take her to Gavin, hoping like hell they could save her because a hospital wasn't an option. Not after what had gone down. And I still had to deal with the rest.
* * *
Thirty Minutes Ago
Shelby
"You were supposed to be mine!" That was all Winston kept yelling after he came back from meeting his father, interspersed with something about "him not having me," but I didn't care. I was beyond feeling the cuts from the glass my body was resting in. The smiling photo, marred with my blood, had a happy couple staring out at me. I vaguely knew it used to sit in the frame whose shards now littered the bed, but…that didn't matter either. That happiness was a lie; it always had been. My last thought as I succumbed to my fate in that room of horrors?
I'm free…
Yes, Shelby Ann. Fly free, little one, fly free…