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And I didn’t have the stomach to give them to him.

The second I got home, I would need to text him and tell him that he didn’t need to come over. I didn’t know how long I could keep him away, but I knew he couldn’t see me like this. Broken. Defeated. Abused. Discarded.

Trash.

Angry tears spilled down my cheeks, intermingling with the blood already present.

One more step.

One more.

One more.

I finally reached the front steps of my house, and I forced my abused, tired body to work, to carry me up the stairs. A cry of agony left me and my muscles protested, but soon, I was up the stairs, through the door, and inside the living room.

I’d meant to head to my bedroom, throw myself beneath the covers, and sleep for eternity, but that never came to fruition. I barely made one step before someone released a horrified, distressed noise from directly beside me.

I spun towards the living room, my heart playing leapfrog at the sight of Beau standing before me. His eyes were wild as they traveled over my abused form, stopping on where my shirt had been ripped down the middle, baring my breasts.

Dylan had destroyed my bra.

Beau then lowered his gaze to my ripped pants.

A thousand emotions flashed in his eyes—horror, agony, disgust, and then…anger. Vengeance.

Wrath.

They all twisted together, creating a virulent cocktail that had my throat closing and tightening with emotions.

“Beau…” I all but begged, wanting him near and away from me in equal measure. I wanted his arms around me, solid bands of steel I could lose myself in, and I wanted him as far from me as humanly possible. I didn’t want him to see me like this.

No words needed to be said, but fire burst to life behind his eyes. Anger like I’d never experienced before radiated from him in tangible waves. It blasted my face and arms, singeing the hairs present there.

“Beau—” I began, but he was already barreling past me, out the door and down the front steps. His entire body seemed to shake as if someone had tased him, as if electricity was coursing through his veins with every step. His fisted hands shook by his sides as his body pulsated with pure, unbridled rage. “Beau!” I cried again, struggling to keep pace with him, to stop him.

My body screamed at me, demanding I slow down, but I couldn’t. I knew that the second I did, Beau would make a decision that we couldn’t come back from. Thathecouldn’t come back from.

As if the universe had a sick, twisted sense of humor, Dylan’s shitty red Mustang pulled up into the driveway. By the way the car swerved back and forth before parking, I could tell he was plastered. No surprise. He’d been drinking an hour before, when he’d—

This wasn’t the first time he’d done it, but it was one of the worst.

Beau wrenched the car door open before Dylan could even get out.

“What the fuck—” my step-brother slurred as Beau yanked him to his feet, his hands clenched around the collar of his shirt. Dylan’s eyes were glazed over with intoxication, and he swayed from side to side like a willow in an empty field.

And then he dropped like a bag of bricks when Beau punched him square in the jaw.

The next few minutes were some of the worst of my life.

A sick, twisted part of me wanted Dylan to pay. To die. It reveled in the violence, in the vindictive sort of justice Beau was enacting. It wanted to see him bleed.

But the other, more logical part of me warned that he was going too far, that Beau had to stop before he made a decision he’d come to regret. Already, Dylan’s face was nearly unrecognizable, his eyes already swelling shut. Blood dribbled from his parted lips as he murmured something too low for me to hear. Whatever it was only seemed to enrage Beau more. With a bellow the entire neighborhood could no doubt hear, Beau laid into him with renewed gusto, the lines in his back rippling with every punch.

The setting sun illuminated this macabre, violent scene in shades of pastel and orange. It provided just enough light for me to make out the object twinkling in Dylan’s hand.

A scream ripped itself from my mouth as I struggled to run forward, to stop him, but I was too late.

Before my very eyes, Dylan brought the knife up into Beau’s chest, starting at his navel and forcing it upwards to his chest. Gutting him.

Dylan had just gutted my best friend.

“Beau!” I sobbed, collapsing to my knees.

My scream echoed around me, filling the silence.

Who would’ve thought that that was one of the last sounds the land of the living ever heard me make?