Page 20

20

STAR

With a scream, I hurled the chair at the window.

“Not a fucking dent,” I snarled, retrieving the chair again and slamming the feet into the glass, but it made no impression.

The bulletproof glass was next level in this godforsaken house.

In the room I’d stayed in prior to this one, a room I’d been trapped in for almost three weeks after pistol-whipping the guard with his own gun, I’d tried to shoot my way out through the window, but though most of the bullets had lodged in the specialist glass, one had ricocheted off the fucking pane and had almost hit me in the shoulder.

It was one of the prettiest prisons I’d been in, with a view of the sea that was insane even if it was winter and the sky was bleak and the ocean, as a result, was moody, but it was exactly that—a fucking prison.

I let loose another scream as I tried to slam the chair into the window again, but the force of the hit made the joint securing the front legs in place weaken and tumble under the pressure.

“FUCK!”

Outraged, I stopped trying to break the window and just smashed the chair into the floor because, having looked at the clock on the wall, the only thing I hadn’t destroyed, I knew, yet again, I’d missed calling Kat before bedtime.

With a scream, I continued pounding the chair until I was an exhausted mass of sweat and heaving skin.

Once upon a time, I used to watch my dad destroy everything on stage—he’d slam his Fender against the ground and scream through one of noxxious’s most famous hits—“Community Grinds.”

The crowd hadn’t known that for that song, the last on the line-up, the shit he wrecked were stage props and that he switched guitars so the new one in his hands got trashed and not his beloved ‘Casey.’

The memory stirred something in me.

Something unbidden.

Unwanted.

It gathered in my throat.

Lodging there.

I breathed in quickly. Released the breath.

No.

I couldn’t?—

The tears burned. Hot and searing. Appearing like a flash flood, devastation their intent.

I ground my teeth together, trying to hold them back, but the memory was too real. Too raw.

Casey.

My mom.

Allegedly.

Her lies gave me purpose.

They let me take back my emotions.

With the remnants of the chair, I reined myself in.

“I.” Smash. “Will.” Smash. “Not.” Smash. “Break.” Smash.

That was when the door opened.

I didn’t hear it, didn’t even register it at first. I was too busy losing control and trying to haul myself back from the edge to notice.

“You bastards want to break me?” I screamed at the ceiling where I knew there were cameras. “It’ll never happen.”

Heavy, panting breaths had my chest rattling until I realized I was no longer alone.

Head whipping to the side, I saw the door was open.

Standing in the entryway was…

I blinked.

No.

Mirages didn’t happen outside of deserts.

Some light phenomena occurred on the water, but I wasn’t looking at the fucking ocean, and this wasn’t a trick of the light.

It was a person.

A fucking person.

Someone I wanted.

Someone I craved.

Someone I betrayed.

My brow puckered with confusion, then I saw that he wasn’t cuffed.

He stood there without restraints.

The ramifications of that hit home before anything else.

Traitor.

I picked up the chair again.

And I charged.