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Chapter Twenty-Five

Ashland

My bedroom door slams, causing me to jump. Koda comes blazing around the corner into the kitchen. There’s fury in the air. I can’t tell if I’m excited or scared.

“What the fuck, Ashland?”

“What’s your problem?” I lift an eyebrow and cross my arms, leaning against the counter. This can’t possibly still be about what he said. He was calm when he went into my room.

He jabs his finger in my face. “My problem is that I’m the other fucking man. I’m the goddamn boy toy. You’ve been using me. You’ve been toying with my fucking feelings.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who the fuck is Damien?”

I feel like I can’t breathe. I don’t move a muscle. I just stare at him because I don’t know what to say. There isn’t a lie I can tell. How the hell would he know about Damien in the first place? The hair on my arms rises and goosebumps spread across my skin.

“Why...” I clear my throat. “Why are you asking me about him?” I can’t bring myself to say his name. My mouth is sour and I didn’t even say it, only thought it. My stomach lurches. I might be fucking sick.

“Because you’re fucking married to him.”

Now is the time to panic. “I’m not...I…He’s…”

“Yes, you are,” he growls. “It’s all right here.”

He holds up the letter that I keep hidden in my favorite book. It’s been torn open.

“No.” I shake my head vigorously. “That letter is from Memphis.”

“Oh, you mean another man that I’ve never heard of? Really? If that’s true then why is it signed Damien?”

“It’s not. It can’t be.” Tears spring to my eyes. “It’s from Memphis.”

I already don’t believe it when I say it.

Koda thrusts the sketchbook he had previously stolen onto the counter and flips through the pages, tearing some of them in his fit of rage. It’s all there. Laid out on the pages are my personal horrors and nightmares. Every memory that I haven’t managed to smash down and set on fire like tinder. The darkness leaks from the pages, crawling toward me. The charcoal morphs into glistening blood. There was so much of it. So many years of it.

Damien. Damien. Damien.

His name is chanted in my mind. Am I distressed? Am I panicking? Am I dying?

The metal door flies open, and Damien strides in. It feels like months have passed, but it’s probably been a week. I’m lying in the bed, doing my best to pretend I’m asleep. My biggest star is clutched in my palm underneath the pillow, the sharpened corners digging into my flesh.

He counts them out loud. He does it sometimes to remind me of how much I have to lose.

“Eighteen, Nineteen…Yang!”

I flinch when Damien shouts his name. There’s a plan. There’s a plan. There’s a plan. It’s my latest mantra.

“Yes, sir?” Yang says like a perfect little soldier. The door closes behind him and scratches the floor when it swings shut.

He’s going to betray me, I think. This was a test, and I’ve failed. How many stars will this be?

“Can you count the stars for me?” Damien asks.

“Yes, sir. One. Two. Three. Four. Five…”

My heart beats wildly in my chest. I’m sure they can hear it.

“…Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten…”

I might throw up. I try to pull the rage I used to have from the depths of my soul.

“… Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…”

I focus on everything that I’ve lost.

“…Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen…”

How the back yard used to be filled with honeysuckles. The way the nights smelled different in the summer. The sound the creek would make when we would splash around. The way Yang always protected me. Just like he is now.

“…Eighteen…”

Remember Ashland. She was a person. She still could be.

“…Nineteen,” Yang finishes.

“Ashland!” Damien barks. “Get the fuck up!”

I don’t get up. I don’t move or even acknowledge that he’s spoken. I keep my eyes shut tight and listen. I’ve learned to be good at listening.

Damien stomps over and grabs my hair, ripping some of it out of my head as he yanks it back. The star is clutched so tightly in my hands that warm blood is dripping down my palms, making it slippery, so I grip it tighter. Damien is so enraged that he isn’t even paying attention. As the tears threaten to spill, I try to focus.

Summer nights. Stars. Damien.

No.

Honeysuckles. Yang. Damien.

Fuck.

Remember summer nights where Yang and I would catch fireflies and play hide and seek.

I can smell Damien. Gun powder and hay.

Remember picking the honeysuckles with Memphis and tasting the nectar.

I open my eyes. Damien is inches from my face with his pupils blown out, per usual.

And remember Ashland. Ashland. Fucking Ashland.

Damien studies me. He’s waiting for the tears to flow, but they won’t. Not this fucking time.

“Where is your little star?”

I stare at him, etching his face into my mind.

“Speak!” he demands.

“Fuck you.” I stab the star into his neck, right where I think his jugular might be.

He looks at me. Just stares at me without a fucking sound. Then he laughs. It’s a little gurgled, but it’s there.

“Baby girl,” he says. “You’ve stabbed me with my own disappointment. Poetic.”

I try not to panic. It’s confirmed. He’s fucking immortal. Damien will never die, and he’s not going to let me either. He reaches up and grips my throat right over my trachea, digging his gunpowdered fingernails into my flesh. I want to cry, but the fear is running so rampant that I can’t.

I choke from the lack of oxygen. He won’t kill me quickly, if at all. I know he won’t. He wants me to suffer. Blood slithers from the wound in his neck in streams, seeping into his shirt. I stare at where the star is sticking out in horror. There's more blood than there should be, but it’s also not enough.

It’s never fucking enough. I take my hand, which is weakening with every millisecond that passes, and pretend to struggle for air. I grab the gun at his waist, and while he’s so full of fury choking me, I shoot him in the stomach point blank. At least I think it’s his stomach. The pop of the gun echoes off of the cinder-block walls. Damien releases me, and blood spreads through his shirt, blooming like a flower. I try to pull the trigger again and the clip is empty. I guess he knew I would try this some day.

He coughs and gives me a terrifying grin. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Damien falls to the floor and Yang springs into action, dragging him into the bathroom. There's a trail of blood, and I follow in complete shock.

I just killed Damien.

I can’t stop thinking that sentence over, and over, and over, even as his chest rises and falls with shallow breaths. Yang hoists him into the bathtub.

“Yinny, I need you to change the clip on the gun. The pocket on my leg.”

I do as he asks, albeit I’m clumsy. Damien’s eyes glow as he watches me try to enact the plan that Yang has laid out for me. I pull up a cut out tile in the floor with my fingernails, and they crack and bleed. I’m so fucking malnourished. The adrenaline is keeping me moving.

I grab the map and shove it into my underwear. I don’t want to cover it in blood because my life depends on it. Yang grabs the star in Damien’s throat and yanks it out. Blood pours from the wound, and Damien gurgles some more.

When Yang speeds out of the bathroom I start to follow, but pause in the doorway, taking one last look at the man who loves me. The one who has brainwashed me into loving him, too.

“You’ll see me again, baby girl,” he coughs. “Next time, I’ll be dragging you to Hell with me.”

“This is him, isn’t it?” Koda points to one of the portraits of the glowing amber eyes. “Who is he?” he barks.

“Evil,” I whisper. It’s all I can manage. It’s so simple, but Koda doesn’t hear me. He isn’t listening.

My hands are shaking, and my teeth are chattering. I stare at the eyes. The same ones that stared into me when I stabbed him. Damien is supposed to be locked in Guantanamo. I'm a nobody here. How? How did he get that letter to me?

“…And you agreed. All of this fucking time you were slutting it out…”

“You went through my stuff!” I scream, effectively silencing him. “Why would you open that?”

My sadness is being replaced by the anger that I know so well. It’s the only way I can try to fight the tears threatening to spill over. They burn my eyes and everything is blurry.

“You know, you had me fucking convinced. You’re a great goddamn actress. I actually felt something for you,” he spits the words out like venom. “Turns out you’re not a slut. You’re a whore . You’ll never be anything else. You pretend you’re this brutally honest face value bitch. Guess what, Stacy , you’re just like everyone else. You know what I see? Someone who torments themselves and keeps their distance, because if they don’t, everyone will see what a fucking liar they are.”

“You have no clue what you’re talking about. What about you, Golden Boy? Do you really think you’re so fucking perfect? You’re surrounded by narcissists who are only worried about what they can make people think about them. When someone asks you a question, they manipulate your answer to make it fit their narrative, and that’s enough because it’s exactly what they wanna hear. They don’t care. Those people don’t like reality. They’ll do anything to escape it, and you just eat that shit up. You hide who you really are,” I laugh. “If I’m a liar then so are you, but you’re wrong. I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. It’s your willful ignorance that gets in your fucking way.”

“You’re a fucking mistake,” he sneers.

I clap. “Well, look at you being honest with yourself for once.”

“At least one of us is. You’re not a good person.” He thought he had me. He thought that would hurt me, but he’s fucking wrong.

My eyes drive daggers straight into his soul. “There's good somewhere out there. Penny is proof of that, but that has never been me. I’ve been to Hell, Koda. I’ve been violated by evil. It peels your skin from your bones, picks apart your soul, and tells you that you’re all the more beautiful for it. Evil becomes beautiful. It reminds you that there is no you without it. So, I’m not a Good person, Ko. I’m the goddamn worst. I love evil. So what does that say about you?”

My mouth is dry. I try to swallow. My words landed exactly the way I wanted them to.

Those coal black eyes weaken to their sage green, and he looks like I’ve shoved him into the mulch on the playground. “You stupid fucking cunt.”

“I know, right? Now get the fuck out.”

“Gladly.” He snatches his coat and shoves it on.

“Oh, and, Armory?”

“What?” he growls, glaring at me.

I give him my middle finger. “I love you.”

That does it. Those three little words tell him that I want this over for good. They send a message that no other words ever could. Surprisingly, there’s regret written all over his face. He knows he’s as good as dead to me.

“Give your husband my condolences on marrying such a whore.” Then he leaves.

I slam my fists down onto the counter and scream with frustration. Damien has once again fucked my life up. We’ve technically been divorced for four years, but that doesn’t matter. In Damien’s eyes that’s just a piece of fucking paper. It doesn’t matter that I was sixteen. He owns me like property. It doesn’t matter that I was a prisoner. None of it matters, because Koda didn’t give me the chance to tell him. Even if he had, I wouldn’t.

I face the sink and roughly wipe my eyes, sniffling. I see my hands and arms still covered with the bruises Damien and his lackeys left on me that have long since disappeared. I can suddenly feel them all over me. They’re crawling on my skin like meth bugs. I flip the handle and hot water rushes out.

I start to scrub. I try to scrub them all away from my thoughts and off of my skin. I try to tear Koda from my flesh and erase every touch. When I’m done, I feel my broken body laying on the jagged rocks at the bottom of the imaginary cliff. I feel empty. Exactly how it should've always been.

I grab the dishes from the sink and start to fling them against the walls, letting the shattering of the porcelain become my mantra. I scream until I’m hoarse and all I can do is choke. I told myself I wouldn’t let myself feel anything. I thought that was some sort of choice that I could make, but it never was. He repeated all of the things Damien did and I fell, crawling to him like the brainwashed prisoner I’ll always be.

I grab Damien’s stupid letter where Koda threw it down onto the counter.

My beautiful wife Ashland,

I feel like taking a knife and cutting my eyes out. I grab the kettle from the stove and throw it for good measure.

I miss you every single day. They took you from me. I forgive you for the confusion they’ve all caused. I am; however, disappointed that you didn’t trust me. I thought you understood that I would never let anything happen to you, and now you’re out there in the world without me to protect you. I’m sorry for the stars. There was no amount of disappointment that you could inflict that wouldn’t have taken me with you. Not even number twenty.

I have chills. I still see him smugly sitting there in chains behind that desk. Even through the one sided glass of the interrogation room he somehow turned to face me, refusing to let me have one moment out of his hold. He watched me like a fucking psycho with sadness on his face. Sadness. Like he can actually feel sad. He’s a sociopath, but it took me years to understand that.

You have broken your vows, but I’ll never break mine. To love and to cherish until death do us part, but we both know that’s not true. Death is endless. My only solace is that I know we’ll be back together soon. I made you a promise, baby girl, and I don’t break my promises.

Love,

Damien

The tears stream down my face, dripping onto the piece of paper. The ink blooms like a flower, just like the blood did on his shirt. I cry harder. I couldn’t just stay calm for one second and explain it to Koda. Instead, I said things I’ll never be able to take back. If he read this letter he probably saw some poor lonely man that misses his wife. With his bullshit about being back together soon I’m sure Koda believed it was true. I kept telling him we would end, and this would drive that nail into the wood.

Wait. He said we’ll be back together soon. The tears turn panicked. Why the fuck would he do that? I try to remember the day that I got this. I came home and it was sitting on the kitchen counter. I had a missed call from Jeremy and figured it was this. Jeremy wouldn’t have just dropped something like this off even if it was from Memphis. In fact, he wouldn’t have brought it at all. Even if he had, Koda tore it open, but isn’t Jeremy supposed to do that first?

“You are so goddamn beautiful when you cry.”

The words slice through me, but the voice isn't quite right.

“Cole? What are you doing here?”

“I saw Koda leave. It’s the first time he hasn’t been glued to your side. He looked pretty pissed. Did something happen?”

“I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want to see you again.”

He chuckles, looking up at the ceiling and settling his hands on his waist. “You tend to say that a lot. I’ve been worried about you.”

“Well, don’t.”

Something feels off. He strides over and snatches the letter from between my fingertips, giving me a paper cut. He pulls a lighter out of his pocket and sets it on fire. “Ya know, I regret delivering this. Damien never deserved you.”

My brain is short circuiting. “How do you know who that is?”

There’s something on Cole’s face that's wild. He looks like he has lost his fucking mind. His pupils are blown out. Psychotic. “Come on, Ash. You can’t tell me that you don’t see the similarities. That you don’t even remember me.”

I scan his face. It takes me three times to see it. Amber. His amber puppy dog eyes. I wasn’t looking for it, so I never saw it. Now I see the shape of his face. His build is similar to Damien’s, but smaller. Most of the men wore masks to hide their identity.

“My brother is a fuck up, but me? I’m a nice guy. You don’t have to chain a girl down to keep her. You just take her to the beach.”

The beach. The beach. The fucking beach. My fifteenth birthday.

“You were there,” I realize. “You were there.”

Before Damien had Yang there was another. I never knew what had happened to him. Now he’s staring at me.

“I was the one who suggested it, Ash. I thought you should have a good birthday. Get some fresh air. I thought that Damien would be coked out of his mind, but no. The fucker decided to stay sober. We were going to run away together. Then Yang had to show up and ruin it all. Became Damien’s new favorite.” Cole purses his lips. “No matter. He’s not here. I’m going to save you this time.”

Cole is delusional. Not the funny, ha ha, I’m delusional, LOL kind, but the real one.

“I thought you’d see how perfect we are. I didn’t want to break you. That’s Damien’s thing.” He waves his hand dismissively, advancing on me until he has me trapped against the counter. “But then stupid Koda fucking Armory just had to have you.”

While Cole continues to rant, I keep my eyes trained on him, trying to see everything in my immediate surroundings. There’s a skillet on the stove. If I could get the drawer open, there’s a knife. There are shards of plates, but they’re too far away. I may not have ended Damien, but Cole? I have a better chance this time. I know better, and I have more to work with.

“But then,” he pulls a gun out of the back of his pants, “You’d wake up as if we never made love at all.”

I swallow the panic. “What are you talking about?”

He waves the gun in the air with exasperation. “You love blacking out. That's why I'd put the drugs into your drinks. You wanted me to do it. The way you would moan…” He bites his lip.

All of these blackouts during nights of drinking. Cole was the one handing me the drinks. The night I was drugged over Thanksgiving. Cole handed me the drink. I never suspected it. Cole was having sex with me while I was on copious amounts of drugs, and I didn’t even know. I want to throw up, but I swallow the bile. That’s why the blackouts didn’t happen every time he wasn’t there. That’s why they stopped entirely when I told him to fuck off. I need to get the gun from him.

I press my body against his and look up at him, batting my lashes. “I wish I could remember it.”

I see my phone laying on the counter and I reach around him, pretending I want to hold him tight. Using my muscle memory, I try to press call on the last contact. I pray with everything that I have that it works.

“God, my brother was such a fucking idiot.”

“I wish you had saved me that day on the beach. You should have told me the truth. We could have had more time together.”

“Don’t think that I’ve forgotten you telling me to fuck off, Ashland.”

“I’m so sorry, Cole. I was just confused.”

“Yes, well, you’ll have plenty of time to thank me later. Now, we just have to wait for Penny to get home.” He says her name like she’s a disease. “She keeps getting between us. I let you have fun with your little friend, but it’s time for her to go.”

He’s going to kill Penny. He’s going to fucking kill Penny. She could be home any minute. I wasn’t paying attention when she told me which flight was hers. I only know that it’s today. The time to spring into action is now.

I knee Cole in the balls causing him to double over. I try to get the gun from him, but he has it firmly in his grip. It goes off, and the dry wall puffs where the bullet goes through. Cole is already recovering. I grab the skillet, but it clatters to the floor. I reach for the drawer, and Cole brings the butt of the gun down on my wrist. Blistering heat erupts in my hand. He probably fucking broke it.

I scream with the pain and try to see straight through it. My fingers are already hooked on the knob, so I yank it open and grab the knife with my good hand. We fall to the ground as he tries to wrestle it away from me. The blade is moving closer and closer to my face until it digs into my flesh over my eye. The skin splits from my eyebrow down to my cheek, and I scream some more.

“Go ahead and scream, baby. I know you need to get it all out.”

I drop the knife before it can dig any deeper. Blinding myself won’t help. It slides to the floor, covered in blood. Then I bite. I bite his face because it’s so close to mine and it’s all I’ve got. He releases me with a growl, but when he pulls his gun away he accidentally pulls the trigger. My adrenaline is pumping so hard that I don’t know where it goes, but I have to keep fighting. For Penny. I’ll keep fighting until we’re both dead if that’s what it takes to keep her alive.

The skillet is next to me. I try to grip it, my hand slipping with blood.

“Goddammit, Ashland!” Cole shouts. “You made me fucking shoot you.”

The cast iron is heavy in my hand. I only manage to hit him in the arm, but it’s enough. He finally drops the gun and I grab it, but he’s back on top of me and he punches me in the fucking face. I manage to pull the trigger, and when I’m able to focus again I see blood dripping from his arm. At least he’s a little incapacitated.

He’s wrestling the gun from me, and there’s another pop. This time, though, I fucking feel it tear through the muscle in my shoulder. Cole nabs it from me, and as he does, I grab his finger and pull the trigger, but at the last second it turns toward me and goes through my thigh. I’m just fucking killing myself.

I think of Penny.

With the last burst of energy I can manage, I use my bad hand to hit Cole as hard as I can in the jaw, screaming and crying through the pain. I feel the crunch. I hear it. It’s sickening. When the gun slips from his hand, I grab it, put it to his forehead, and pull the trigger until it won’t shoot anymore.

He slumps on top of me, stuck in a state of mangled shock as he dies. I drag myself up, lying against the cabinets. I’m fucking drowning. I look down, surveying the damage. Blood is leaking from my stomach. I won’t make it much longer.

I manage to laugh, but the pain is too much. It’s over. Maybe this was what I always wanted. Maybe this is the only way to end all of this fucking turmoil. Damien made a promise that he would drag me to Hell, but it looks like I’ll be the one cashing in.