Page 38 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)
SHANA
M y ankles scrape against a coarse surface, prickling threads pinching when I pull.
My head pounds before I can peel my eyes open, and I vomit as the blackness falls again. I drift back to here, wherever that is, and yank my feet forward, but nothing gives. My vision flutters, a firefly blinking, sometimes close until it’s far away again.
“Open your eyes, Shana!” a voice hisses, deep and musky, but forced like it’s being shoved out of a tube it can’t quite fit inside. But that makes no sense.
My head pounds, and it reminds me of my monthly headaches, which reminds me of my period, which reminds me of…
“The baby!” My eyes spring open, but it’s so dark where we are, I can hardly see the other person across from me. It’s patchy, and I’m wobbly.
I didn’t notice the hangover until my eyes tried to focus.
On Thomas Remmington.
“Thomas?” I attempt to shove back, but forget I’m stuck in place. Tied to a chair.
Tied like Thomas.
It’s dark, but the lantern hanging above us glows enough. It’s unmistakably him.
I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s the one that splintered my confidence.
A date.
A drink.
A fizzing white pill you’d never notice across a beer pong table in a field of people.
“I didn’t want this!” he sobs through a twisted fabric gag, stretching his mouth. “I’m not who took you.” Thomas’ eyes drift to the floor, feeling the footsteps beneath us before I can even hear them. “Pretend…” his sentences become panicked and half-spoken, “sleep!”
I watch, aghast, as he slinks into his chair and closes his eyes.
“The hell is going on, Remington!?” I yell, trying to buck my chair forward. Instead, I earn a slow clap from the last man I ever expected to walk through the door.
“Lawrence?”
“Hey, honey, I’m home. Did you miss me already? Uh-oh, your restraints are loosened.” He bends down and tightens the ropes on my wrists and ankles, breath heating my exposed skin and churning my gut.
Or that’s the baby .
My breath gathers in my lungs, and I heave it out steadily.
“Pity your old pal Tommy isn’t awake to see the big finale.”
“What are you doing, Lawrence, and why am I here? I know you and Dustin had your moments, but we didn’t work out. You didn’t like me to begin with, remember? You called me a stripper!”
“Your GUARD DOG brOKE MY HAND!”
The air releases from inside me like it’s been knocked the whole way out, and all my hackles rise.
He smoothes his hair, a tic in his neck taking over and forcing him taller.
He straightens his suit for the third time, then forces his skeevy smile on me.
“I wanted you from the start . I noticed you. I asked you out on Flinger. We matched, Shana! Sixty-Nine !” His voice drops.
“Don’t you remember?” His eyes wander my face wily, a different side of Lawrence reaching out from inside and breaking through and taking over. “He ruined it , Shana!”
“Okay,” I breathe, nodding, anything I can do to get him to move an inch away from me. Away from the threat that at any moment he could knock me over, punch me, kick me, harm this child— or worse.
My neck stings on the puncture wound of the drugs he injected into me, and for a swift second, I allow myself to pause on a thought. That maybe whatever he gave me already hurt the baby more than anything he could do now.
What if he killed her?
But, no! I shake my head, grinding my teeth in defiance of my own thoughts. I won’t think that way.
Dustin would fight.
We will fight.
Because I’m not alone. I’m not the last of my kind.
And I’m saving us both from this monster.
“Was it you? Writing those notes all along?” I pinch my eyes shut, half of me not wanting to know, the other half already having accepted it. He doesn’t answer, just huffs, a wounded child, finally told he can’t have everything he ever wanted after a life of anything he could imagine.
Somehow, I understand that.
We’re told we can grow up to be anything we want to be, but not everyone finds that pot of gold, some just find broken bits of rainbow, cling desperately to shards of color, and struggle to maintain hold of a single, jagged edge…and that’s if they’re lucky.
“And Thomas?” I ask, putting together the pieces. “That’s how you knew about some of the details in your notes that only Dustin would, isn’t it? Like the octopus or the stars.”
He lifts his head as a strange sort of pride settles beside his anger. “You don’t know, do you? Even after all these years, you still haven’t seen the truth.”
“What do you mean, all these years ?”
“You didn’t have one stalker, Shana Holiday.” He smiles, brushing a sweaty strand of hair behind my ear. “You, my dear, are special enough for two.” He winks. “ Eye see you. ”
“But…” My heart races, letters and words tumbling behind my eye lids even as I squeeze them shut to block it out. “…that one was from middle school . It’s my oldest one.”
Lawrence nods solemnly, and it’s the same exact moment he does that all the water in my body rushes from my eyes and falls like waves down my cheeks. A shrill cry flies from my throat, nothing in its path to block it, my mouth wide as my eyes at the terror that spikes me with his admission.
“It was always me, Shana, your love letters. But of course, I knew you were too perfect for me. Too perfect for this world! I had to create a better one. A home,” his lips curve, his eyes flashing with hope just as quickly as they do anger, “away from death. A place to dance your days away, free of pain or loss, a habitat all your own.”
He tosses a handful of sugar packets at my feet and kneels beside me. “Like when we were kids.” He frowns before he crushes a packet in his fingers. “No matter what I do, you still don’t SEE me!”
My skin prickles, memories skittering as the sugar packets lay in a pile.
A roof.
A flash of Lawrence stacking the Stevia at Cowboy’s Paradise, then another…
A boy with a hermit crab.
“It’s you!” I gasp. “Lucy’s brother!”
Larry .
His face twists with a demented sort of glee that chills me to my core.
“That’s right, darling. I’ve always loved you, but I knew I would never be good enough, so I waited.
Unlike that imbecile you’ve attracted the attention of.
I waited. Patiently. It was my turn. He had his, and he turned you down time after time!
I WATCHED IT! He rejected my precious, perfect little dancer. ”
If heckles could rise any higher, mine would be in the sky. I pull at my bindings, but they’re too tight at this angle. I’ve got to get myself turned.
“I always hoped you’d see me, even after my pathetic sister found my photographs and threatened to tell you. I burned them, and I burned her, too.” He smiles, not a shred of remorse on his features. “Bye, bye, Lucile.”
Tears break over my vision as I scan the room, Thomas is captured, I’ve been taken, Lawrence killed his own sister.
“But you only saw him , and I knew in my heart, if you could see what I see…you’d remember we’ve always been meant for one another. Remember our fun? Remember the notes I left you? None of this amateur watcher shit your criminal boyfriend plays at.”
It occurs to me, the extent of Lawrence’s delusions. Is he not a criminal now, too? At least Dustin did everything in the name of honor, saving those who needed him. Innocent girls being taken advantage of were brought to justice because of him, and it haunts him still every night.
Lawrence doesn’t even see his faults.
He’s proud of them.
He gets close again, lips brushing the shell of my ear.
He must think I like it, because he rubs against me, a satisfied chuckle stumbling from his throat, and I try like hell not to vomit.
“I’m the real deal, baby. Watch you wake, sleep, even put you in a shiny cage of diamonds, so I can watch you sparkle anytime I please. Want to see?” He grins wildly. “I installed a ballet barre. And a pole, of course .” My breathing halts, chest seizing at the weight of his words.
“You sent me the music box after my mother died, didn’t you? I always thought it was Dustin.”
“I loved watching you dance. More than he could ever know!” His smile and his scowl are nearly identical, his eyes shifting from left to right so fast, I can’t keep focus.
“My sister could fly, but you could soar.” He flicks open to an image on his phone, bars and lights and chains.
“I’ve found a way to keep your wings clipped now. ”
“I didn’t help him, Shana!” Thomas cries, working his chin up and down, loosening the gag around his mouth.
When his eyes lock on mine, I fear him almost as much as the psychopath lording over me.
But the boy who stole my trust is done playing possum now.
He’s a changed man, watching. Listening.
Even without his hearing, he squints his eyes to read Lawrence’s lips beneath the light.
It occurs to me as I watch his show of loyalty, that Thomas may always be my monster, but he’s a fellow victim of a much bigger threat to me right now, and if he makes it out, so do I.
So does my baby.
Tears flow down his bloodied cheeks as he looks at the cage on screen and sees what I’m seeing.
“I didn’t do this! Tried to stop him, but he…
he’s been threatening my family! I’m different now, Shana, you have to believe me!
I am not part of this!” His voice becomes a falsetto cry as Lawrence cracks a whip across his face.
He snatches the hearing aid from his left ear, the only ear with hearing capabilities at all thanks to decisions he made long ago.
Not Dustin. Him.
“You would have raped me like you did the others,” I say to Thomas, for the first time in my life.
Funny how it doesn’t make me feel any better.
Just honest. I know he can’t hear me with his ears right now, but I find it worse for him that way.
He sees it with his eyes, formed precisely by my lips.
He feels it in his heart, tied up here with nowhere to go.
Nothing to do but listen to the girl who got away.