Page 40 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

One who killed his own sister.

Fuck you, I don’t say, because I want to live.

Instead, I moan and wiggle, shoving my crotch into his knee for show. “I want it really bad. Please, Larry. ”

His gaze drops to the hem of my borrowed T shirt, and his lip curls in disgust. “This his? This shirt?” He grips the fabric around my neck and twists, tugging until he’s choking me, the tightness in my throat forced even smaller by constriction.

My pulse sounds in my ears with each word he utters.

“Is this filthy piece of scraps HIS?” He smells it, like an animal .

Obsessed.

His nostrils flare as he thrusts his pelvis into my still tied stomach. “Do you feel this? Pressing against my pants to find you? You do this to me, but then I see this filthy piece-of-trash shirt covering what’s mine , and I want to burn it.”

Panic rushes me, my breath staggering when he procures a lighter from his pocket.

He strikes it with his thumb, the flame flickering across his gaze, luminating his empty eyes, and a smile that will forever haunt my nightmares.

“Maybe I’ll burn my name in your flesh, just above this used-up pussy.

Everyone will know that you belong to me . ”

My arms are searing in pain, my fingernails broken and bursting at the tips from splinters of rope shoved deep beneath them, but I will not let him win.

With the last piece of rope sawed free, and my bloodied fingers flexing for what’s to come, I jerk my head toward Thomas as a signal.

I can’t wait any longer.

Thomas grunts, growling and crying through his sopping gag, shaking his chair to come to my aid. The very boy who tried to take my dignity, my innocence, my autonomy …struggles at his ropes to save me from a monster I fear is far worse.

He’s what Thomas sees himself as, and I can hear from his cries how he detests who that is. I wonder, through his cries, if purgatory is always after one’s death. Perhaps this is judgement day. For more than just Thomas.

His arms pull at his sides, bound to the chair as he struggles to break loose, yanking at his restraints and rocking his chair to no avail.

I guess it’s scarier that he can’t even hear the asshole talk right now.

All he sees is fire in this man’s hands, and with his face toward me, Thomas has no way of reading his words.

He stares ahead in horror as he watches Lawrence hovering above my exposed belly, flame so close the hairs on my skin tinge the air with a foul smell, and I wince.

“Leave her alone!” He roars, surprisingly loud through his gagged and swollen lips, and I’ll be damned, but it works.

“What did you say to me, Ears? You wanna burn first?” Lawrence whirls around and snatches Thomas’ hearing aid from the table between us and lights the thing on fire until it’s sparking and smoking, dropped to the floor and crunched beneath his foot.

Yup. I might hate Thomas fucking Remington to the end of time, but Lawrence Lawson? Fuck this man. Shakespeare himself wouldn’t bake him in a pie. He would taste so foul, you would have to vomit him back up.

And that’s exactly what I do.

Vomit.

All over the back of him, because what he doesn’t know, is I am standing now. And free, my feet untied from excessive rubbing and yanking at the broken joints of the chair when he was occupied with my face. And what rich little boardroom boy doesn’t know is I don’t sit in meetings all day.

I’m at the gym. And I’m twenty-eight years of pure, athletic, muscle.

“Hey Lawrence,” I say, wiping the puke from my face as I sock him in the jaw. “That’s for Lucy.”

His hand darts to his cheek, embarrassment and true hurt snaking through.

His brows pinch in as he clenches fists at his sides.

“ You fucking liar ! I was going to propose to you here! For your mother, but you ruined it. Again!” He pulls a knife from his suit jacket and takes a step, eyes shining against the blade.

“I’ll have to kill you both now,” he says dejectedly, face blank and resolved, like it’s more of an inconvenience than anything.

When I think I have a shot, I shove him against the table and dash for the keys.

“Stop!” He screeches, scrambling to use the table and chairs for balance, but he slips on blood.

Thomas’ blood.

And he falls back to the ground, right below Thomas’ feet, and the two of us exchange a single glance, no sign language or lip reading needed for this message.

We kick him until he can’t stand. “Stop! I will slice your toes off one by one when I get you in your cage, you horrible piece of trash! That’s all you’ll ever be with him, you know, smalltown white trash, ballerina, washed up in a water-damaged studio with no one!

I know you, Shana! I’ve watched you! I can be there for you.

I can provide! Just look at what I’ve built for you!

You can dance your days away and never want or fear again!

Just think!” His face lights up, obsession swirling through dark orbs he darts to mine.

“No more people means no more loss. No more sadness. Just me and you, and all the time in the world to dance in your life-size music box. My pretty dancing doll, don’t you see it? !”

He swipes at my legs, but I’m too fast, kicking and stomping on any piece of him I can land until he cries out, bloody and bruised, a crumpled paper like the ones he left me…waiting…watching… defiling my innocence and trust.

“You are wrong!” I scream at him, slamming the ball of my foot into his groin and sending him several inches across the floor with the force of my kick. “I am not alone. And I’ll never be alone.”

I snatch the knife from the ground and slice Thomas free of his chair and God does he sob, falling into my body and hugging my waist.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Shana. I’m so sorry. What I did back then…”

“Stop it, Thomas.” I crane my neck down to his.

We don’t have time to spare, so I’ll only say it once.

“It’s past. I’m not saying what you did will ever be forgiven, because you don’t deserve that from the girls who didn’t get away like me.

The ones who didn’t have a Dustin fighting their battles for them when they were too weak or na?ve to notice it was a battlefield at all.

For Sarah and Tiffany and those who aren’t here to tell it to your face, for them you are not forgiven Thomas, and you never will be.

” I pry his arms off me and slide them gently to his sides before I spin back around and snap my foot against a groaning and stumbling Lawrence, shoving him back to the floor with a crack of his teeth against the tile. Woops.

“Look,” I tell a deflated Thomas, before I shove the keys in the lock. He reminds me of Dustin in this way. Of me, even, secrets and emotions bottled up for far too long, never moving on or breaking free.

No more.

I can choose to walk away from this nightmare, now and forever.

I can move on.

“It’s been a long time since you made those choices,” I say, carefully choosing my words. “Nobody can take back who that makes you or what you did. But you can write the rest of your story in whatever way you choose. And you have already started, by helping me get out of here.”

Lawrence groans behind us, shoving to one elbow before Thomas knocks him out again and I wrangle the keys.

“Now, let’s get the heck out of here before he wakes up and remembers a deaf dude and a one-hundred-andten-pound ballerina dismantled his grand stalker plans, yeah?”

We brace ourselves for what’s to come, as I swing open the door, and the saltwater air kisses us in the face. I know this floor.

“The aviary!” Right above the aquarium. I turn to face Thomas.

“That was the whooshing sound. The vibrations?” He nods at that.

“The note said to come here, but that was when I thought it was from Dustin.

I will my heart to slow as I think about what we need to do now.

“We just need to hold him long enough for security.”

I search Thomas’ face, but he’s already backing up into the room we just emerged from, eyes ahead and streaked with fear.

“Dustin!”