Page 67 of Vying Girls (Girls of Hazelhurst #2)

My palm sweats around my blade. There’s light ahead. I don’t hear anything. No voices, no struggle. But who else will be down here but them? There’s no society meet, everyone else is out celebrating Varsity.

My ears twitch when they catch a low, burring noise. A voice, one I never thought I’d hear again.

Though is that true? Since sixteen I’ve been running.

I didn’t escape him, I just stayed one step ahead.

Until Hazelhurst, when the tables turned and suddenly I was running after him.

I hadn’t been chasing his ghost, just took his name, the key to the best future I could secure.

Then I’d be free. But now, here, it all seems creepily inevitable.

Sightlessly, I raise a palm, hoping the others will divine its meaning. I don’t hear them behind me as I creep forward.

I don’t hear Tilda, either, but it must be her he’s talking to. My heart pounds, so loud I think it’ll give me away. I try slowing my breaths through my nose. There’s still no plan, nothing but going in there, snatching Tilda and running for the rest of our lives.

Back pressed against the tunnel wall, I close my eyes and think.

Tilda

It’s better with my eyes closed. One less sense, no way to see the low ceiling of the chamber, the horrible shadows his torch throws. I don’t want to see the place where I might die.

Unfortunately, everything else is heightened.

There’s ringing in my ears after coming round from passing out.

I’m no longer in the chair, but draped over his lap, his jeans scratchy against my bare legs.

His sweat stinks, that chemical smell I once smelled on Nic.

His breath is hot where he talks, making me wince each time he laughs and it hits my neck like a flare of fire.

Worse is the feel of cold metal against my head.

A gun, properly loaded—he showed me. It quivers against my scalp. He’s snorted more shit since I came round. He’s talking fast, desperate, almost like he’s the dying man not me.

So I keep my eyes closed, mentally screaming Nic’s name in a bid to drown out this trip down a hellish memory lane he’s decided to take me on.

I don’t want to hear what he’s done to her, but he just won’t stop.

‘I used to make her come, you know.’

Breathe in, breathe out. Keep my head still so I can’t feel the gun. Scream for Nic. Scream, scream, scream.

‘Bet she never told you that. I was her first. Fuck, it was good back then. With a little something in her system, she was a dream. Hesitant at first. Trying to work out if I meant what I was saying I wanted from her. But the shit we were on, made you want to fuck like bunnies. Didn’t matter who with.

Didn’t matter to her after a while. She’d bend over before I even told her to, head buried in her arms, pretending she was hating every minute of what I was giving her.

I could feel her squeezing around my dick though, the way her legs would stiffen, shake a little, her little choked gasps.

When you want it but don’t want it, you know?

When you don’t want to want it. That’s my favourite kind of fucking. ’

Perversely, I do know. Wasn’t that how I felt about Nic, feeling those things for her for the first time? How she felt about me?

At least we had choices. At least we weren’t literal children.

Damien shifts, raising his hips beneath me, a groan escaping him which quickly dissolves into a derisive laugh.

‘Wrong type of shit for that.’ He taps the barrel of the gun against my head.

‘Why I’m here, actually. Unless Nicole pulls through, doubt I’ll be getting that shit again. Or any shit, I suppose.’

My bones melt in relief. Besides dying, him doing to me what he did to Nic, down here, alone, just like in their basement, had been my fear. I made my decision, minutes ago, that I’d rather die ten times over than suffer the fate of that.

I want to ask him questions. To know why he’s even doing this.

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in situations like this?

Keep them talking, get them connected to you.

But I’m too scared. With a gun to my head, I’m rendered mute.

Blind. Ironically, my nose is now unblocked.

He could tie me back up but it’s better when I can’t see him. His eyes were scaring me.

It’s a wild kind of fear too. True fear. Not anxiety or stress or anticipation. It feels like I’m a tiny, terrified bird. One caught in the paws of a toying cat.

I’m prey. That’s how I feel. The adrenaline so acute, I’m hardly human.

‘I found out who you were,’ he says musingly.

‘The one before me, hm? How…serendipitous to find each other again. Nicole has a way of reconnecting with the past. It never leaves her, just like it never leaves me.’ He heaves out a tutting sigh.

‘She should have known that before running off. I taught her better than that.’

Again, he hits the gun against my head, punctuating every word with it.

‘I…found…out… everything. She never talked about her pa, nothing about you. Didn’t talk much at all, to be honest. Only ever wanted to live in the present, where it was known and controllable.

Where I was. We knew our dear uncle was dead, that I never got to meet him.

Mum was cagey on the why. ’ He chuckles.

‘And I can see why. Dirty bastard. Preying on a pretty kiddie like you. Some fuckers just like them that young. Nothing in that for me. Let them ripen a few more years, let them discover their bodies, how much it wants, then be the one to show them how good it can feel.’

I grit my teeth, rage eclipsing the fear so rapidly my body jolts with the effort not to strike him, to rake his fucking drug-hazed eyes out, take that gun and pummel every bone in his body.

Make him hurt as much as he hurt Nic.

‘Well, hello.’

I snap back to awareness, sensing a heightened alertness in his body.

‘Took your sweet time, didn’t you, oh cousin of mine.’ There’s a smile in his voice but his voice is different now. Sharper. ‘Nice to see you again.’

I pry open my eyes and they well immediately at the sight of Nic’s blurry form. She stands tall, impassive, gaze raking over me.

How much had she heard? Everything, judging by her expression.

Don’t lose it, I beg her.

I feel the coiled energy within, her flexing fists. As much as she’s hated me, I know she’d channel that very hatred into my safety. Throw herself before the bullet. Avenge us using only herself.

Damien pushes me off him, careful to keep one of my arms tightly clamped as he staggers to his feet. He uses the wall to aid him, the metal of the gun glinting off it echoing around the chamber.

Nic’s eyes follow it. I see her swallow.

God, this is worse. I’d been praying she’d find me but now all I want is for her to turn and run. To get the hell away from this devil and this gun, everything that could hurt her.

But when her eyes meet mine again, something like hardened resolve flaring in them, I know she won’t.

‘Come alone?’

Nic raises her arms, looking about herself. ‘What do you think?’

After a charged pause, Damien pulls me across the chamber, making sure to keep me on the other side of Nic.

I make eye contact with her as he checks the tunnel left and right.

Nic severs it to watch him, something like fear flashing in her gaze.

It’s gone as soon as Damien steps back into the chamber, making me think the others aren’t too far behind.

I hope I’m wrong. I can’t bear to think of any of them getting mixed up in this.

‘You can let her go now. Now I’m here.’

Damien huffs, threading his arm across my chest so my arms are pinned to my sides. ‘Hasty. You haven’t given me what I want yet, Nicole.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘I think I’ve been pretty clear. Well—maybe I haven’t. Maybe I made it sound too much like a request. My apologies.’ He taps the gun against my head and my eyes slam shut. ‘Perhaps this’ll help. Your old little friend. Old friend, new girlfriend. Past likes to catch you up, doesn’t it?’

Nic’s gaze darkens. ‘Stop fucking about, Damien. Let her go and I’ll give you the money. That’s all you want, right?’

‘All?’ There’s a grin in his voice as he says, ‘Never. And you’ve had weeks, Nicole. Weeks. And now—and now it’s too fucking late.’

He gives a choked laugh, tossing his hand holding the gun up into the air. My body jolts against his and I damn myself for not making a break for it.

Nic studies him. It seems to dawn on her that he’s not in his right mind. ‘What are you on?’

Damien sighs, readjusting his grip on me. ‘An old favourite. Think they cut it differently now. Even the air seemed purer back then.’ Another one of those choked laughs. ‘I’m like a cat. Come home to die.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘They’re out there,’ he says, that crazed humour fled as quick as it had come. ‘Time’s fucking up.’

‘Who?’

Damien jerks, his gun arm loosening. Gripping the handle, he pummels the end against my arm. ‘ Doesn’t—fucking—matter.’

The pain is incredible. I try holding it in, for Nic’s sake, but when it doesn’t stop, a scream escapes. Numbness soon follows, that dull, deep pain echoing in my stomach as nausea.

My head feels sweaty when he finally stops, barely able to hold my legs up against the urge to fall to the floor and curl around my arm. I keep crying out, the pulsing sensation in my bicep like he’s still hitting me.

I heard Nic shouting Damien’s name. She must have tried to help as she’s now barely a metre away, the gun trained on her now.

Damien’s breaths are loud in my ear, sounding like hisses through clenched teeth. I’ve known angry men before but I’ve never been so sure one might kill me.

Nic fumbles with her phone, the shakiness in her hands making me panic even more. ‘I’ll send you the money now.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘No! No. It’s not. Look, I’ll do it now.’

Damien groans, tapping the gun against his own forehead. ‘I’m a dead man, Nicole. You’ve killed me.’