CHAPTER 45
ESSENCE
ONE WEEK LATER
Being backat the carnival a few weeks after that night with Dante is so strange. I’m excited to finally be off work so I can enjoy the start of my Halloween weekend, but I can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t quite right.
“You okay, baby?” Dante asks.
When I look up at him, he’s looking down at me with concern. It occurs to me that I haven’t spoken much since we got here.
I give him a small, reassuring smile and nod. “I’m fine.”
If I tell him I’m feeling uneasy about being here, he’ll want to leave immediately. While we’re here, I want to try to have as much fun as possible.
He eyes me warily, not entirely buying my answer, but he doesn’t push it.
In the distance, the bright lights of the Funhouse catch my attention followed by screams and shrieks of pure terror.
Dante leans in close and murmurs in my ear, “Imagine all the fun we could have in there, little flower.”
My toes curl inside my shoes when his breath skates over the skin of my exposed neck. I shiver and lean into the warmth of his huge body.
“That’s too risky,” I say, even though excitement courses through me at the idea of having sex with him in there. The potential of being caught sends a thrill through me.
“Baby, I’ve fingered you in a crowded restaurant and fucked you on top of a Ferris wheel—you’re really worried about getting caught in a silly little funhouse?”
He’s right.
Biting my bottom lip, I turn my head up to kiss him.
“Let’s go have some fun,” he says mischievously.
CHAPTER 46
RONNIE NEWSOME
I limpinto the carnival with a gas can filled to the brim with gasoline in one hand and a gun in the other.
Screams erupt around me once everyone sees me; parents snatch up their kids, and boyfriends and husbands steer their partners towards the entrance of the carnival.
I don’t care. I’m here for one reason and one reason only: Dante Romano.
He tookeverythingfrom me, and now I’m going to end him.
I’m covered in scars from the fire he started weeks ago, the fire I wasn’t able to save my family from.
I should have died with them that night. I couldn’t save them, and the guilt eats me alive every single day.
But not anymore, because tonight is where this ends. And as I watch Dante follow some dainty little girl into the Funhouse, a cruel smile forms on my face.
He’s making this so easy for me.
“S-sir,” someone says from behind me. I turn around to see a boy, probably no older than eighteen, standing a few feet from me, cellphone clutched tightly in his hand.
A cruel smile forms on my face, and the boy backs up a few steps at the sight of it. I can only imagine how terrifying Ilook right now: half of my face is normal while the other half is disfigured with shiny pink skin.
He looks like a monster, children whisper to their parents as I walk down the street or into a store. Their parents don’t even bother to correct them, to explain to them that people get hurt really bad sometimes and it can change the way they look on the outside, but it doesn’t change them on the inside.
