I flick the scissors that I’d been planning on cutting Landon’s hair with right at Calvin. I make sure to open them first so when they slam into his forehead, there are two points of entry.
“FUCK!” he screams while he reels back.
“Excuse me one second, my love,” I say as I give Ellison a brief kiss before slipping past the illusions and yanking the knife out of the man’s hand. “I could have made it quick, but I want you to suffer.”
I throw him down in a chair, grab a stapler, and slam a few staples down on his hand. Each howl that comes out of his mouth is like music to my ears. “You listen to me. I’m going to peel off every fucking nail on your body, then I’m going to snap your fucking fingers, and then I’m going to castrate you so you can never have another child whose life you can ruin?—”
Ellison hauls me back while the man stares at me with wild eyes. “No… we’re not doing that.”
“If you don’t want me to kill him, I’ll leave him alive at the end,” I assure him. “He doesn’t need a tongue… or eyes… or?—”
Ellison grabs my face, cutting me off. “I fucking hate him. I hate that man so much that at one point in my life I wanted him dead. And you see where that got me. But you would be in so much shit if you killed him. It would fuel the fire of the assholes who hate supers. He can go to court for trying to stab me. Let him rot.”
I want to let him rot in the earth, but my husband gets what my husband wants.
I catch that vile man’s eyes. “I will be watching you, and I will tear you apart until there’s nothing left if you so much as look atEllison again,” I threaten before Ellison wraps me up in his arms and starts hauling me toward the door leading out.
“What if I just pushed something in front of the door and then… fanned the fire a little bit?”
“NO! That’s a huge no,” Ellison says.
I sigh, disappointed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ELLISON
I feel like I’m in a haze while I walk down the stairs. For so long, there was a part of my mind, a part that belonged to El, that was closed off. I remember the first time he closed it off from me was in that closet. And then… it just got easier to keep that part closed.
Asmodeus leads me to the SUV where Nolan is still sound asleep. I slide into the back seat and Asmodeus promises to return shortly. I watch as he talks to the others and then he opens the back door and jangles some keys in front of me.
“They’re going to be a while, so I procured us a vehicle. I told them you needed to get out of here.”
“I’m fine,” I say, not wanting to inconvenience anyone.
He raises an eyebrow. “They didn’t mind that I took the keys.”
“Who didn’t mind?”
“That guy who punched you.”
I give him a look as I say, “No.”
Asmodeus smiles. “I’m joking. It’s Wyatt’s work car. He said he’d ride with Valerie and get it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I say, still not positive if I can trust that he didn’t steal the car, but leaving this place sounds best. I follow him to the car, and once inside, he begins to drive. For a long while, we’re in silence before he pulls off to the side of the road. I realize we’re in the woods not far from my house, the same woods I’d run into that day after visiting my mother. He gets out and I slowly follow him as we head out into the trees.
“Spending forty-two days in the wilderness sounds dreadful for most people,” he says as he sits down in a clear patch. “But there was something about it that set me free. It let my mind relax. There were no people, there was nothing but the serenity of it all. The birds… the sound of water, the beauty of it.”
I sit down next to him, and I look up to see the sunlight cutting between the leaves. As it shines down on me, I drop onto my back and close my eyes.
The part of my mind that El had shut off is open. I can feel El there, but I can also feel all of the things that made me hurt so badly. All the things he protected me from are crashing back down.
“I can close it off again.”
My eyes snap open and I look up at El, who is standing over us.
“No.”
