“Did you think it wouldn’t come to this? Did you think you would get away with it?”
This wasn’t about Daisy and the kids.
This was about me.
Poison dripping from my veins, my hands squeezed the grips of the guns that were still smoking.
Guilt and fury vied for dominance.
I should have known.
I should have known.
But as I turned back to the SUV and felt the horrified relief rolling from it, I wasn’t sure that I could change the trajectory.
Wasn’t sure I could find any goodness left inside to stop myself from consuming every perfect thing she was.
THIRTY-NINE
DAISY
The headlightsof Cash’s SUV cut through the darkness as we slowly traveled down the narrow lane that led to his cabin. The bare drive carved out by tires that cut a rugged path to the seclusion of his home.
Tension reigned.
The silence so thick and heavy that I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think anything other than,Thank God, thank God, thank God.
I’d been terrified for my children’s safety, horror hurling through me as I threw myself into the backseat to cover them if anyone tried to get inside.
A gut-wrenching panic boomeranging through my being as I listened to the brawl of gunshots and shouts.
Shards of dismay impaling me during the time I was unsure of Cash’s well-being. If he was whole and alive or if he had succumbed.
Knowing if he had, the perpetrators would have then come for us.
But it went deeper than that. The brittle planes inside me moaning at the thought of losing him all over again.
God.
I was a fool.
Setting myself up to get slaughtered like this. My heart already a mangled mess from when he left me behind.
But now…
The connection felt entirely different.
Turbid and muddied.
Thick and coagulated.
As if every breath I attempted had to be forced through the concentration, but the density was only amplified with each crude exhale.
Cash traveled at a harrowing crawl through the impenetrable woods, the SUV rocking back and forth as if it was set off balance by his tumultuous breaths.
Or maybe it was my children’s hearts that still thundered from the backseat that made the atmosphere feel rutted, though their own silence had taken them over. Their fears still lingering. I’d made the choice to lie to them, which I hated to do, but I didn’t want to alarm them even more when we didn’t know what had happened.
When we didn’t know for sure who was out there.
