“I do.”
I shrug my shoulders, trying to move away, but the arm wrapped around my waist pins me in place. He’s taller, broader, fitter, stronger. His body is all hard angles and tight muscles. Especially where his stiff cock bulges into the soft curve of my lower back.
“Shoot him,” he whispers against the knot at the uppermost curve of my spine. “That’s why you brought the gun, isn’t it?”
“I don’t even know who you are,” Robbie shouts. “If Tessa is so upset about her little sex show, why isn’t she here?”
Fury engulfs me and still I can’t pull the trigger.
I hate the boy in front of me with the burning rage of a thousand suns and I can’t pull the trigger.
I watched the light die in my foster sister, leaking out over the hours, days, and weeks until there was nothing of her left and I can’t pull the trigger.
A helpless gasp fills the echo chamber of the warehouse, and it takes a full second to understand it comes from me.
Zach’s hand engulfs mine, palm large enough to cover my hand and half the gun as he lowers it to my side. He peels my fingers away. The gloves he wears are soft and warm, cleaner than my sweaty skin.
My eyes close and I draw in a breath between trembling lips. The room dips and sways as my consciousness turns on and off like a light switch.
The gun is gone.
I wait to feel the frigid chill of its barrel against the back of my neck. I can’t be bothered to care.
“Poor, Lilac. You came all this way and fell short at the finish line.” The arm still holds me close. I relax into his strength. “Robbie has a point. Where’s Tessa now?”
I choke the word out on the backend of a sob. “Dead. She killed herself.”
He shoves me away and I stumble, dropping to my hands and knees. The concrete bruises them, but I can’t really feel it through the numbness, through the cold.
“Well, thank god you came to your senses,” Robbie laughs. “Thought you were going to let her—”
A gunshot rings out. The noise is smaller than I imagined. Even echoing around the bare walls, it’s nothing like the telly. Neither is the contained spurt of blood and brains. Or the crunch as Robbie’s legs concertina, spilling him supine on the ground.
The acrid bite of the propellant hits the back of my throat, leaving a faint taste of burnt sugar.
A dark hole, slightly off-centre, in his forehead doesn’t seem large enough to have caused the effect. A glut of blood pulses up through it, dribbling down the right side to drip upon the floor.
My eyes tear away from the scene long enough to see Zach lower the gun, then they helplessly return to Robbie.
A seizure grabs hold, beating his clenched limbs against the floor. His mouth is open and choking… gasping…wetnoises expel from him in a gush.
Zach crouches near me. Snaps his fingers to get my attention.
I look past him to the spasming boy. Boy? Seventeen. Eighteen. My age. He seemed older before the bullet dug into his brain.
“Your fingerprints are on the weapon,” Zach says, holding the gun mid-barrel and dangling it before my eyes. “If you tell anyone what happened tonight, I give the police this gun.”
Tell anyone.Tellanyone. Is he mad?
This secret will ride with me to death. It can be the cushion underneath my head. The cotton stuffing my cheeks. The superglue that holds my lips shut so nobody gets a shock from the open casket.
My eyes return helplessly to Robbie. The spasmodic jerks lessen. His gaze meets mine, a faint frown creasing the otherwise smooth brow.
He sees me.
“We never want to see you again. Do you hear me?”
Again, the snapping fingers. Not much competition to a dying man’s stare.
