Yet his arms are telling me, somehow, that it’s going to be alright. He’s not going to kill me. He’s putting me through hell, but he’s not going to hurt me. Not really.
My silent monstrous protector.
Nothing I’m thinking is making sense right now. It’s like I’ve lost every one of my brain cells in the freezing cold Astley Lake.
“Come on, Quill,” says Liam impatiently. “We’ve had our fun. How about letting her go now? Let’s go set some trash cans on fire.”
No. Don’t let me go. Never let me go. Please, Quill. Don’t.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Quill keeps his paper plate resolutely angled down at me, and I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. Probably not. Probably he’s hesitating to continue his torture, or to change it up, or to drop me right into the water and head off with his friends.
Whatever magnetic force is drawing me to him right now is too cruel.
Too cruel, because he’s a psycho. He hates my guts, but no matter what he does… he’s the person who occupies every one of my waking moments.
My nightmares, too.
Despite everything he’s put me through these past few years, he’s still my obsession.
At last he drags his face away from me to utter one word. “Go.”
“Uh…go? What do you mean?” asks Liam. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“Go,” repeats Quill.
“But… what about your dad’s car? How the hell are wesupposed to go downtown? It’s miles from here…”
“Leave the car. Fucking go.”
Again his eyes seem to flash a murderous glare, though this time, with his face resolutely turned toward Liam, there’s no way it could be directed at me. Right?
Anyway, I must be imagining it, because how the hell could I see what kind of glare is in his eyes? In the moonless night, they’ve turned into black vacuums in the middle of his face, and I can barely catch a glimpse of them anyway, since he’s facing away from me.
It’s not like I could see his eyes even if it was the middle of the day and he was facing me. The world went fuzzy the minute Quill took my glasses.
But it feels like I don’t need to see a thing. I can sense it all from the tenseness of his muscles, the way his hands are clenched around me right now.
I’m letting my imagination run away from me.
Regardless, Dane, who doesn’t look quite so stupid as Liam, pulls on his friend’s arm. “Let’s go, Liam,” he says quietly.
“The fuck,” grumbles Liam, but he does what his friend says.
I hear the light, crunchy padding of their feet as they walk away, leaving me alone with my bully.
I shiver, wondering what the hell he’s going to do to me now that I reallyamat his mercy. Somehow, with his two idiot friends around, it didn’t feel as dangerous. Even though I’m sure he wouldn’t let two hangers-on like them keep him from whatever he wanted to do.
But this eerie silence between us, the realization that we’re entirely alone, suddenly feels terrifying.
I had allowed myself to believe he wouldn’t kill me, but right now I’m very aware that he could drown me and bury me in the dense shrubbery surrounding the lake, and it would take the police weeks to find me.
Maybe they’d never find me, because who the hell would go looking for Piper Day?
Quill slowly turns his head back around to me and I look up at him, my teeth chattering from both the cold and my fear.
“Quill,” I breathe, feeling tears bubble up embarrassingly in the corner of my eyes. “Please, Quill… please…”
