My hands shake. My fingers turn numb, making it almost impossible to drag the corkscrew free of its casing. But I manage the small knife. Tiny and pathetic, it may as well be a stick I pick up off the ground.
He flips me onto my back and crawls along my body, pinning me to the ground and hyper-extending my knees.
I fist my weapon and swing my arm down, the small blade arcing through the air until the inch-long knife penetrates his shoulder blade.
His roaring cry echoes throughout the trees. “Fuck!” He slams his fist into my ribs, brutalizing my kidney and winding me a second time, then he swings out and smashes his fist against the side of my face. “You. Will. Do. What. I. Say!” He hooks his hand into the waistband of my jeans, tugging me further underneath him, and though I squirm and scream and fight his grip, he manages to pull himself out of the car and crawl over top of me.
He presses his weight onto my hips, the blood on his face running with the rain that sprays down over top of us both. I writhe and wiggle and bend my knees, digging my heels into the space where the roof of the car and the earth meet, and though I try to use it as an anchor point, he’s too heavy. Too determined. Too vicious.
“It didn’t have to be like this, Rose.” He presses his hand to my throat, squeezing and crushing my windpipe. “You just had to love me!”
“Stop!” My words garble and break, ineffectual as I claw his wrist and kick my legs out. “Darcy!”
“It’s not so much to ask! Why can’t you love me the way I deserve, Rose? Why’d you have to go crying to your parents about us?”
My parents?I stop and still, my eyes flaring wide.
“I love you!” He weeps, his tears mixing with raindrops. Already, darkness tickles the edges of my vision. My heart sprints savagely in my chest, pounding and racing. But I have no new oxygen for it. I have nothing left to give. “I saved you when Seth died! I held you while you cried for him! I got you through that awful time, and then I got you through grieving for your parents, too. And this is how you repay me?” He fists my hair in one hand, trapping me into perfect stillness, and with a choked sob, he leans in and presses a wet, disgusting kiss to my lips. “You were supposed to get better once your parents were dead. You were supposed to only needmeafter that.”
“You hurt them?” I try to push the words along my throat. I try to breathe. To live. To understand. “You hurt my parents?”
“You had to let them go,” he cries, gently stroking my bloody forehead with the pad of his thumb. “It was time for you to grow up.”
ROUND FIFTY-EIGHT
OLLIE
“She’s stopped just around this bend.” Eliza braces with her hand on the dash, her eyes whipping from the phone to the road ahead of us.
Billy’s lights flash red and blue in my rearview mirror, his bumper damn near kissing the back of my truck.
“Eliza?”
“Just around this corner!” She searches the road and the trees lining both sides, squinting to combat the blinding rain, and as we approach the turn, she grabs onto the handle above her door. Setting the phone in her lap to free up her hand, she presses her thumb to the seatbelt latch, ready to undo it and dive out of the truck.
But then we skid around the bend and find… nothing.
“Eliza!”
“She’s here!” Horrified, she snatches up the phone again and desperately searches the screen. She taps and zooms in. Zooms out. She exits the app and opens it again. “Ollie! It says she’s right h?—”
“Oh God.” Nausea bites at my throat and thrashes across my heart, because smoke plumes into the rainy sky further ahead. “He tossed the phone.” I flatten the gas pedal against the floor and push my truck as fast as it can go, but Billy is faster, an “I’ve got it” echoes through the phone as he whips his car across the double lines and hurtles ahead.
“Is that…” Eliza sets the phone aside and presses her palms to the dashboard, a sad whimper rolling along her throat. “Oh my God, Ollie. They crashed.”
“You need to stay back,” Billy growls, approaching the accordion-likeBMW dangerously fast, then slamming his foot on the brake and skidding the rest of the way. “Eliza, keep him back.”
“Let’s go!” Ramone orders, shoving his door open even before the cruiser is still.
“Ollie…” Eliza trembles.
“You stay back.” I do as Billy did, but I hit the brakes later, and my truck weighs more, so we blow straight past the cruiser and skid to a stop mere feet from the back of the BMW. I shove my door open, the wheels still rolling on the soaked tar, and sprint around to the side of the destroyed car.
My vision turns red. Violence, my only friend. I release a roar in the same breath Rose bridges her hips high and tosses Darcy forward. He uses his hands to catch himself, Rose’s terrified, bloodshot eyes swinging to mine. But then I drop my shoulders and run, colliding with the prick and tearing him off her so we fly together. We roll through the mud, crashing against the trunk of a massive tree. And still, I see Rose’s bruised neck in my mind. So I grab his throat and dig my thumb into the carotid artery. Then I wind my arm back and slam my fist against his face.
“Ollie!”
I destroy his cheekbone. His jaw. His fucking eye socket.
