“Don’t act like you know me.”
I unlock the door and he barges in before me, going about his duties like a good soldier. He checks for monsters and killers, completely oblivious to the fact that the worst is already standing right in front of him.
“Satisfied?” I ask.
He pauses at the kitchen counter and looks at me.
“I felt sorry for you,” he says. “That whole thing that happened with the butcher? You didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that, Scarlett.”
The scars on my chest burn the way they always do when someone brings it up. I want him to stop talking and I tell him so.
He carries on anyway.
“I get that you’re fucked up in the head. But we’ve all had a shitty go of it, okay? Even Rory. It doesn’t give you the right to take your hate out on everyone else.”
“Stop talking,” I tell him again. “And get the fuck out of my apartment.”
“He cares about you,” Conor says. “And I know you’re fucking with him. I can see it in your eyes. We all can. He doesn’t deserve that any more than you deserve what happened to you.”
He keeps talking about the butcher and he’s being an asshole and now it’s all I can see. All I can feel. His body on top of me. Inside of me. His taunting words and the blade of his knife slashing through my skin.
Conor’s laughing. Or is it just in my head?
No, it’s the butcher, laughing. And then it multiplies. Alexander and his friends. They are all laughing too. It’s five pairs of hands holding me down. Choking me. His laughter starts to multiply and I scream for it to stop. But it’s five pairs of hands and voices and faces and…
Conor’s words.
“You need to talk about it with someone. If you keep holding it inside, it’s just going to keep poisoning you. Making you sick. I know you think I’m stupid. But I know better than anyone.”
“Stop talking,” I say and it’s the third time I’ve said it and most are lucky enough to get one warning.
But Conor doesn’t heed my words. He doesn’t understand what he’s unleashing right now. It’s rising up inside of me like a volcano.
“Don’t you want to get better?” he asks.
And I don’t want to get better, I want to fucking murder him.
I reach for the knife on my thigh, but it isn’t there. Because Rory took it from me last night. He took my power. The way that they all do.
I lunge at Conor anyway, prepared to go at him with my bare hands.
He puts me in a choke hold I never saw coming.
“Mack’s been teaching me,” he says.
“Let go of me!” I scream.
My voice is raw and my breath is gone and when he hears it, he does fucking listen this time. And now he’s staring at me. Judging me. And even worse. Pitying me.
“You need to leave.”
“Okay.” He holds up his hands and tells me he’s sorry and he didn’t know.
“I’ll leave,” he says.
But he doesn’t.
“There’s just one thing I need to say first.”
