Page 120 of Nowhere Good

Another gun clicked. “Ron, don’t shoot.” Marty.

The shot never came. Claire opened her eyes to see Marty pointing his rifle at her dad with a shaky arm.

“That’s e-enough, Ron.”

Her dad glared back at him, completely unbothered. The handgun was still pointed at Claire, so she couldn’t unwind, couldn’t breathe.

“Marty,” her dad said. “Be serious.”

“I—I am serious, Ron. You killed Dillon. Dillon. We’ve—we’ve gone far enough, okay? Let’s forget it. Clementine’ll never forgive me if I let Claire die. She’s family too. We can’t lose everyone. It’s not worth it.”

“What, exactly, is not worth it? You don’t think Sullivan’s future is worth it?”

When her dad turned away, the gun shifted from her forehead with him, and Claire gasped for air. Seth’s energy sparked beside her, a livewire.

“You do realize,” her dad said, “that my daddy sold half our cornfields to get us into a business that matters, a business with real money. I’m his goddamn legacy, and Sullivan is mine. He is not gonna lose it all. You have no idea what I’ve done, Marty, no idea.”

“He’s my son,” Marty said. “It’s too much, Ron. I wanted him to be strong, but I don’t want him to be—to be this.”

“Oh, Marty-boy…”

Her dad’s arm flew up.

A shot fired off, followed by another one, a louder one. Something hot whipped past Claire’s hair as Seth pressed his hand on her back and forced her down. Claire yelped as her cheek collided with the grass. Gunpowder overpowered the air.

When she peeked up, Marty was lying flat on the ground, twitching, his gun beside him.

“Fuck’s sake, Marty!” her dad shouted.

In a flash, Seth vanished from her side. Claire watched in horror as he lunged at her dad from behind, catching him off guard. He tackled him and smacked his arm. Her dad let out a surprised grunt as the gun fell and skittered across the grass.

“Son of a—”

Seth jumped on her dad’s back and wrangled him from behind, trying to take him down, but her dad was strong and so tall, he didn’t seem human. He wasn’t human. Claire scurried to her feet and nearly fell back, using the front end of Seth’s car to support herself. The blood rushed to her head and nearly blinded her, but the adrenaline wouldn’t let her look away. Seth locked her dad’s throat in an arm bar, but her dad was big enough to lift his feet clean off the ground.

Then, her dad fell back, slamming all his weight onto Seth’s body. Seth released a winded gasp. He tried to shove him off, but her dad’s massive frame straddled him, pinned him in place. He laid a hammer-like fist onto Seth’s cheekbone, shouting words Claire could barely hear through her shocked eardrums. But she recognized the bash of bone on bone. Saw the blood that spurted up as her dad’s fist connected with Seth’s face, even as he tried to protect himself with his forearms.

He was going to lose.

Claire didn’t think, she just dove for the gun. She’d never held one before, but it was cold and heavy. She clumsily gripped it and hovered her index finger over the trigger, then pointed it at her dad’s back.

“Stop!” she screamed. Her voice sounded subdued in her ears, but scraped painfully against her throat. “I said stop!”

Disoriented, she watched her dad slowly rise. Seth rolled over and spat out a mouthful of blood, trying to pick himself up, but his arm bucked beneath him.

When her dad’s gaze landed on her, fear paralyzed her.

Every moment in the cage came back. The terror, but the need for him too—the need for him to feed her, clothe her, free her. It’d always been like that in the cage. He became her keeper, her captor, her savior.

Even now, she still believed this could only ever end with her alone in a dark, black cage, reliant on him, like it always did.

But she was out here. She was alive. And she was the one holding the gun.

He limped toward her with a crooked smile. “Drop that thing, baby girl. You’re not gonna shoot your old man.”

“Why?” she ground out, tears blurring her vision. “Why did you have to do this?”

He laughed, because he always laughed. And he gave her no answers, because he never gave her any answers. All he did was stagger toward her.