“No,” I say.
He puts his hands around my waist again. “Come with me. I’ll protect you.”
I push him away again. “Stop. Don’t you get it? I can’t. My dad would kill me if he found me here with—”
I can’t finish my sentence.
Not without breaking his heart in the process.
But when our eyes meet, I know it’s already too late.
I see the poison seeping into his eyes.
I injected it straight into his veins.
Fuck.
“With what?” he hisses.
Is he really going to make me say it out loud? Is that how he wants this to end? Would this make it easier for him to leave? To hate me?
“Say it. Say the word, goddammit!” he yells, grabbing my arms.
Maybe it’s for the best.
“Redskin.”
His nostrils flare as he practically sucks up the word while licking on his bottom lip. The pain oozes from his dark eyes until nothing but suffering is left … all those years and all those people judging him for who he is and how he was born have left their mark.
And now I stomped on the tiny bit of hope he had left.
Crushed it with my very words.
Just like his soul.
“Don’t make me hate you, Dixie.”
I don’t reply. There’s nothing to say. Taking it back would mean lying, and he deserves better than that.
We both deserve better. We deserve to live.
My dad would kill us both if he found us here, making out in his shed … forging plans to escape this life.
And I don’t want Brandon to die. I like him too much to allow that to happen. I’d never forgive myself.
If he hates me for it, then so be it.
“You’ll regret this,” he barks, turning away from me.
I already do. But there’s no point in trying to undo what I’ve done. There’s no way to turn back time, or take it back, or suck back the words and pretend they don’t exist.
He needed to hear this in order to move on.
In order to let me go.
He paces in the shed with his hands in his hair, murmuring some inaudible words. Then he stops and glares at me.
“Fuck you, you know?” he fumes. “Fuck. You.”
The second time around, he actually means it.
Tears sting my eyes, but I push them away into the abyss of my soul.
“Fuck you, I’m outta here,” he says, shaking his head.
Without looking at me, he storms out of the shed, slamming the door shut behind him.
I sink down onto the stool and bury my face in my hands, wishing all the wishes of a teenage girl that never came to fruition.
Chapter Eighteen
Brandon
Present
There’s an aching need in me that needs to be fulfilled. A thirst dying to be quenched.
A hunger for death.
I haven’t always felt this way, but ever since that night at the Burrell farm, I can’t stop thinking about it. Death. Killing. Murder.
It’s on my mind plenty during the day, and the more I stopped listening, the worse the voices became. So I caved in and started looking for victims to punish. Little by little, step by step … I became more and more vicious. When I look in the mirror now, I don’t even recognize myself anymore. That’s how much I’ve changed over the years.
Dixie Burrell … finding her at the hotel and taking her with me only brought out the monster in me.
She antagonizes me. Pushes me. Gets underneath my skin and makes my blood boil.
And it makes me wanna kill someone … literally.
I want someone to feel the pain I do, to experience the suffering, and then end it all. Snuff them out with fire.
So I’m gonna put my thoughts at ease and do just that. Calm my mind a bit, just as it always does when I pick a criminal to punish.
It’s not bad when it’s someone who deserves it. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I know it’s hypocritical, considering the crimes I’ve committed, but I’m not the only one who deserves to go out with a bang. I won’t hide in the shadows … I’ll welcome death with open arms. But as long as I live, I’ll continue using fire to my advantage and pleasure.
Which is exactly what I’m going to do with this man right here. The man sitting right in front of me on this abandoned road. The dirt clings to his neat suit, but it doesn’t hide the filth underneath.
I found him via a friend of mine who works at the police station. We have this unwritten rule that as long as I don’t leave any trace, I get the names on a certain bad-guys-who-got-away-with-shit list. Suffice to say, I locate them, hunt them down, take them somewhere remote, and do whatever I want.
The guy in front of me is one of those who used the justice system to his advantage and got away with hurting a child.