Page 107 of The Demons We Hide

“Fuck, even your cunt is pretty.” I ignore those words and focus on the ones in my head, repeating them over and over again.

This isn’t real.

It’s not real when he parts my thighs wider. It’s not real when something hard and hot pushes against my core. It’s not real when the hard pinch of pain slices through me.

I lie back and drift. I can’t do anything else. My body won’t move, so this can’t be real because I would never let this happen. I would never do this.

I close my eyes and try to tune out the sounds of his grunts and the slaps of flesh on flesh. Male groans fill my ears and I flinch.

No. That’s just part of the nightmare.

“My pretty girl,” Morpheus says. “My pretty, pretty girl…”

Fingers pinch my nipples, grip my hips, the slapping grows louder and I sink deeper into my mind.

“Oh fuck, oh God. Fuck… Juliet… Juliet… Juliet…”

Each time he says my name I repeat my truth—it’s not real. Not real. Not real. Not real.

The pressure inside me withdraws and a moment later, something hot and liquid splashes across my lower belly.

Nightmares are ugly things. I hope I never have another one.

42

JULIET

Present day…

The last time I woke up from a hangover this bad, I’d scrubbed myself raw in the shower of my hotel room for three hours. Unfortunately, as I crack open my eyelids, there’s no expensive bed or deceptively clean hotel room and definitely no shower in sight. Instead, all I see is yards and yards of train cars.

Red train cars with gold emblems that have faded with the passage of time. Black and gray train cars with broken out windows and rusted off doors. Lots of graffiti spray-painted across every surface of a few of them. The ground beneath my ass is cold and hard, and my head throbs as I struggle to sit up. Something hard prods at my backside—a train rail.

Immediately, I know where I am.Trail’s End.Far enough outside of Silverwood to be somewhat private and yet close enough that I can’t have been out for very long.

My hands are still handcuffed in front of me and my legs are bound in not rope like I’d originally thought, but a rough sort of twine. Is that still rope? I don’t know, but my foggy mind is struggling to take in as many details as I can.

I only vaguely recognize where we are because I’ve been here once before. Four years ago to be precise, right before I’d entered high school, Avery and I as well as a few of the girls that we’d been friends with at the time had snuck out here to drink and smoke. It was so long ago that I’d almost forgotten. It feels like a different life.

Itwasa different life.

“—do with her now? You said—”The sound of an angry male voice has me twisting my head and peering around the wall I’m propped up against. Except, it’s not a wall, but a train car turned on its side. Glass fragments scatter the ground at my feet and it’s a miracle that I haven’t managed to cut myself yet.

“We were just supposed to bring her here,” the man continues and the longer I listen, the more I recognize it. It sounds like the driver from the van and he is not happy.

That makes two of us.

The glass surrounding me and the broken window of the train car gives me a decent idea. I start to scoot to the side, moving away from the sound of the man on the phone, and use the movement of my arms to search for a large enough piece that might be able to cut through the twine binding my legs together. At least, there’s one good thing about waking up with this pounding headache more than once—I can handle it long enough to figure out how to get myself out of this mess.

My jeans and hoodie are both thankfully still on, and I try not to think about anything that might have changed that while I was unconscious as I search for the right shard. Unable to find anything large enough or sharp enough, I end up twisting my body around and lifting my bound fists towards the window. I wait a beat, pausing and listening as the man starts to yell at whoever is on the other line. The second he begins to shout obscenities, I take that as my cue.

Using the man’s own voice as cover, I punch the side of the still remaining corner of the window at the edges. Despite being out here for most likely decades—years of sitting in the hot summer sun or under a cold freezing rain—the glass isn’t all that easy to break. It takes several tries and pauses as I have to wait for the man to start talking before I start working.

Sweat clings to my brow and slides down my spine beneath my clothes. Finally, the corner piece of glass comes loose. I’m so excited by the freedom it can bring that I cut myself as I yank it out of place. Hissing at the sharp sting, I try not to linger on thoughts of how many germs could be crawling around on the surface of it as I start to saw at my bindings with one of the sharper edges.

The guys that tied me up weren’t idiots, though. They hadn’t just wrapped one long stretch of it around and around my legs. No, they’d wrapped multiple fucking bands and each one needs to be cut.

My back cramps as I bend forward and saw and saw and saw. One line drops away. Then another and another. After what feels like an eternity working at the twine, the last one at my ankles breaks under the sharp glass shard and feeling rushes back to my legs. My hands, though? I glance over the handcuffs, using the moonlight above to examine them. Without the key, I’m not entirely sure I can do anything about these just yet.

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