Page 3 of Boy of Ruin
I straighten, my hands in fists by my sides as I take a step back, fear crawling down my spine. The rain is so loud around me that I can’t hear my own voice when I shout, “Hello?”, wanting the figure I saw in that flash of light to know that I saw them.
There’s no response. Even if there had been, the storm would’ve drowned it out. Still, I have this strange feeling whoever it is isn’t here to fucking talk.
Fuck.
I take another step back, reach around for the zipper at the top of my shorts in the back, trying to tug the pocket open with slippery fingers. I feel clammy. Cold.
I shouldn’t have fucking done this.
Every night, I’ve disabled the alarm of the house and snuck out the back where I know the guards aren’t positioned because Jeremiah wanted to give me some semblance of a normal life.
He wanted to trust me.
Some nights he works late, his schedule is erratic, so I have a key in my pocket too, in case he locks up and accidentally locks me out, not knowing I’m out here.
But it’s not the key I reach for now as I manage to get the zipper open.
It’s the switchblade.
I thumb the latch, gripping the handle tight as I take another step back, my hand trembling.
Fuck, Jeremiah is going to kill me if I die out here. Bring me back from the dead just to slit my throat and say, “I told you so, sis.”
I glance over my shoulder as I keep retreating, refusing to turn my back completely on the hunter. I can’t see shit in the darkness, even toward the house. There’re no lights on and Jeremiah wasn’t home when I slipped out this time.
He had a late night “job” he said before he told me goodnight.
Lightning crackles across the sky again, and the hairs all over my body stand on end. For a second, I’m motionless, scanning the forest in front of me. Beside me. My knife is held aloft, the handle slick beneath my wet fingers, and I grip it tighter, biting my lip and holding my breath as I use that half a second of light to find the person watching me.
But I see nothing.
No one.
They vanished.
I start to think maybe it was just my imagination. Sometimes I have hallucinations, stemming from my recovering memories. Usually I know when it’s happening, because Reverend Wilson is dead. The men who touched me, they’re all dead.
The ones I didn’t get, my husband killed.
But this didn’t feel like a hallucination.
It felt so real.
Still feels real, like I’m being watched.
Taking a breath, I go to spin around, but before I can, strong, sure fingers circle over my wrist, an arm banding across my chest and prying the knife from my grip, holding the blade to my throat.
The hand on my wrist moves to clamp over my mouth as I gasp, trembling and momentarily mute with fear, my heart seeming to stop beating altogether.
Someone’s hard chest is against my back, the blade’s sharp edge to my neck as I stand motionless, my mind telling me this is real but another part of me wanting to believe it’s all in my head.
Is it all in my head? Am I crazy too? Just like my husband?
“You’re all wet, sis,” a voice says in my ear, trailing the point of the knife lower, ripping into the fabric of my running shirt. I gasp beneath Jeremiah’s hand even as I reach for him behind me, gripping his shirt in my fists. He keeps dragging the blade down, slicing through my shirt, my sports bra, freeing me, the tip of the blade grazing my skin.
“Jeremiah,” I say beneath his hand, my chest heaving, voice low, and I don’t know if he’s heard me. “Stop—”
He tightens his hand over my mouth as the blade cuts through the hem of my shirt, the scraps of wet fabric in pieces, my chest and belly exposed. But he doesn’t stop with the fucking knife. Instead, he skims the sharp point softly over my low belly, up my ribcage, my sternum, before coming over my left breast.
