Page 717 of One More Kiss

The room spun, my breathing echoed through my body into my ears. My heart rate spiked as sweat broke out over my skin. My skin turned to fire as my vision blurred and I struggled to stay upright.

Dragging my feet, I slogged forward, the pain in my hand and the riot of my body as it rebelled against the poison obliterating the pain in my heart.

* * *

Nothing good happenedto girls who wandered in the woods.

So many warnings for us of how things could go terribly wrong. How our innocence could be stolen.

What they didn’t want to admit was they started chipping away at our innocence long before we dared venture in the woods.

We were scapegoats for the bad decisions of others.

Chip.

We were held even more responsible for boys’ reactions to our bad decisions.

Chip. Chip.

We were turned into pretty things expected to be appealing because we were taught to feel responsible for a man’s happiness.

Chip. Chip. Chip.

But they’d already done their worst to me.

They’d whittled away everything good they’d intended to mold in me and left anger, bitterness, and rage behind.

A never-ending craving for revenge.

I struggled to my feet and turned in a slow circle. Cold seeped into my skin and my breath burst in short clouds before me, illuminated by the light of the moon. Rotting leaves littered the forest floor.

Barren trees tangled overhead, reminding me of the veins in the wallpaper. I blinked away the blurry edges to my vision and searched for something, anything to help me figure out where I was or which way to go.

Sucking in a deep breath, I caught the telltale smell of smoke from a chimney and looked for any obscurity in the sky overhead to indicate which direction it came from.

There, at the forest edge where the trees loomed thicker, taller, and darker, a small cabin and a single car parked in the modest driveway.

I looked down at my hand, the flesh between my knuckles of my index finger and middle finger swollen and hot, the skin smooth and tight.

I lived.

So why wasn’t I at a celebration right now with all of the other new members inducted tonight?

Was I so goddamned expendable I could just be left in the woods to rot?

Nothing made sense and the burning in my gut screamed that not only had I been robbed of my reward, I’d been relegated to the lowest of the low. Disposable.

Forgettable.

My hands curled into fists.

If they wanted to get rid of me, they better stop my heart and stick around long enough to make sure they did the job right.

Fuming and stumbling over slippery leaves and roots of trees, I scrambled toward the cabin. With every step, my limbs grew stronger. I should have worn a watch. My mother hated how I relied on my cell phone for the time and finally her lesson hit home.

Maybe I’d even survive it.

I caught movement in the picture window, but nothing I could make out just yet. What if the person inside knew I was out here? What if they were the ones who left me in the woods to die?

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