Ruined (The Eternal Balance #1)(7)
The memory faded, and Sam pulled away and opened her eyes—then her mouth. The mist bled into the water around us, swirling like colored ink. The dark blue of sadness tainted with regret and mingled with smoky gray fear. The demon was in control, but I felt it all. The sensation was overwhelming. It was pleasure and pain and necessity.
A single bubble escaped Sam’s mouth and her eyes closed. I let out a rage-filled roar—or maybe it’d come from the demon. In that moment, we were so tangled up and twisted, I couldn’t tell where I ended and it began.
Just when I was sure it would abandon her, it gathered Sam in my arms, shielding her, and crashed through the glass, kicking hard for the surface.
Chapter Four
Sam
Before I dared open my eyes, I moved a finger. One by one, each in turn, they did as commanded. Next came the toes. All ten piggies wiggled exactly as they had before. An arm here, a leg there, my limbs appeared to be attached and functioning properly.
“Samantha?” asked a voice thick with concern. “Samantha, baby, are you awake?”
Oh, God, no… Someone put me back in the river.
The voice belonged to my aunt, and I made the decision to keep both eyes closed tight. No doubt the moment they opened, Kelly Merrick would be flinging disapproval like monkey shit at the zoo. The unsafe car—which she just happened to be right about; the decision to drop out of school; my less than snow-white past—she would have whored me off to Chase at fourteen if she could have legally gotten away with it. Everything in my life was subject to the older woman’s constant nagging.
It was the main reason I’d applied to an out-of-town college. There’d never been any real interest in school for me. I was nineteen and had no idea what to do with my life. I had sketchy people skills, and no marketable hobbies. The only real talent I had came from my earlier years of troublemaking. I could pick a lock and hot-wire a car in record time, but the chances of turning that into a lucrative career that didn’t end in the pokey was pretty nil.
As far as I was concerned, there was plenty of time to decide. Life right now should be about hitting up frat parties and pulling all-nighters ending by 7:00 a.m. at the local diner with a missing shoe and no memory of the evening. Living off mac and cheese and wearing flip-flops all winter. Proving to Aunt Kelly that I could stand alone. Huntington was supposed to be the path to finding myself and where I belonged in the world.
Or, it had until I’d walked away from it all. Nowhere in my wildest fantasies had there been anything remotely resembling scenes from a B-movie horror flick.
Lately disaster seemed to follow me around. There’d been a string of increasingly bad accidents since I’d turned tail and run from school, and my mind had been nudging the possibility that maybe there was something bigger going on. But this was an accident. The car was a piece of shit. Brakes failed—especially when you didn’t have the money to maintain them.
“Are you happy? This is your fault,” Aunt Kelly spat at Jax. “You’ve always been a horrible driver. Disaster just follows you along wherever you go, doesn’t it?”
“Kelly,” Chase said from somewhere to the right. He sounded tired and in need of caffeine. “Jax wasn’t—”
“I’m responsible for global warming, too. Haven’t you heard?” Jax snapped. “I bet you could place me at the assassination of Lincoln if you tried hard enough. Oh. And I killed that stupid deer, too. What’s its name? Bambi?”
Kelly gasped and I felt an internal eye roll coming on. The surprise over Jax’s response was nothing more than an act played by an old pro very much deserving of an Emmy. Where she viewed Chase as a saint—an exemplary specimen of a man that could do no wrong—Jax was the devil incarnate.
“Do the authorities know you’ve come back to town?”
Jax ignored her. “What’s the rabbit’s name? Humper?”
Chase sighed. A sound like paper crumpling was followed by, “Thumper. The bunny’s name was Thumper, Jax.”
“That’s right,” Jax snickered. “Thumper. Made excellent stew.”
Kelly gasped again. Really, it was a wonder the woman didn’t pass out more often. “You are a menace. How many people will you harm while you’re in town?”
I waited, sure he’d declare his innocence, but Jax remained silent.
“The best thing you ever did was leave,” she continued, no doubt interpreting his silence as an admission of guilt. “Everyone’s life was better without you here!”
Jax hadn’t done anything wrong—this time—other than being his not-so-charming self. There was no reason for Kelly to rip him to shreds for my mistake. They were standing over me bickering like five-year-olds. I’d almost just died, for Christ’s sake.
I’d almost just died…
Everything came crashing back and my heart began to pound. The car had gone over the edge and into the river. Under the river. A shiver ran through me and I could almost feel the icy water kissing my exposed skin again. No wonder Kelly was flipping out. She thought Jax was driving and had almost killed me.
I pushed the terrifying thought aside and forced my eyes open. “I was driving.” If he wouldn’t come clean about his innocence, then I would. They’d been telling me to take the car in for service for months now. As with everything else, I kept putting it off.