In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(86)

Harris smiled. “Thanks, man.”

“I’m just going to run to the bathroom—too much beer. But then I’ll be back to watch. Break a leg.”

Mint slapped Harris’s shoulder, then turned and sprinted away from the stage. But instead of keeping left for the bathroom, he kept going, out the side door, into the night.

***

He needed and he wanted to hurt her. It consumed him, became an ache deep in his bones. He would take everything that was burning inside him and unleash it on her, put the pain where it belonged.

He strode with purpose across the Bishop Hall lobby—a ghost town on Saturday night—and punched the elevator button. Everything went slightly blurry then, like it was someone else in the driver’s seat, and he was just watching what happened.

Up, up, up. He was going to climb the walls of the elevator if it went any slower; he was going to claw his skin off. The ding of arrival, the doors sliding open, and then he was moving, finally gliding down the hallway. Everything grew a little hazier, the walls closing in. He couldn’t tell if it was the alcohol or the drugs or the idea of confronting her that was making him slightly delirious.

Punching the code to her suite, twisting open the door. All the lights were off. But even in the dark, he could see the living room was a mess, dark objects laying like booby traps on the floor, the couch cushions ripped up and left sideways. The aftermath of two people struggling, or roughhousing, or—the thought scoured him—having sex.

So it was true. He could see it with his own eyes, the traces of where they’d been. It was the final straw that unleashed in Mint something other, something animal.

He shoved open the door to her room, panting. So dark inside, the only moonlight coming from a tiny sliver of window uncovered by curtain. He stared at her bed, where he’d spent countless nights by her side before he’d known.

There she was: a dark figure, lying stretched out under the blankets. Asleep, as if she hadn’t promised to meet him at the Sweetheart Ball and then stood him up, as if she enjoyed embarrassing him, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

Rage took over, propelling him forward, and then his hands were on her, gripping her by the shoulder and the waist, shaking her.

“Wake up, Jessica. Wake the fuck up and face me.”

She barely stirred, just made a low groaning noise in her throat.

“I’m not kidding.” He rocked her harder. “I know what you did. Wake up!”

Her groan grew louder, and she tried, feebly, to shake off his hand. “Go away,” she mumbled, her voice barely audible, half-asleep.

“You think you can dismiss me?” His hands were shaking. Even though it was from anger, the sight shamed him, so he shoved Jessica hard, forcing her to roll on her stomach like a naughty child, the better to be spanked. In the movement, her head smacked the headboard. She cried out, her voice catching in her throat.

The sound of her pain sent a tremor of satisfaction, of rightness, through him.

“Leave me alone,” she garbled into the pillow, the words almost incoherent. She’d clearly been drinking. Her voice was strange and rough. “I told you… I’m done with you. I hate you.”

After everything she’d done, she hated him.

Mint’s vision turned red. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently, hearing the sound of her head hitting the headboard, again and again, sharp little thwacks. “Say you’re sorry.”

She was making some sort of noise, but it wasn’t language. It wasn’t an apology. She must think he wasn’t someone who counted, someone to be afraid of. Wasn’t a man.

Impotence filled him, and the fire exploded.

Mint stumbled back from the bed, hitting the desk, and then he saw them. Massive, sharp-pointed scissors, the blades like knives. And what to do seized him, the rightness of it hitting him as swift as a lightning strike. He swept the scissors off the desk, gripped the handles so hard his fingers hurt, and drove them down like a pike into her back.

She screamed into her pillow, arms flailing. It was like opening a dam, all the rage and pain flowing out of Mint and into her. He wrenched the scissors out and stabbed her again, feeling the solidness of her flesh resist, then accept, the blades. This girl who’d humiliated him, who was trying to ruin him—now he was hurting her, making her weak, making her flop like a fish out of water. The tables had turned.

He punished her again and again, taking the apology from her body since she wouldn’t give it to him in words. It felt so good that the feeling frenzied him, making his heart smash against his rib cage. He twisted her onto her back, pushing the scissors into her stomach—the power of it—and he knew with every fiber of his being that he wasn’t his father, that he had a backbone, that no one could laugh at him. She kicked wildly, foot catching the curtains, wrenching them open, and moonlight flooded the room. He looked at her with a thrill of anticipation, wanting to soak in the pain on her face, the horror and regret.

Blond hair, not brown.

His grip loosened on the scissors. They clattered to the floor.

It wasn’t Jessica’s face that stared back at him, eyes wide in terror, mouth open, fighting for a slow, gurgling breath.

It was Heather.

“Oh god,” Mint said. The room spun, fire draining out of him, and he went dizzy, nearly dropped to his knees next to the scissors. What was Heather doing in Jessica’s bed? And why hadn’t she spoken clearly, said something to identify herself?