Gun Shy(85)

That’s enough for you, little bitch, I thought to myself, as she struggled under the chloroform-soaked rag in my hand. Sorry, babe. I don’t care about your life. I only care about the life I put inside you. The light in her eyes dimmed to a flicker as she writhed underneath my grip. She was terrified, and this is what you got when you threatened me. Silly girl. She should have known better.

Once she was passed out I lay her down on the seat beside me. Jennifer thought she’d kill my kid and go on to have a life away from here. Cassie thought she’d get to leave town eventually. Leo thought he’d get out of prison and continue his life, get to put his greedy hands on the people who belong to me.

I flashed my lights at Ray, his truck idling fifty feet from where we were parked, and he flashed his back. We were a team, me and my psychotic not-brother. Water is thicker than blood. Pine boxes are thicker than the lies we tell ourselves. The lines on a pregnancy test are things to be revered. And the lines we should never cross are thicker than any redemption we might think we deserve.





CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE





DAMON





Did you love her, Cassie asked me once. Did you love my mother?

Of course I did. I just decided somewhere along the way that I loved Cassie more.





CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO





DAMON





Starvation.

That’s how Cassie pulled the truth of my childhood from me, like strands of runner grass ripped out of the dirt. Telling her what I did to her mother, to Leo, to Jennifer. That wasn’t enough. That sated her reasoning for revenge, that drove away her doubt about locking me up, but it did nothing to quench her rampant curiosity.

My little Cassie was a voyeur, just like me. She wanted to dig around in people’s chest cavities, searching for the weak points, stealing all the secrets.

I didn’t want to give her my secrets. I didn’t want to ever think about them. But starvation is a cruel way to suffer, and so I gave her metaphorical breadcrumbs in exchange for real ones.

She tossed the Happy Meal box at my feet, and I was so hungry, I would have eaten her whole if she’d just come close enough. Not, like, in a sexual way — by that point, I was so hungry I would literally have bitten into her pale flesh, chewed and swallowed. She would have tasted good, too. She always ate well. She put a golden French fry in her mouth, and in the dark, my eyes could see so well the oil on that fry fucking shimmered. Those marketing people at McDonald’s would have been salivating over such an exquisite French fry.

Cassie settled in, cross-legged, just out of my reach. One day soon, I was going to get thin enough that my wrists would slip out of those damn cuffs, and then I’d rip her smug fucking face off with my fingernails while I laughed and she screamed.

She always ate in front of me. Cunt. A burger and fries, and then a caramel sundae. My favorite. I wanted to kill her. I should have killed her when I had the chance.

“You look angry,” she said, opening those gloss-covered lips long enough to deep-throat five French fries at once. Five. Greedy bitch. I only wanted one. One!

“This isn’t supposed to be fun,” she added, chewing noisily. “This is punishment, Daniel.”

I was going to kill her. She used that name and it was more painful than somebody peeling layers of my fucking foreskin off with tweezers. I’d tie her down, good and proper on the kitchen table, and play a very messy game of operation. I’d start with her fingers and toes first. Maybe her tongue next. It’d be a shame to never feel that tongue on mine again, though. Maybe I’d save her mouth until last, and take all the teeth so she couldn’t bite me.

She finished her own meal and went back for the brown paper bag. Dear God, if there is a God, I’m fucking sorry, okay?

“Are you praying?” Cassie asked, tilting her head back and laughing, a noise that I used to enjoy before. When I was starving, I’d prefer if she stuck a cockroach in each of my ears and let them race to see which one could claw through my eardrum and burrow into my head first.

I must have been muttering. I did that sometimes. I’d been locked in this room for an undetermined length of time. Give a guy a fucking break. She was a mean prison guard. At least I fed Jennifer and bought her as many audiobooks as she wanted. I knew Cassie had a little dark in her, but I didn’t know she was a fucking psychopath. If she weren’t using her particular methods on me, I’d have a hard-on at how cunning she is. Liquid food replacement? She bought those meal replacement shakes that cancer patients drink, and I had to suck it through a straw.

“Don’t think I’m going to let you die yet,” she would always say to me. “How long did my mother live on a liquid diet, stuck in a bed? Eight years?”

That was the thing that frightened me. Not dying. Dying is easy. No, I was always terrified at how much longer she’d keep me alive.





CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE





DAMON





“Tell me,” Cassie insisted. “Tell me what happened.”

She had one of the milk cartons in her hand, and she turned it over, studying the picture of little-boy me.

“Why?” I asked her. “Why does it matter?”

“Because I want to understand,” she replied. “And you owe me that.”