Page 24 of Oathbreaker

A razor blade. It’s rusted and looks like it would have been part of a shaving kit. I touch the blade’s edge. It’s sharp.

“Winter, if you don’t fucking get a move, I will tear you a new asshole!” His feet stomp toward the bathroom, and I meet him at the doorway, the blanket clutched around my shoulders in tight fists.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” I say. I look down at his feet in submission.

“Whatever. Let’s go,” he says. He puts his hand on the back of my neck, leading me toward the door.

It’s now or never.

One.

One-two-one.

I whirl around, the edge of the blade firmly in my hand, cutting me. But enough of the sharp razor sticks out of my grip so that when I aim for his throat, the pump, pump, pump of blood through his severed artery sprays across my face.

He moves back from me on instinct, bending over and clutching his neck.

“Fuck!” he yells, stumbling wildly.

I keep the blade in my hand, shedding the blanket and rushing toward the idling SUV.

I lurch out onto the porch, rusty nails stabbing the bottoms of my feet when I trip.

I feel a pop in my left ankle, and fire licks up my calf.

He’s behind me, barreling through the door and wheezing as he draws closer to me.

“Winter, stop!” He takes three steps—clomp, clomp, clomp—and then my indecision proves near-fatal when he’s on me again, pinning me to his chest with an arm around my neck. His fingers are sticky, and a copper tang fills my nose.

“I say when this is done. Not you,” he hisses. Breaths bellow in and out of his chest. The edge of darkness creeps into the sides of my vision. I pitch us forward through the dilapidated railing, using the inertia of my body mass to tumble us off the porch.

We fall into a tangle of broken boards and dowels. The sharp shock of cold covers my body as we land on the snowy slush. His grip loosens, but I don’t have enough time to get away before he grabs me again. We’re face to face, and his rage sends icy fingers of fear down my spine.

“No, no, no, no!” he screams, slapping the ground near my head with each word. The feeling of him on top of my body morphs time.

Him then. Him now.

Me then. Me now.

When I feel his weight impaling the gravel into my skin, I scream with primal rage. Blinding rage.

No one is going to save you, Winter.

Time slows. My breath seizes in my chest. I spread my arms out straight from my side, seeking, seeking, seeking....

“I love you, Winter. I forgive you. I forgive you,” he pants, grabbing at all the parts of my body he can reach.

“Burn in hell, you sick fuck!”

The makeshift weapon—a nail affixed to a splintered dowel—in my bloody palm pierces the flesh at the base of his skull with the furious force of my stab.

He jerks, his body movements uncontrolled. I push him off me, pulling the nail out at the same time and rolling to straddle his chest. Adrenaline makes me strong; I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel anything but rage, rage, rage at the audacity of his fucked-up parody of love—at his obsessive, possessive sickness that’s metastasized through every part of me.

Using the board the nail is attached to as a handle, I plunge it into his right eye.

Animalistic screams come from him, piercing the air. So I aim the board at his mouth, stabbing him through his upper jaw.

His head jerks to the side when I rip the nail from his face, and I use the opportunity to stab him in the neck. Blood sprays from the artery there, and I wrench the nail out of his bloodied flesh, aiming for his temple.

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