Page 299 of Obsession

I turned and clenched my fist over my mouth, clinging to the last drop of sanity I had left in me.

“Why did you do that, Harris? What if he was telling the truth? We could have gotten more out of him,” Mike said.

“Nothing is true. It was him all along,” the voice boomed.

It wasn’t my boyfriend’s voice, it wasn’t the voice that told me he loved me.

I dared to look at him again. It was not the face of the boy who had cried in my arms at his mother’s grave.

I could see the tattoo with my initial so well, but I could no longer connect it to the moment he had made it. I couldn’t grasp that this had really happened and that the man with the bloodied hands and face was the same one. And the truth terrified me, it tore my heart apart to realize that this was his real face.

Without meaning to, my eyes fell on Joshua again as he lay there, his neck quartered and bleeding like that of a sacrificed animal. It shook me to the core.

Harris pulled out the fearsome claws and threw them on the ground, the sound they made making me wince.

All that was left was the glove, dripping blood.

He didn’t take it off, but lit a cigarette and started smoking it furiously while looking at Joshua.

A memory came to mind and materialized before my eyes.

I had seen this picture somewhere.

The tall, massive body, the leather glove, the cigarette…

Now it had a face.

A whimper caught in my throat as I forgot to breathe.

“What should we do with him?” Ty asked, far too calmly.

“We’ll deal with it tomorrow. I have to get back to Katherine.”

I trembled when I heard my name on his lips.

He didn’t finish the cigarette, he stubbed it in his fist and the smoke slipped through his glove.

Before I realized it, I started moving, because just the thought of facing him made me want to howl.

I ran up the stairs, my footsteps unheard because I was not wearing shoes. As I stepped into the cold night air, I allowed myself a few seconds to catch my breath as I rested my palms on my knees.

It couldn’t be him… no. It couldn’t be the same man.

I gasped.

I’d forgotten the night at Decepticon Fast Food, the creepy guy who’d entered the store a few minutes before all hell broke loose, the fear I’d felt, and the way he’d watched me.

The events of that night had triggered the move.

It couldn’t be him.

I refused to the core to believe it, to think that we had not seen each other for the first time when I thought.

That he had been playing with me all this time, with my life, until he had me exactly where he wanted me.

I had to get away.

I started to run until my feet took me into the parking lot, past a few people who were too drunk to notice me, then gasped as I realized I had no means of transportation. Who was I supposed to…then I saw his fucking car camouflaged in the darkness.

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