Page 106 of Soul of a Psycho

I look over the edge, at the back of campus and the manicured lawn. People are milling around, setting up pristine white chairs. A stage has been erected. My chest constricts because I’m out of time. And in two days, we’re all out of time.

Unless I can stop him.

But I have to find him first.

Chapter Seventy-Three

Cade

Ihave one foot on either rails of the train tracks, arms at my side as I stare up at the purple sky. The storm is festering. Stubborn. The rain is trapped above the clouds and they won’t break even though the air is thick with humidity and crackling with electricity. I’ve shed my hoodie. I want him to see me for what I’ve become. I want him to strike me down in a flash of lightning. I’m tempting him. The metal beneath my shoes a conduit. But the fucker won’t kill me. Does hewanteveryone to die? I’m giving him an out to what he created.

“Take me!” I scream, ripping my throat as the tendons in my neck tighten.

I’ve done everything. All one-hundred bombs are finished. Plus two teddy bears. The chairs have gone up as I expected—in a pattern I expected. No one will survive. My plan is finally here. A whole night earlier, even. And I just want to die. It’s me or them and I would rather it be me.

But I’m a coward.

“Killme!” Rage burns under my skin. “It’s them or me, you sick fuck!” I cry up to the heavens.

I hoped I would have starved. Passed out and hit my head. Bled to death and rotted in the woods. Rotted like Bobby. That’s what I deserve. But I keep moving.Why? For fuck’s sake, why?!

“Please.” I fall to my knees, bones hitting the sleepers. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Then don’t.”

I don’t even have to turn around to know he’s set my angel down. Her voice is damnation, raking across my skin like divine retribution, and I hang my head. This is what he gives me? A bitter smirk eats my lips, a menacing chuckle bubbling up. Because of course,of course, this would be how he punishes me. Death would be too easy.

“Do your worst,” I dare him and stand, gritting my teeth for the onslaught.

Oh, and does he ever.

Sky is wearing my hoodie, her bronze hair flowing over the black material like a seductress. It takes everything in me not to run to her,breakseverything in me when she doesn’t run to me. Because she’s scared… of me—of what I’ll do or say. It’s what I wanted, but it’s not what Iwant. I want her to jump on me, wrap her legs around me, smother me in her scent and warmth. I want her tosaveme.

But she can’t.

“You don’t want to be here,” I tell her.

She winces, squeezing her shoulders together. The response peels at the pieces left of my heart like a hangnail, slow and agonizing.

“I want to be wherever you are,” she says softly, timidly.

This isn’t the shielded and fiery girl I met a year ago. This girl is palms out and walls down, willing to let me tear her apart. She trusts me. As scared as she is, she still trusts me. She shouldn’t.

“No, you don’t, Sky.” Her name tastes good on my tongue, and I bet she would let me taste other places. But she doesn’t know that come graduation, she will want to be as far away from me as possible. She doesn’t know that where I am, there is death.

“Cade…” She steps closer, some of that tenacity peeking through.

I wish I could enjoy it, but that one step illuminates a set of dark circles under her eyes. The skin is thin and fragile, and I note the haunted shadows in her irises. It’s my turn to wince, and I avert my gaze, not willing to see how I’ve destroyed her.

“I do,” she continues. “No matter where that is, I want to be with you.”

Flashes of her in Hell, donned in white as the flames lick her skin, make me shudder.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grind out as a distant train whistles.

“Yes, I do.”

Anger courses through me faster than a match can spark, and I lunge for her.

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