Page 16 of Soul of a Psycho

I don’t feel my feet hit the floor though, as if my legs have turned to jelly, and the room suddenly spins.

Oh, no.

I try to grasp the table behind me, but my body goes forward from my momentum, and I watch as the floor comes at my face. I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for impact. I hit hard; the wind knocked out of me. But it’s not from the ground. What I feel is firm, but comforting.

Cade.

I blink up at him and realize he’s thrown himself on his knees and caught me against his chest. He’s smirking at me through the edges of my blackening vision.

“How about a thanks now?”

Chapter Eleven

Cade

“Just get in the car,” I sigh as I hold the passenger door open to my car.

“But we can make it to second period,” Sky says and takes another step back.

“You just fainted.” I put an arm around her back and drag her closer. “You have low blood sugar. You need something to eat.”

“But…” she tries, and I put a hand on top of her head, lowering her into the seat. She goes easily, probably because she can’t think straight and is weak right now, but I use it to my advantage. I help her legs in and duck out of the car as she tries to formulate another excuse.

“But the food hall has—” I don’t let her finish, and close the door on her, locking her inside.

Yes, the food hall has food, but it doesn’t have ice cream. Ice cream that is both sugar-filled and cooling—something of which I need too after being so close to her blood. My body is heated in a way I’ve never experienced, and I think it has everything to do with the scarlet essence that keeps Sky alive.

I’ve never had the pleasure of being up close and personal with blood, and up until today, I didn’t know I had a passion for it… Or maybe it’s just because it’sherblood. But damn if it wasn’t intoxicating, richly iron scented, and mesmerisingly red.

When I climb into the driver’s seat, Sky is tugging on her ruined skirt and looking anxiously out her window. I blindly try to put the key in the ignition, making sure she doesn’t try to bolt and face plant onto the concrete, but I can’t find the damn slot. And that’s not a metaphor for being a virgin. I think I would find Sky’s slot just fine, regardless if it would be my first time.

Why the fuck am I thinking about Sky’sslot?

Agitated, I spare a glance and then groan. I can’t find the key slot because thereisno key slot. Now, if that’s not a metaphor, I don’t know what is. I push the START button and shake my head, tossing the keys into the cup holder. I haven’t forgotten about that in a while, and I realize I’m distracted. This girl is one big interruption with her tantalizing blood. I’m missing class, for one. I’m not trying to sound lame, but I can’t afford to lose Valedictorian. Not with everything I have planned. And yet… somehow, I’m being derailed.

I tighten my grip on the wheel of the pretentious car and back out. I don’t know what kind it is, but definitely not something I would have picked out. It was a gift from the headmistress in my sophomore year tosootheme over. I drive it because I’m not stupid. Without it, I would be stranded in this shit hole.

Once we’re on the highway leading to town, I relax a bit. I’m pretty sure this oak lined road is the only thing that keeps me sane. The thick branches are laden with yellow leaves this time of year and have thinned out to expose their limbs that join with each other, as if they are all holding hands. It’s really a stark difference from the spanish moss of oppression that surrounds Hillcrest. It’s like I can breathe out here. I know trees give oxygen, but I wouldn’t put it past the ones on Hillcrest grounds to be doing the opposite. Sucking the students dry of their clarity of mind with hypoxia.

“It’s pretty in the daylight,” Sky says.

I glance at her, noticing a slight smile on her lips, her hair kind of mused from me pushing her into the car, and I realize it isn’t bronze, but golden. Apparently, Hillcrest leeches the color out of things too.

“It’s not the only thing,” I say without thinking.

I snap my eyes back to the road before she turns, but I can’t take the words back, and her gaze roams over me, lingering like I don’t have peripheral vision. In a haste, I reach back and pull my hood up, tugging it down low enough that I can only make out the lane markers on the pavement. I don’t know why she looks at me like that, and I don’t know why I’m doing this. It’s like pointing a gun at my foot.

Whatever happened to Sky today is a one off. She’s eventually going to climb the social ranks and make jokes about that one time I took her for ice cream while looking down at me. They will tell her who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve endured, and she’ll shudder in her pretty little skin at the fact that she ever let me touch her.

I contemplate turning around, whipping the wheel and jerking us back to hell, but I push farther down on the pedal instead, gunning over the speed limit within a second. If I turn around, then it’s an eventuality that I’ll know what it looks like to see her face twist in disdain at me. If I keep going, keep going faster, there’s a chance I’ll kill us, and she’ll forever be frozen in my mind with that lusty gaze.

“Cade.”

I clench my jaw and ignore her. She’s a dead girl walking, anyways. Why not make it sooner? Will I be any less evil if I only take her with me, instead of everyone?

“Slow down.”

He was troubled. It’s a tragedy that he took such a bright girl down with him.

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