Page 240 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

I keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

The euphoria’s long gone. And although I try to outrun the rest, it follows me as doggedly as my fucking shadow.

First comes the shame. It burns through me in an incandescent wave.

Next; guilt. Heavy, leaden, it drags down my feet and makes my body ten times heavier than it should be. My sprint becomes a slow jog.

Lastly, always…anger.

It eviscerates my reservations, logic.

Every fucking thing.

All I want—need—is to break her…even if I can’t put her back together again. Then that beautiful, broken girl will be all mine.

I like broken things, but I love breaking them even more.

Chapter Seventeen

Indi

I eventually do find remnants of an earlier, happier time in Marigold’s house. For reasons I can’t quite explain to myself yet, I don’t tell her about the intruder. Instead, I claim I saw a spider terrifying enough to make me run wet and partially naked from the bathroom.

She went to bed still wearing a grimace. That had been for the almost empty bottle of wine she spotted in the kitchen though, not my tale of arachnophobic horror.

Briar’s blue eyes kept me awake for an hour before I abandoned the concept of sleep altogether.

Intent on getting some warm milk, I head down to the kitchen. I walk past a hallway that heads to the back of the house, one Marigold never bothered to include in her initial tour. I always thought the room went to a study or a smaller sitting room, perhaps, so I never even bothered investigating.

The door’s locked. But there’s a hallway closet nearby I hadn’t seen before. I open the closet and rummage through the shelves.

I find a few photo albums and some dilapidated sporting equipment—a baseball bat and mitts, faded roller skates, a scratched bicycle helmet.

Weighing the bat in my hand, I purse my lips at its solidity. Then I grasp it tight and take a swing at an invisible enemy.

Not a bad self-defense weapon. Good to keep close at hand, should a certain Prince decide to sneak into my fucking house again. Fuck knows if I’d even use it. I should at least pretend that the fact that he’s not just a rapist and a murderer, but a creeping tom to boot, scares the living shit out of me.

Because it really should.

Somehow though, it doesn’t.

I guess after all the shit life’s dealt me recently, a run-in with a young Ted Bundy seems tame in comparison.

Briar

Marcus’s SUV is still out front when I finally get home. Inside, the mansion is quiet as the grave.

I find him in the pool house, immersing himself in weed and video games. He doesn’t even hear me come in—with such a dank haze in the room it doesn’t surprise me at all.

There’s beer inside the fridge—I take out two cans and bring them over to the sofa.

Marcus twitches when I move into his peripheral view, and then pauses his game and settles back on the sofa as if getting ready for battle.

I hold out the can until he takes it, and then I lower myself onto the seat with a sigh.

Marcus scans me with black, unreadable eyes, pops open his can, and says, “The fuck happened to your shoes?”

I laugh and wave away the question. Taking a sip of beer, I sit forward and grab a joint roach from the ashtray. I’m still hunting for a lighter when Marcus holds out a hand and flicks on his Zippo.

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