Page 78 of Sorrow

Regardless, I move in and hold her hair back now that the knife is out of her grasp. “Breathe for me, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Nothing about this is okay,” she gasps, standing up and gripping my shirt to keep herself steady. Her eyes are still locked on Holt. “At least the fucker smells better now.”

A shocked laugh escapes me as I pull her in. “I want to kiss you so bad right now. Why’d you have to puke?”

“You know that really gross feeling when you gauge someone’s eyes out of their head?”

“Now you’re just turning me on,” I tease, realizing how fucked up we must seem to be able to joke in a time like this. Or maybe we justarefucked up... maybe we don’t care.

I carry her to the room and help her brush her teeth and wash the blood off her hands, but I don’t have an opportunity to give her a shower before the front door flies open and I hear Boo yelling out her name.

“Samara!” There’s so much broken fear in that one word that we both run out to the living room and find him and Reeve frozen in place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stark-white face in person, but tweedle dee and tweedle dumb here have accomplished it. I won’t hold it against them this time though. My poor grandmother’s house looks like it’s an active set for a Tarantino movie, and all that’s missing are the feet for his fetish.

Glancing down, I see that my girl has that covered for him, and I have to bite back a laugh.

Not the time.

Reeve looks around with his nose turned up. “What the fuck happened here?”

Who invited this prick to the murder party? It sure as hell wasn’t me, and now I’m wondering if I’ll have to kill another person before the night is through because we can’thave any witnesses to this. “Why the fuck is he here, Boo?”

“Three of them, seemed logical to have three of us,” he mutters, stepping around me to follow the trail of blood into the hallway. For a solid thirty seconds, he just blinks at the bodies and breathes like he’s never had any oxygen in his lungs before. “Looks like all it took was one, though. How’d you take on all of them by yourself?”

“Good question.” I turn toward his sister who still has blood everywhere but her hands. “Tell him about the eyeballs.”

“Samara?” Boo’s voice sounds far away, it’s so quiet, so fearful. “You did this?”

“Part of it,” she shrugs. “Most of it. Hayes finished Ricky off, but I did all the stabbing. Luckily for you, Hayes likes blood play so we had a set of really sharp knives just sitting there on the nightstand. Otherwise, your little quest for revenge would’ve ended very differently.”

The words come out so matter-of-factly it’s hard to get mad at her for spilling our secret, especially when Boo drops to his knees.

“Sam, I’m so sorry. Fuck. It was never meant to end like this.”

“It wasalwaysgoing to end like this, you idiot. The moment you refused to turn them in, whether it was to save me or not, you wrote the ending of this story. I just finished it early.”

I feel bad for the guy, but I also know this is something they need to hash out. Nothing she said was wrong, I just also understand his reasons for keeping most of this off the books. Deep down, he knew one side wasn’t going to survive. “I didn’t even hear anything because of my music.” I’ll never forgive myself for it, but I can’t help but send a thank you out into the universe for our survival. “She took care of all of them on her own, I just finished Ricky off before he could bleed out from what she did to him.”

“Wait, I lied,” she rushes out. “We lied. He didn’t kill anyone, it was all me. So arrest me, not him.”

“Arrest you?” Boo asks. “Why the fuck would I arrest you? They broke in here, not the other way around. It’s self-defense.”

I’m still staring at her completely flabbergasted at the fact that she would take the rap for what happened here. Forme.

I’ve never been worth more than a second glance, and yet this woman would go toprison so I could be free. “Samara, I love you.”

I realize after I blurt that out that everyone else has already moved on, and my words cut them all into silence.

All I see is her though.

“Youwhat?”

“I love you,” I repeat, completely ignoring the others like they’re invisible. “I didn’t mean to, but I fell in love with you.”

“Is this really the time for this?”

I frown at Reeve’s irritating whisper, but I refuse to take my gaze off her. Her expression is changing by the second — angry, confused, sad — everything negative I see on her face only breaks my heart... until she speaks.

“I love you too, you moron. I can’t believethisis the story we’ll tell our fucking grandkids one day, but I love you too. I think I have for a while.”

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