Page 182 of Scrimmage

He waves the gun in the air with exasperation. “You love blacking out. That's why I'd put the drugs into your drinks. You wanted me to do it. The way you would moan…” He bites his lip.

All of these blackouts during nights of drinking. Cole was the one handing me the drinks. The night I was drugged over Thanksgiving. Cole handed me the drink. I never suspected it. Cole was having sex with me while I was on copious amounts of drugs, and I didn’t even know. I want to throw up, but I swallow the bile. That’s why the blackouts didn’t happen every time he wasn’t there. That’s why they stopped entirely when I told him to fuck off. I need to get the gun from him.

I press my body against his and look up at him, batting my lashes. “I wish I could remember it.”

I see my phone laying on the counter and I reach around him, pretending I want to hold him tight. Using my muscle memory, I try to press call on the last contact. I pray with everything that I have that it works.

“God, my brother was such a fucking idiot.”

“I wish you had saved me that day on the beach. You should have told me the truth. We could have had more time together.”

“Don’t think that I’ve forgotten you telling me to fuck off, Ashland.”

“I’m so sorry, Cole. I was just confused.”

“Yes, well, you’ll have plenty of time to thank me later. Now, we just have to wait for Penny to get home.” He says her name like she’s a disease. “She keeps getting between us. I let you have fun with your little friend, but it’s time for her to go.”

He’s going to kill Penny. He’s going to fucking kill Penny. She could be home any minute. I wasn’t paying attention when she told me which flight was hers. I only know that it’s today. The time to spring into action is now.

I knee Cole in the balls causing him to double over. I try to get the gun from him, but he has it firmly in his grip. It goes off, and the dry wall puffs where the bullet goes through. Cole is already recovering. I grab the skillet, but it clatters to the floor. I reach for the drawer, and Cole brings the butt of the gun down on my wrist. Blistering heat erupts in my hand. He probably fucking broke it.

I scream with the pain and try to see straight through it. My fingers are already hooked on the knob, so I yank it open and grab the knife with my good hand. We fall to the ground as he tries to wrestle it away from me. The blade is moving closer and closer to my face until it digs into my flesh over my eye. The skin splits from my eyebrow down to my cheek, and I scream some more.

“Go ahead and scream, baby. I know you need to get it all out.”

I drop the knife before it can dig any deeper. Blinding myself won’t help. It slides to the floor, covered in blood. Then I bite. I bite his face because it’s so close to mine and it’s all I’ve got. He releases me with a growl, but when he pulls his gun away he accidentally pulls the trigger. My adrenaline is pumping so hard that I don’t know where it goes, but I have to keep fighting. For Penny. I’ll keep fighting until we’re both dead if that’s what it takes to keep her alive.

The skillet is next to me. I try to grip it, my hand slipping with blood.

“Goddammit, Ashland!” Cole shouts. “You made me fucking shoot you.”

The cast iron is heavy in my hand. I only manage to hit him in the arm, but it’s enough. He finally drops the gun and I grab it, but he’s back on top of me and he punches me in the fucking face. I manage to pull the trigger, and when I’m able to focus again I see blood dripping from his arm. At least he’s a little incapacitated.

He’s wrestling the gun from me, and there’s another pop. This time, though, I fucking feel it tear through the muscle in my shoulder. Cole nabs it from me, and as he does, I grab his finger and pull the trigger, but at the last second it turns toward me and goes through my thigh. I’m just fucking killing myself.

I think of Penny.

With the last burst of energy I can manage, I use my bad hand to hit Cole as hard as I can in the jaw, screaming and crying through the pain. I feel the crunch. I hear it. It’s sickening. When the gun slips from his hand, I grab it, put it to his forehead, and pull the trigger until it won’t shoot anymore.

He slumps on top of me, stuck in a state of mangled shock as he dies. I drag myself up, lying against the cabinets. I’m fucking drowning. I look down, surveying the damage. Blood is leaking from my stomach. I won’t make it much longer.

I manage to laugh, but the pain is too much. It’s over. Maybe this was what I always wanted. Maybe this is the only way to end all of this fucking turmoil. Damien made a promise that he would drag me to Hell, but it looks like I’ll be the one cashing in.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Koda

Stupid.

I don’t know if I’m stupid, or if she’s stupid. Maybe we’re both fucking stupid.

For a second, I thought she might cry. I thought she might show me something,anything,to prove that all of this meant something to her. Ashland is a master manipulator. That’s what I want to believe anyways.

When I found the letter, I was cleaning her stupid books up off of the floor. I figured I could try to read one of them because she loves them so fucking much. When I had said the thing about getting over her, it was when I realized I don’t want to. There was no desire in me to eventually move on from her, but I just didn’t know how to make it work. I was willing, though, more than willing, but I needed to tell her that. Talking to Ashland about anything serious is like trying to catch a cloud in a jar. The only languages she speaks are sex and books, and if I could find something, maybe I could find a way to get her to listen to me.

I picked the one that looked like it had been read the most. It was worn and falling apart. Looking for Alaska. She quoted it to me once in my kitchen. There were tons of notes written in scrawling handwriting. Page numbers with color coded tabs that marked quotes she loves, parts that make her think, and other things I couldn't determine were on the inside of the cover, which is so anti-Ashland that it blew my mind. She’s so fucking disorganized, like Alexi, but she has some method to the madness. There were doodles in the pages. It was nothing like the scary shit in her sketchbook. The letter was placed in the middle.

I don’t know what possessed me to open it. Well, I do. The letter was addressed to Yinny. Tearing it open was a gross abuse of the fact that I found it in the first place. Inside of it wasn’t at all what I expected. In her favorite fucking book was a letter addressed to her in a way I didn’t like, and it started with ‘My Beautiful Wife, Ashland’. I think I read it one hundred times before I moved on. It was full of promises and apologies. The stars. The goddamn stars that I’ve been obsessing over. The ones she tattooed on her arm were in memory of this fucking Damien guy. Her husband. Love, Damien. Love. Damien.

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