Page 155 of Worthy

Not anymore.

Chapter ten

Melanie

Smirking back, he crouches over me. “It would seem you’re the only one with a fighting spirit.” He cups his ear. “Listen to her cry.”

More blood pours from my lips, and I shift onto my side to cough it all up, but he shoves me back down and grips my throat. “I’ll take my time with her, make sure she fucking feels it when I finally kill her.”

He cuts off my airflow. I soon begin to struggle, my heels sliding frantically through the thick snow.

There’s no doubt about it—he’s killing me. His shadowed eyes watch closely as my lips turn blue.

“Sweet dreams, whore!”

I shoot upright in bed, coated in a thin layer of sweat and breathing harshly. Hazy remnants of the nightmare linger at the fringes of my consciousness.

I lean over to check the time on my phone. It’s eight in the evening. As soon as I arrived home from school, I collapsed on the bed.

Rubbing my face, I cringe as I think back to when Jessica walked in on me and the girl from my history class. I don’t know what I was doing. It was a poor attempt at drowning my misery. I can’t be with Jessica; she’s my stepsister. It doesn’t matter that I keep thinking about what happened between us at the cabin. Our parents would never approve, and the kids at school would never accept us.

As I place my feet down on the rug, Jessica’s soft moan travels through the wall. Our parents are away this weekend, so she can be as fucking loud as she wants.

She takes full advantage of that now.

I stare at the wallpaper for too long—hoping and praying I imagined her moan—before rising to my feet and stepping out into the hallway. I don’t know why the fuck I do it, but I have to see it with my own eyes. A small part of me wants to believe Jessica wouldn’t be so vengeful as to fuck her boyfriend to get back at me. I’m lying to myself. I’ve told her time and time again to go back to him. I’ve pushed her away enough times not to have a fucking right to feel this hurt.

Her door is ajar. I press my palm to it and push it open. The hinges creak, and she looks up with a spoon in her mouth. My eyes skate down to the tub of ice cream in her hand. The relief is instant. I slump against the doorway and release the breath I’d been holding.

“What do you want?”

I deserve the poison in her voice after what I did.

Pushing off, I enter her room. Purple walls, covered in framed pictures and photographs, meet white curtains that are too long, pooling on the floor. Her room is tidy in a way that mine is not.

“Where’s Jaxon?” I ask.

Scooping up more ice cream, she shrugs, then looks up at me. “I broke up with him.”

“You did what?” I freeze.

Instead of answering, she brings the spoon to her mouth and wraps her lips around it. Then she’s back to scraping ice cream from the bottom of the tub.

“Why did you break up with him?” I take a seat on the edge of her bed.

“I’m done pretending.”

“Pretending?” I echo, confused.

She eats ice cream in silence before placing the tub down on the bedside table. Her brown hair is up in a messy bun, and escaped tendrils tease her collarbone when she shifts. “I told him the truth.”

My eyes widen, but before I can speak, she holds her finger up.

“My truth.”

“What’s your truth?” I daren’t breathe.

“I’m not in love with him.” She hesitates before admitting, “I have feelings for someone else.” Chocolate-brown eyes hold mine until I’m forced to inhale a sharp breath.

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