Page 225 of Ruin My Life
I hope Damon made it to Rebecka. I hope she’s already running. Hiding. Safe.
Connor’s finger tightens on the trigger.
I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the end.
And then—
Brakes.
A sharp squeal just outside. A car pulling up fast.
My eyes snap open. I twist toward the window. Headlights slash across the frost-bitten glass. I can’t see past the glare—
But I know that sound.
Someone’s here.
Connor lowers the gun, a grin slithering across his face. “Sounds like mommy dearest is home,” he drawls, each word dripping with mockery.
He melts back into the kitchen shadows, swallowed by the dark. Waiting.
I can’t see the car clearly from here. It’s parked just out of sightline—too far for me to make out the model through the frosted window. I strain against the zip ties, rocking up onto the balls of my feet despite how tight they bite into my skin, desperate for a better angle.
I can’t tell who it is.
Please let it be Damon.
Please. Please.Please.
The car beeps—a single chirp of the locks. Footsteps echo on the porch, but they’re much lighter than his. Slower. More cautious.
Not Damon.
Then—
A gasp. Small. Caught in a throat.
Definitely not Damon. The voice sounds like a woman.
She edges closer, eyes catching on the fractured windowpane, the blood on the frame, the door slightly ajar. Her face tilts into view, haloed by the porch light—
And I forget how to breathe.
She looks just like Amie.
So much so my lungs seize.
She’s older—early twenties, maybe my age—but everything else is a mirror. That same long, pin-straight brown hair. The same soft hazel eyes, blown wide with worry. The same peach-blush skin, the same heart-shaped mouth, the same faint pink bloom across her cheeks from the cold. Even her nose—small, round, so heartbreakingly familiar.
She looks like shecould beAmie.
If Amie had lived.
If she’d grown up.
She locks eyes with me through the glass, and I’m cemented in place—tied to this chair or not—breathless and gutted clean by memory. The phantom ache in my chest surges, monstrous, like a wave swallowing me whole.
My baby sister.
