Page 99 of Half the Summer's Night
“This is going to be so much fucking fun,” he cackles as he rips my clothes away. “You have no idea what you’re?—”
He freezes. I stare at him, blinking through my pain and terror. I don’t understand what made him stop.
“What the fuck was that?” he hisses, shoving his arm up under my chin to hold me in place. I squirm against him, choking down small gulps of air. He doesn’t have his full weight on my trachea, but it’s enough.
Kaplan looks away from me, squinting into the darkness.
That’s when I hear it, too. Soft, heavy thuds.
Footsteps. The same footsteps that followed me into my examination room weeks ago.
And although it shouldn’t, hope blooms in my chest. Because Nameless came for me after all.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kaplan snarls.
I manage to twist my head around, hope and fear warring inside myself. A figure steps toward us: tall and broad, big enough that he almost seems to fill the hallway.
It’s him. Nameless.
“Let her go,” he says, taking another step forward. And that’s when I realize it. He’s not wearing his mask. For the first time, I can see him.
Rowan Hanover has come to save me.
36
ROWAN
I’ve never wanted to kill someone more than I do in this moment. Abi,myAbi, is bleeding and half naked, her clothes hanging in tatters. And the man who did it to her is standing over her with his cock out.
It’s Sheriff Kaplan. I’ve seen his face on re-election billboards, watched him on the news as he gave updates on a few of my kills.
And right now, he’s looking over at me in confusion.
“You’re Nash Deegan’s son,” he says, dumbfounded. “What are you?—”
The idea that anyone, even this piece of shit, would think Nash Deegan is my father sets another dynamite explosion of rage off inside me. And this time, I let it propel me forward. I launch myself at Kaplan, moving on instinct and adrenaline. He shouts and swings his knife at me, but I catch it by the blade and wrench it out of his hand and throw it aside with a clatter. Then I fall upon him. I slam his head up against the wall, hard enough that white plaster rains around us. Then I throw him against the floor and leap down to slam my fists into his face, over and over.
I never kill like this. I never kill like a wild animal. It’s always planned, calculated. But this afternoon with Charlotte loosenedsomething inside me, and my terror at almost losing Abi set it free completely. I don’t even care that it’s the sheriff, a man I’ve always known could ruin my life. All I know, right now, is that he’s human, that he hurt Abi, and that I am going to beat him until he’s no longer breathing.
Kaplan squirms beneath me, trying to get away. I grab his shoulders and slam his head back. He grunts; blood splatters across the floor. Then I punch him again, over and over and over, my fist sinking deeper and deeper into the mess of his face. Some of his teeth scatter across the floor. Hot blood sprays across my face—my face,and not my killing face. For the first time, I feel it on my skin, as warm and sweet as one of Abi’s kisses.
Kaplan twitches beneath me, and I hit him harder. You wouldn’t know it’s him anymore. His face is nothing but blood and bone and swollen muscle. But I keep going.
Because he was going to take Abi away from me. He was going to torture her. Brutalize her. Rape her. Kill her. And he deserves to be punished.
The blood flows thicker, pooling across the floor. There are other things mixed in with it, too. Brain. Bits of bone. My fist sinks through his face, and I yank it out, dripping with gore.
And then I feel Abi’s eyes on me.
All my bloodlust evaporates in an instant. The world goes from red to black. I freeze and look over at her, suddenly aware of what I look like: Blood-covered. Feral.
Faceless.
“Rowan,” she whispers in a ragged voice. Her eyes are two bright spots in the dark. “Rowan?”
She repeats my name like a question, and I can hear a tearfulness in the way she says it that makes me slump backward.
“All this time?” she asks. “At the hotel—when we went for coffee—and the golf course—” Her eyes widen, and her mouth drops open. “Oh my god, that’s how you knew. I thought you were spying on us—I’m so fucking stupid?—”
