Page 49 of Glass Rose
Static hisses back at me, mocking my efforts. I set the radio down, rubbing my eyes.
Please don’t be dead.
ELEVEN
SOFIA
Blood explodes across the room as the knife plunges into my father’s eye socket. The blade meets resistance, then slides through with a sick, wet sound that reverberates through my bones. His body goes slack, collapsing against me like some grotesque puppet with severed strings.
I killed him.
I killed my father.
I try to scream, but no sound emerges, just the crushing weight of his corpse pinning me down…
Down into darkness.
Down into silence.
Down into this horrifying loop.
Behind him, my mother’s corpse rises from the kitchen floor, intestines dropping from her gaping stomach wound. Her glassy eyes fix on me with accusation, mouth working silently as she staggers forward, arms outstretched.
I struggle beneath my father’s weight, lungs burning for air. “Please?—”
“You killed us both.” Her face morphs into somethinginhuman—features stretching, skin sloughing off in wet chunks. “You’ll kill them all.”
The scream finally breaks from my throat, raw and primal?—
A large palm seals my mouth, rendering it silent. My eyes fly open to darkness, heart hammering so hard it might crack my ribs. I’m still in the nightmare, still pinned beneath my father’s corpse with my mother’s mutilated body lurching toward me.
“Shh.” Gavin’s voice, low and steady, whispers against my ear. “You were dreaming.”
Reality filters back in fragments. Gavin’s solid weight above me on the narrow bed, naked from the waist up, and his hand still covering my mouth. My muscles unclench gradually as the nightmare recedes, leaving behind the sour taste of adrenaline.
“You with me?” His breath tickles the baby-hair on my temple as he places a soft kiss there.
I nod against his palm, and he releases me, his fingers ghosting down the column of my throat, calluses catching slightly on my skin.
“Your parents?”
Another nod. Words feel too heavy, too complicated. The memories of my father’s blood on my hands and my mother’s shredded body on the kitchen floor too fresh.
“What do you need?” His hand continues its downward path, skimming over my nipples.
“You know what I need.”
“Say it.” His voice hardens. “I spent fourteen months having things done to me without my consent. Everything between us happens because you ask for it. Clearly.”
“I need you to make me forget.”
“Well, then let me help you drive away the thoughts in that brilliant brain of yours.” His palm flattensagainst my stomach beneath the oversized t-shirt, lifting the material until my breasts are bared. “Just for a little while.”
“Please.” My voice cracks on the single word.
“Need you to be quiet.” He shifts above me, straddling my hips. “Others might hear. And I don’t share.”
I nod, biting my lower lip.
