Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,54

three pills. He told us it would make us sleep and that when we woke up, everything would be fine. We wouldn’t have to answer the questions none of us wanted to answer about who we really were. About the things we’d done. He would have handled everything.”

“Cyanide or some shit?”

She shrugged. “And the women, they were so brainwashed. Some of them came from some seriously fucked-up situations and they were just ready, you know. Ready to let someone take away all the big decisions. I mean, they’re brainwashed and abused but it’s the sly abuse, you know. The abuse that looks like love.”

“You weren’t ready to let someone else make all the decisions?”

“It was nice for a few months. But…I have control issues, what can I say?”

This time I smiled, because she was trying so damn hard to keep her head up.

“You actually think your sister would take the pills?”

“No. But I actually think he’d kill her before he let her talk to the police. It’s what he threatened me with when I left. That if I tried to come back, he’d kill Jennifer.”

There was no way to win. Lagan had every base covered.

“I’ll let you go,” she said. Her voice cracked and she could not hide the fact that she was scared.

She took a deep breath and then tossed me the key from across the room. I caught it with my free hand and used it to pop open the handcuffs.

Fuck. I shook out my hand, rubbing my wrist. I’d cut the skin a little lunging for her when she was going to bust the phone.

“Two days. Two days I’ve been handcuffed to this bed.”

“I’m sorry.”

I got to my feet, glad I was steady. She was backing away from me, stepping into the corner between the dresser and the window. I followed her, eating the space between us.

She didn’t scream, or put up her hands. She only looked at me as if she was waiting for what she knew was coming. Still, she was breathing hard, trying to shrink.

And I’m a pretty fucked-up human, with some fucked-up tendencies toward violence and fear and once I had her cornered against the wall, I lifted my hand to her chest, putting my palm right against the pounding of her heart.

Her fear shook something loose in me, some cornerstone that held up a whole bunch of shit—crumbled. How many times had I done this in my life? Had I stood over some scared person and done everything I could to tear them apart? To take what they had? To hurt what they loved?

“I’ve hurt so many people in my life,” I told her. Her eyes were so green. I’d never noticed before, blinded by her tits and the armor. But her eyes were the color of grass. Serious green like golf-course grass. “If you’d done this a year ago, I would have fucked you up. I might have killed you.”

Her eyes slid shut and she whimpered low in her throat. But I just stood there, feeling her heart beat.

How do I…not do this?

I remembered when I gave up on my mom. Gave up on the dream of her being clean. Of us—her and me and Dylan and Pops—being some kind of normal. Of being a family instead of a pack of dogs tearing at each other.

I remembered the exact moment I gave in to the dogs.

It was about a week after Mom had come home from the fancy place Dylan’s money racing cars had gotten her into. And it had been a good week. Mom was fragile, her smile weak. But she was there. And you could see her trying. She asked about school. She asked about girls and friends. The cars. Dylan’s racing.

Every day, Pop treated her like he expected her to disappear. Like without his hands on her, his arm over her shoulder, his lips pressed to her hair—she’d just…poof away.

And then—it was a Thursday. I remembered because I got Dylan to school—which was hard enough in those days but instead of sticking around for my own classes I headed home, and there was Mom and one of Pop’s brothers from the club. And the spoon and the lighter and the rubber tubing. And the sound of them fucking in the bedroom.

After that—I just didn’t care anymore.

The dogs could have us.

I had turned around and walked away. Walked in the opposite direction. Every time the instinct to care about her or about Pops came back—I shut it down. I