“Soon, baby.”
“Soon, Creed.”
His arms gave me a squeeze. “Love you, Sylvie. Didn’t think I could do it more but after what you gave me tonight, know it can be more until infinity.”
Oh.
Wow.
People in town thought Winona Creed was a redneck hick, a floozy, stupid and a loser.
Creed fell very, very far from that tree. What he said might not rhyme but still, it was poetry.
“I love you too, Creed. Seems like I’ve loved you forever but I know that I will love you that way. Forever.”
I wasn’t as good at it but Creed didn’t seem to mind. I knew this when he bent his neck and gave me another good-bye kiss, soft, sweet and short.
Okay, so that kiss was the last one.
In my car, I waved, staring at his shadowed form in my rearview mirror, feeling light, feeling free, feeling happy, not having any clue I wouldn’t see that tall, muscled frame for sixteen years.
Not having any idea.
And feeling so happy, when I stole into the dark house I grew up in, through the foyer and up the stairs, thinking it was for the last time, I didn’t feel Daddy’s eyes watching me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
You Can’t See It
Present day, six days later…
They had him chained to the floor, cheek to the cement, tape on his upper and lower eyelids, stuck to his lashes, holding his eyes open.
So Creed saw her when they pushed her down and chained her to the floor six feet away.
At first glance, he thought she was me. Same hair. Same build. Same face shape. Even the same colored eyes.
She wasn’t me.
Daddy held his head down so Creed couldn’t even turn it. The tape held his eyes open so he couldn’t shut the visions away. There was no way he could close out the screams.
No.
He had to watch.
Watch as they ripped her clothes away.
Watch as, for hours, repeatedly, brutally, they raped her.
Watch as she fought the chains, strained, shrieked, begged.
Watch as the blood flowed from between her legs, where the chains gouged into her wrists, her neck, her ankles.
Watch as the fight left her, the light died in her eyes and she lay, her head turned, her gaze locked to Creed’s as they kept at her for hours, one after the other and then back again.
Five of them.
Then they were done.