The hand I was holding the knife in was tremoring, and the stranger’s eyes glanced to it, his eyes widening and then narrowing as he tried to focus. He laughed again. “You’re scared shitless, kid. Chill. Have a fucking drink.” He held the bottle out toward me. “I swear, I ain’t gonna fuck ya again.” He raised his free hand. “Don’t get me wrong, that was a hell of a tight ass. But if it makes you feel better, you saved your girl from getting it up hers.”
I was breathing through gritted teeth, trying to suck and release air through my clenched jaw. My lips were pulled back, and the rage consumed more of me by the second as I glared at him.
“Should be thankin’ me,” he said with a nod as he tipped the bottle to me. “You really think that bitch woulda given it up to you? She was a virgin, dude. You weren’t gonna get that cherry.”
I took another step closer, and the man’s eyes shifted to my feet as the bottle paused mid-way to his mouth. He stared at me, his lips parted. His body was suddenly rigid and unmoving—even the drunk sway was stilled for the moment. He was sizing me up. I’d been in enough fights to know exactly what he was doing. It was the pause before the pounce.
My grip tightened on the knife. Could I do this? Could I kill this man? I wanted to, but was wanting enough to make me do it? I needed Helene here. I wanted to hear her voice. I needed her to tell me what to do.
Kill him. I could hear her speaking quietly against my ear in a cruel tone not at all befitting of her. Make him suffer for me. Make him pay for what he did to us. Make it hurt.
Yes, I could kill him.
Don’t do it. This time her voice was pleading with me, and I could feel her imaginary hand on my arm, pulling me back from him and back from this place into her arms. Her arms. That’s what I needed. Not this. Just her. You don’t want to do this. Her voice was so gentle against my ear, pleading softly. Come back to me. Let me give you peace.
I whimpered, and it turned into a groan of intense frustration. I shook my head trying to get her out of it so I could focus on this place and the stranger standing in front of me. He was still frozen, but as I watched him, the corner of his lip pulled up in a subtle smirk.
He dropped the bottle, lunging toward me, and before I knew what I was doing, I was lunging right back. I planted my fists in the middle of his chest, my hand still tightly holding the handle of the knife, and I threw all my weight into pummeling him backward.
And I did.
I shoved him straight over the edge of the embankment, and I watched his body fall as his eyes widened and his hands clutched at the air between us. He landed ten feet down the steep hill on a jutting chunk of rock that broke through the earth. It was a sickening sound of bones breaking when he hit, and the air from his lungs was expelled in a huff. His body tumbled hard and fast down the hill out of sight into the dark. I could hear it crashing and bouncing, but the man made no conscious sound. The last thing I heard was a loud crack of hard on hard.
And then nothing.
I stood there, gasping as I stared down into the darkness. I couldn’t see where the dark ended, and I had no idea how far down it went. I listened, trying to hear over the roaring pound of my heart and the desperate pant of my breaths. I didn’t move a muscle as I waited for something to happen.
But nothing happened.
Not a sound stirred the leaves down below—no snapping twigs, no groans of pain, no scrambling hands trying to claw their way up to me. Silence. A shiver ran through me, physically sending a tremor out from my chest to my limbs, and when it passed, I finally moved. I picked up the nearby rucksack, and I threw it as hard as I could down the same path the stranger’s body had fallen. I kicked the vodka bottle down too.
And I ran.
Chapter Forty
Kane
She was crying by the time I finished speaking, and she was covering her mouth as tears streamed down to pool on the top of her hand. She was standing next to me, staring down the embankment at the same spot fifty feet below.
The hill didn’t drop as far as I’d once assumed. That night nearly eleven years ago to the day, I’d stood in this same place imagining the hill just dropping into oblivion and going on forever. But in the light, it was just a steep craggy hill with an end.
“I made it nearly a mile down the road before I realized I was still holding the knife. I pulled over and threw it as far into the woods as I could.”
“Why was he still here?” she said even as she still covered her mouth.
“I don’t know, baby. It looked like he was getting ready to leave.” I shrugged. “They didn’t find his body for a year and a half. Skeleton actually.” I glanced at her.