“But—”
“But, but, but,” she mocked, “of course. Why would I do this to you? The answer is in the question.” She laughed mirthlessly. “People are dead all around you, and you ask why I did this to you. It’s not what I did to you, it’s what I did for you. What I always do for you.” She jabbed an index finger toward her chest. “I protect you. But do you see it? No,” she dragged out the word. “Of course not. You never see it because it’s all about Sawyer. Sawyer’s boyfriend. Sawyer’s teacher making a pass at her. Sawyer’s new family. Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer.” Chloe stood. “But what about Chloe?” she pointed the knife at herself. “What about me?” Her eyes flashed back to a fresh, clear blue, and when she blinked, a single tear rolled down her cheek.
Sawyer sucked in a shaky breath and thought about Tara lying nearly unconscious upstairs, thought about her baby sister. There was no way past Chloe and her knife. No cell phone, no help on the way. She licked her lips.
“I love you, Chloe,” Sawyer said, her voice a breathy whisper.
Chloe sniffed and shook her head. “Don’t you say that. You don’t love me.”
“I do.” Sawyer took a step forward.
“Stop!” she gripped the knife and shoved it in front of her. Sawyer’s eyes went to it, and she felt herself start to shake. She steeled herself, forced herself to look away.
“You don’t really care about me,” she murmured.
“What did you say?”
Sawyer swung her head to face Chloe and kept her words flat and matter-of-fact. “I said, you don’t really care about me. You don’t really love me.” She chuckled. “I guess you were right. I don’t know anything about love.”
Chloe gaped. “Are you kidding me? All this. I did all of this for you.”
“I think you did it for you. I think you like to hurt people and you wanted an excuse to do it. You don’t love me, Chloe, you don’t even like me half the time.”
“Shut up!”
The smack across Sawyer’s face was hard. It stung, and she reeled. She tried her best to stay calm, unaffected, as she wiped her hand across her throbbing nose. She looked at the blood in her palm, tasted it gushing from the front of her mouth. “That just proves it.”
“No.” Chloe’s eyes were big, the tears falling immediately. She raked her fingers through her hair, still clutching the knife in front of her. “I’m sorry, Sawyer, I didn’t mean to do that. But you—you don’t understand. I love you. I love you so, so much. Can’t you see? Everything I do. Are you listening to me?”
But Sawyer was nonchalantly looking around the house, kicking at the carpet with her foot, as if Chloe was trying to sell her Girl Scout cookies, the knife in her hand nothing but a box of Thin Mints.
“You’re impossible!” Chloe shrieked, whirling around to pace. When she stepped back again, Sawyer was gone.
She cut through the entry hall and kicked the front door open, letting it smack loudly against the wall. She knew it would get Chloe’s attention, knew that if she took off, Chloe would follow. Sawyer snatched Tara’s bag from the peg by the door as she ran, her socks smacking against the damp concrete of the driveway.
It seemed like only seconds that Sawyer had been home, but the storm-dark sky was already bleeding into an inky black. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, and the icy cold froze Sawyer’s lungs and made her legs feel tight and heavy. She heard Chloe cross the threshold and bound after her, just seconds behind.
Sawyer pushed herself harder, vaguely wishing she had her windbreaker to cut through the biting wind.
“Oh God.”
She remembered the photo of herself running pinned to Chloe’s wall. She was wearing the windbreaker she wished she had now—the one she was wearing the morning she ran in the neighborhood.
Her best friend had been stalking her.
Terrorizing her.
She tore down the street, looking for somewhere to go. The houses that had been so cheery and homey just hours ago seemed to scream out their emptiness. The blank, black windows reflected Sawyer’s image back to her, a bitter reminder that she was all alone.
“Sawyer!” Chloe was closing in on her, and suddenly Sawyer cut left, running up her neighbor’s driveway. The wind whipped her hair in her face, but her pace was steady. Rain had just started to fall, heavy drops turning the dirt into mud and pounding over the abandoned two-by-fours and other construction debris as Sawyer cleared through the unlandscaped front yard and tore around the side of the house. The fresh redwood fence and cheery neighborhood fa?ade ended at the back of the model, and Sawyer paused, heart thundering, as she looked out at the muddy expanse in front of her.
Chloe hadn’t come around the house yet, and Sawyer took the second to stop, digging through Tara’s bag until she found her cell phone. She mashed all the buttons and the screen lit up, letting Sawyer know that she had only one bar of service.