CHAPTER SIX
I sped the Highlander down the I-5 like a demon in the night. Perhaps that was a bad analogy, but I felt almost supernatural as I managed to clock record speeds while somehow avoiding every single speed trap there was out there. I was motherfucking Batman and timing seemed to be on my side—I just hoped it would be as kind to Perry.
I texted Ada as I drove, letting her know I was on my way and urging her to keep things as secret as possible. I was pretty sure that their parents wouldn’t be too happy to have me in their house and would probably throw me out on my ass, especially when I decided to quiz them on my dear old Pippa. And Max, well, I had a bad feeling about him. I didn’t understand how it was even possible that the giant ginger king was there, in Portland, in their house, meddling in what used to be my affairs. After everything that he and I had been through, this just reeked of sabotage.
It was raining steadily and dark as fuck outside when I turned the car onto Perry’s street. As much as I tried to tell myself that everything would be fine and that the plan would work, I was a nervous pervous. I was not only afraid of what was happening to Perry, afraid that I might fail in saving her, but I was afraid of her in general. Not of the thing that had apparently taken over her, but of her. Of what she’d think of me. Of the way she’d look at me.
Christ, I was in over my head and my head was over my heels. I was just a fucking tumbleweed in love with a constant breeze at my back. I slammed the car into park a few houses up from hers, and wished I had a whole packet of Nicorette that I could jam into my mouth.
Alas, I didn’t. So I settled for one—bite, bite, chew, then sent one last text to Ada and waited for five painful, agonizing minutes before I saw her lithe little form running down the street through the rain. She jumped in the passenger seat and slammed the door, her white blonde hair going all Debbie Harry on her.
“Hey,” I told her, twisting in my seat to get a better look at her. Maybe I should have been afraid of Ada instead of Perry. Though she was just fifteen, Ada looked years older at that moment, dark circles under her eyes, which were wide and flashing like blue hazard lights. She looked jacked up, angry and scared all rolled into one emo bundle. “Thanks for—”
Smack.
It wasn’t as hard as Rebecca’s slap and from the surprised look on Ada’s face, I could tell it was the first time she hit someone and meant it, but damn. The Palominos had some serious anger management issues. Or Dex Foray issues. Potatoes, potatoes.
I stretched out my jaw and shot her a wary look. “Well, I suppose I deserved that.”
“I thought about it and decided you’re still an asshole,” she snarled. Then smiled politely. “But thank you for coming.”
Oh man, what did I get myself into? Nope, didn’t matter. I’d walk over hot coals and a million teenage slaps if it meant getting to Perry.
“You’re probably going to get it worse from my dad,” she went on. Okay, make that a million teenage slaps and a punch from an angry Italian.
“Let’s try and prevent that from happening. Anyway, can you sneak me into her room?”
She shook her head. “Maximus is in there, thinking he’s taking care of her. He’s such a tool.”
I ground my teeth together, not appreciating the mental image of Perry strapped to a bed with Max taking “care” of her.
“Well, the flannel-coated * stealer won’t be taking care of her for much longer,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. She looked at me blankly. Perhaps she didn’t appreciate her sister being referred to as “*.” I cleared my throat. “I meant flannel-coated…ginger douche.”
She dipped her chin and said dryly, “Dude, the term is douchecanoe.”
She flung her door open and we ran down the street in the pouring rain. The Palominos’ large house loomed at the end of their driveway, the lights from the windows looking more like reptilian eyes than anything else. Warm and cozy? Nuh-uh. I could already tell that something was terribly wrong and I felt it in every part of my body. Evil? Yeah, I could believe evil lived in that house.
A movement at Perry’s window caught my eye—the silhouette of he-who-shall-not-be-named-except-in-insults-I-found-fitting. My fists clenched and I breathed out slowly through my nose. So many things were rushing through me—conflicting, dangerous feelings, it was no wonder Ada looked so torn and cracked out. My head and heart were already being done in and I hadn’t even been in the house yet.
We paused on the steps, Ada holding her finger to her mouth, as if I needed to be quiet. Maybe I was breathing through my nose rather loudly.
“Just stay behind me,” she whispered. “I think my parents are in their room.”
I nodded and she pushed the door open. I was immediately met with this…darkness. A malevolence, like a cancer in the air, that rushed through me, making me feel sick all over.
Ada gave me a look like she understood exactly what I was going through and I followed her in, walking as quietly as possible. I shrugged off my wet jacket, a droplet of water running down my neck.
It was strangely still inside, like some unseen life force inside had paused the second I walked in. It’s hard to explain, but since I was grasping for the impossible anyway, it was almost like there was a fuck-you-up energy in the house that was waiting in a hidden corner somewhere, ready to pounce.
“You feel it too?” she asked quietly, as we walked up the stairs, my eyes searching the dark hallway that led to even darker rooms.
I nodded. “Is it always like this?”
She shook her head. “I can feel it, all the time. But it’s never been so calm like this. It’s freaking me the fuck out.”
“Like it knows I’m here.”
We exchanged a worried glance and continued up the stairs, the blood pounding more loudly in my head the closer I got to the top.
Once there, I could see Perry’s room at the end, the door slightly ajar. I could hear his stupid drawl but couldn’t make out what he was saying. We walked to the door and Ada slowly pushed it open, casting me a furtive glance before doing so. As if she was trying to prepare me.
Maximus was standing in front of Perry, looking down at her. I couldn’t really see her body, but I could tell she was lying on the bed, immobile. A rope was wrapped around one leg and down around the bed post. I focused on her foot, her little toes, the fact that she was held down. I couldn’t even move. I could only listen as he went on, not noticing either me or Ada in the doorway.
“Just get through tonight,” he said in an overly cloying voice. “Things will turn around tomorrow.”
“And what will you do when the men in the white coats take me away?” Perry answered. I hadn’t heard her voice in so fucking long. I almost collapsed right there and then, her presence rolling through me, wanting to bring me to my knees like she had before. “What will you say then? Will you still ask me if I’m scared?”
She sounded so small, so afraid. It speared me.
“Wherever you end up, Perry, it’ll be for the best,” Maximus said. I couldn’t believe his fucking audacity. “They’ll make you new again. The doctors will help you. They’ll treat you. You’ll be given medicine and it’ll fix you. Those mental institutions have a bad rap, you know that. But they do more good than harm, especially for people like you. It may be scary at first, but you’ll be fixed. You’ll be as good as new.”
I couldn’t let this happen. He was full of absolute shit. What the fuck did he know about being diagnosed with a mental disorder? Nothing. Nothing.
But I did.
I cleared my throat, the anger boiling up. “Are you sure about that, Max?”
Maximus flinched, startled, and whipped his head toward me. His jaw came unhinged, his face pale with disbelief. That’s right, you red nutsack. Guess who’s here? Your worst nightmare.
Ada brushed past me and walked around the foot of the bed, her eyes on Perry, trying to give her fair warning for my appearance.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” he exclaimed, blinking hard as if I were an apparition. He’d be so lucky. A ghost wouldn’t kick his fucking ass the way I could.
But I couldn’t concentrate on him. He was only part of the problem. I was here because of Perry, and as he moved over, straightening up to look at me dead on, he revealed Perry on the bed behind him.
And my whole world stopped.
It barely even looked like her. I mean, it was her. Her beautiful, petite face that was so easy to cup in my hands, her long black hair cloaking her like a shield. Her breasts as they filled out her sweater, somehow even bigger than before. But her eyes didn’t look the same, her expression was shocked, just as shocked as I was, but something didn’t match up.
It didn’t matter though. Nothing mattered at that moment except for the fact that the love of my life was in emotional and physical pain, strapped to her own bed, very much like the animal that Ada had said she was. A million things passed between us—love, anger, regret, sorrow. They flew faster than anyone could see, in a language all our own, between my dark eyes and her dark eyes. No, that was it. Her eyes. They weren’t her eyes. They belonged to someone else. My god, what the fuck was going on here? What happened to her?
I snapped. I charged right up to the first person I could blame.
“What the fuck is this?” I yelled in Maximus’s face, throwing my arms around. “What are you doing to her?”
“What the fuck is this? What the fuck are you? Why are you here? You shouldn’t be here!” the Douchefucker yelled back, not backing down, as if he had the right to be mad and not me.
“You should thank your freckled ass that I’m here,” I sniped, coming closer. Did he think I was afraid of him, because I was about to show him how a real mentally deranged person behaved.
“Guys!” Ada yelled. She then looked at Perry nervously. “It’s okay, I invited him.”
“Why would you do a stupid thing like that?” Maximus said to her. Oh, I was so damn close to feeding him his own dick.
“Stupid?” Ada cried out, her hair flying. “I’m not going to sit back and let you tie my sister to her own bed, pretend you know what the hell is going on with her, and then cart her off to a hospital tomorrow when we all know she’s probably not going to be coming back!”