Page 217 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter
“Sure,” Sydney’s faint reply comes.
He sits and faces her.
I lean on the counter. It’s like a movie. A really bad movie. Actually, it could be the opening to a porno… “I’m sorry I pretended to be someone else, let’s bang.” Cut to a shot of Sydney choking on cock… I’d drop dead if those words left Penn’s mouth, though.
You know what? It’s best not to jinx it, otherwise the cullero might actually try to fuck her in this condition.
“Everything we talked about was true,” he says. “I swear to you.”
Her expression is closed off, but when her gaze drops to her lap, she says, “Tell me a lie.”
“I’m in love with you.”
I choke.
“If you want to run away from this fucked-up town, leave the trauma behind, I’ll go with you. I’d follow you anywhere. If…” He pauses. “If you don’t want to pick between us, I think I understand that, too. I would even accept it. For you. Because I fell in love with you between texts and actions, and I don’t know what I’d do if you couldn’t forgive me.”
Wow.
He pulls something from his pocket. “I put this around your neck without asking. Carter took it off after I hurt you, betrayed you… but now, I hope that you’d do me the honor of choosing it.”
That freaking necklace. The gold one with the pendant of the goalie mask and the snake. I admit, I didn’t realize Carter was the one who’d removed it.
Sydney wipes at her cheeks, even though I don’t think she’s actually crying. She nods and leans forward, sweeping her hair aside for him to put it on. She continues to pick at the blanket on her lap, tugging a loose string.
“I love you, too,” she whispers, when his head is bent next to hers.
The words do an odd thing to me.
Pain?
I’m moving before I can register doing so, slipping out the door without a word.
How did he get there with her? Seemingly so fast?
Against my better judgment, I walk home and retrieve my motorcycle from the garage. It’s not supposed to snow until tomorrow, and the roads are dry. I tug on my leather jacket painfully slow. It hugs my ribcage when I zip it, and although it hurts initially, it actually kind of feels better. More support.
Helmet on, I ride out and head for the warehouse.
Carter is there, his car parked in front of one of the garage doors. I park beside him and enter through the side door. I stride through the empty, silent warehouse, and try not to marvel at the fact that so much good and horrifying things happened here. The good memories are layered under the bad, and nothing is left untainted.
There’s a pool of blood soaked into the concrete where Bear’s brother was shot, near where the fighting ring is still drawn in chalk. Parts of it have been worn away by feet and time, but no one has bothered to redraw it. I pass it and go to the offices, the only rooms in the warehouse that are heated to livable temperatures.
Which makes it all the more disgusting that they kept Sydney in the storage room. Without heat, without natural light.
I open the door and stroll inside.
Carter glances over his shoulder at me, frowning. He’s got a computer in front of him, a split security feed on the screen. One shows the outside of the door I walked through moments ago, with a view of his car and my bike. The other shows Bear.
He’s in the manager’s office, handcuffed to the radiator. A bit of a nasty trick, seeing as how it gets hot as fuck when the heat kicks on. As an added bonus, he’s got the mask he terrorized Sydney with duct taped to his face, wrapped around his head and over the eyeholes.
I think Penn came up with that one.
“Has he said anything?” I sit beside Carter, then stand again. The door to the manager’s office is right there. We’ve been speaking in low tones in case our voices carry, and nothing is different now. “Has he… done anything?”
Carter drums his fingers on the desk. “Nope. Well, he whimpered for his mommy, but that’s about it.”
I grit my teeth.