Page 119 of Sticks and Stones (Shadow Valley U)

I’m wheezing, and there’s blood in my mouth, but I’mokay. And I try to will that toward her, so she knows. Those hazel eyes of hers are going distant.

“I’ll do it,” she whispers. “I just—”

“Just nothing,” her dad spits. “Every moment of inaction gets taken out on your precious boyfriend.”

I grit my teeth.

The big guy drags me back into the bathroom. Jessie tosses him the tape, and he re-secures me to the pipe.

“Get to work.” Jessie leaves.

The bigger guy stops just behind Wren, and he fucking sniffs the top of her head.

“Don’t fucking touch her,” I growl.

He laughs. “Or what? You’ll come over here and stop me?”

“Kerrigan!” Jessie hollers from outside.

I note his name. And the shiver of disgust that rolls down Wren’s back once he finally moves off. Without a doubt, I imagine he was the source of some of her nightmares.

The thought kills me. Because after this, how could she not go down that path again? How will the nightmares ever let her go?

There’s only one way this can end—and it has to be with Jessie Davis’s death.

* * *

I watch Wren make meth.

She does calculations in her head and carefully pours and mixes under a giant glass hood that I hadn’t really registered until now. But it comes down around the counter, protecting her—and I suppose me—from the fumes.

“Wren,” I whisper. My throat hurts.

She ignores me.

“Wren,” I try again.

Her head snaps toward me. “Shut up, Stone.”

I press my lips together.

For the past hour, her father or one of his goonies has periodically come in to check on Wren’s progress. When the big guy Kerrigan enters, Wren freezes up. And after he goes, she dashes away tears.

While I just clench my jaw and stay silent.

They’re smoking outside, the trailer door left open.

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispers.

Again. Like some sort of comfort—except, now I think she means it solely for me.

“I’m going to save you, Stone.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, baby.”

She ignores me.

I turn my attention back to my wrists. They’re raw, but I keep picking at the tape, trying to unravel it or at least rip it. I lean up and bite it, and itfinallytears a bit.