Sorrow (Cape Frost #1)

33

Hayes

She looks like she’s five seconds away from either screaming bloody murder or running away to hide. She’s covered in blood, eyes frozen wide like none of this has quite settled into her brain yet, and the bruises on her neck make me want to kill every single one of them again.

Especially because I didn’t get to kill them all this time.

No. My beautiful hurricane never needed a hero, because this was inside of her all along.

She’s a survivor.

With my hands raised like I’m approaching a feral animal, I slowly take a step toward her. “Hey, baby. Are you with me?”

For a moment I’m worried she’s going to remember all the times I made her life a living hell and slit my throat next, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I still need to hold her.

The knife in her hand glints in the low light, making me pause. “Stop. Just stop,” she rushes out. “What the f—? What the fuck just happened?”

“You lived,” I say simply. “Everything else was just collateral. They came to take you from this world, and you fought them. You survived them.”

Finally, the music stops. The battery in my speaker must’ve finally died. The sudden silence makes her jerk, bloody knife twitching. “I shouldn’t have had to. I told you. I told you both to just turn them in, and what— what the fuck? Do you have any idea how long it’s gonna take to get the blood out?”

The almost desperate pitch of her voice tips me off that she’s not talking about the carpet. She’s talking about her. Her heart, her mind, her soul. Her hands. She was forced to take their lives because we did nothing.

Fuck.

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know exactly which part I’m talking about, but I wish I could fix it all. “I don’t know why they came tonight, but we had a plan. ”

Not a good one, but who am I to tell Boo how to handle his vendetta?

“It’s just — you’re just —” She cuts herself off with a bloodcurdling, angry scream, spinning and hurling that knife against the garage door.

It bounces off and hits the floor.

“Fuck!” she screams, catching sight of the mess she made of Holt. He’s so bloody I can’t tell exactly what she did to him, but it’s enough to make her double over and throw up all over his body.

Jesus. Now I know why they say to never drive a woman crazy. I think I’m scared of her.

Regardless, I move in and hold her hair back now that the knife is out of her grasp. “Breathe for me, baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Nothing about this is okay,” she gasps, standing up and gripping my shirt to keep herself steady. Her eyes are still locked on Holt. “At least the fucker smells better now.”

A shocked laugh escapes me as I pull her in. “I want to kiss you so bad right now. Why’d you have to puke?”

“You know that really gross feeling when you gauge someone’s eyes out of their head?”

“Now you’ re just turning me on,” I tease, realizing how fucked up we must seem to be able to joke in a time like this. Or maybe we just are fucked up... maybe we don’t care.

I carry her to the room and help her brush her teeth and wash the blood off her hands, but I don’t have an opportunity to give her a shower before the front door flies open and I hear Boo yelling out her name.

“Samara!” There’s so much broken fear in that one word that we both run out to the living room and find him and Reeve frozen in place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stark-white face in person, but tweedle dee and tweedle dumb here have accomplished it. I won’t hold it against them this time though. My poor grandmother’s house looks like it’s an active set for a Tarantino movie, and all that’s missing are the feet for his fetish.

Glancing down, I see that my girl has that covered for him, and I have to bite back a laugh.

Not the time.

Reeve looks around with his nose turned up. “What the fuck happened here?”

Who invited this prick to the murder party? It sure as hell wasn’t me, and now I’m wondering if I’ll have to kill another person before the night is through because we can’t have any witnesses to this. “Why the fuck is he here, Boo?”

“Three of them, seemed logical to have three of us,” he mutters, stepping around me to follow the trail of blood into the hallway. For a solid thirty seconds, he just blinks at the bodies and breathes like he’s never had any oxygen in his lungs before. “Looks like all it took was one, though. How’d you take on all of them by yourself?”

“Good question.” I turn toward his sister who still has blood everywhere but her hands. “Tell him about the eyeballs.”

“Samara?” Boo’s voice sounds far away, it’s so quiet, so fearful. “You did this?”

“Part of it,” she shrugs. “Most of it. Hayes finished Ricky off, but I did all the stabbing. Luckily for you, Hayes likes blood play so we had a set of really sharp knives just sitting there on the nightstand. Otherwise, your little quest for revenge would’ve ended very differently.”

The words come out so matter-of-factly it’s hard to get mad at her for spilling our secret, especially when Boo drops to his knees.

“Sam, I’m so sorry. Fuck. It was never meant to end like this. ”

“It was always going to end like this, you idiot. The moment you refused to turn them in, whether it was to save me or not, you wrote the ending of this story. I just finished it early.”

I feel bad for the guy, but I also know this is something they need to hash out. Nothing she said was wrong, I just also understand his reasons for keeping most of this off the books. Deep down, he knew one side wasn’t going to survive. “I didn’t even hear anything because of my music.” I’ll never forgive myself for it, but I can’t help but send a thank you out into the universe for our survival. “She took care of all of them on her own, I just finished Ricky off before he could bleed out from what she did to him.”

“Wait, I lied,” she rushes out. “We lied. He didn’t kill anyone, it was all me. So arrest me, not him.”

“Arrest you?” Boo asks. “Why the fuck would I arrest you? They broke in here, not the other way around. It’s self-defense.”

I’m still staring at her completely flabbergasted at the fact that she would take the rap for what happened here. For me .

I’ve never been worth more than a second glance, and yet this woman would go to prison so I could be free. “Samara, I love you.”

I realize after I blurt that out that everyone else has already moved on, and my words cut them all into silence.

All I see is her though.

“You what?”

“I love you,” I repeat, completely ignoring the others like they’re invisible. “I didn’t mean to, but I fell in love with you.”

“Is this really the time for this?”

I frown at Reeve’s irritating whisper, but I refuse to take my gaze off her. Her expression is changing by the second — angry, confused, sad — everything negative I see on her face only breaks my heart... until she speaks.

“I love you too, you moron. I can’t believe this is the story we’ll tell our fucking grandkids one day, but I love you too. I think I have for a while.”

Suddenly, I don’t feel broken anymore. Those jagged edges I’ve lived with all my life are slowly fusing together because of her. “You want kids with me?”

“Okay, this really isn’t the fucking time.” He isn’t whispering anymore, and I turn my attention toward Boo’s backup best friend as he continues. “In case you forgot, there are dead bodies bleeding on your floor, and you’re standing in the room with a cop still in uniform. Figure out your next move and talk about making babies later.”

“The door is right fucking there, Reeve. No one asked for your help.”

One look at Boo says that’s not at all correct, and the fucker knows everything that’s been going on already. “Guess again, dumbass.”

Yeah, I’m definitely going to kill someone else.

I step forward to do just that, only stopping when Samara steps in between us. “He’s right. He might be a dick, but he’s right. We have to make sure we’re all on the same page and then Boo needs to call this in.”

“Do you still want to leave, Samara?”

It isn’t until the question leaves my lips that I realize I meant it. I’d actually leave with her.

She pauses, exhaling hard. “I’m sorry, Hayes. I wish I could say I’d stay for you, but yes. I never want to see this fucking town again.”

“Then let’s go,” I rush out. “We’ll deal with the bodies, clean up the evidence, and leave. ”

“I vote we torch the place. I can make it look like an accident, but you can’t pack too much if that’s the case.”

Finally Reeve isn’t a waste of space.

I meet her gaze to see her reaction, and it’s the first real light I’ve seen in her eyes since before I decided to do some late-night work. “I don’t have much to begin with. I lost everything to a fire once before, why not one more time?”

Boo holds up his hands. “Wait, wait. We can’t just leave, do you know how suspicious that would be?”

“Not you,” Samara says roughly. “You’re staying here to fucking cover for us. You got us into this mess, now you’re gonna stay and get us out.”

I shrug because none of us have an argument for that, Boo especially. “Anyway, can you torch it after we’re in the wind?”

I don’t really want to see it burn, but if she does, I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever she needs.

“We’ll handle it,” Boo promises. “Just take what you need and leave your phones here, okay? Get new ones wherever you end up. I’m gonna have a fucking field day trying to explain five missing people.”

“Good thing most of those people have a lot of enemies. ”

Silence spreads as all four of us let the truth sink in. Nothing will ever be the same again — Samara will be irrevocably changed, I’m losing my home, Boo’s in for a wild ride trying to make it go away, and Reeve... fuck that guy. No one invited him.

“So what do we do with the bodies?” Samara cuts in. “Leave them here to burn, or bury them?”

Boo huffs. “Neither. We load them up in the Silverado and drop them in Bleak River where they belong. God only knows how many people they put there themselves, and we can’t risk burying them. If they demo the remains of the house once it burns, they could find them. And bones don’t burn like this.”

“I can make a fire hot enough to burn bones, but it’d be obvious at that point that it was arson. Not worth the risk.”

He’s lucky he’s actually being helpful right now. “So it’s settled? They’ll rest with their victims?”

When no one argues, I meet each of their gazes and then move in to grab Samara. “I’m going to clean her up and then we’ll deal with the bodies.”

I don’t want her to have to carry any more of this mess.