In Between the Lines

Chapter 26: Everything

All words abandoned my head as I met those eyes and found them boiling over with rage, unearthly rage and—panic. Hysteria. His breaths came out in short gasps, but he stepped forward slowly, carefully. As if he knew I needed the minute to collect myself. To grasp that he was here, really here. At my house. 

But even with the moment to compose myself, I still wasn't ready for the words that came out of his mouth.

"Did he hurt you."

I brought a hand up to my throat, feeling my heart hammer there. "Dez—"

"Did that fucker hurt you." He stepped closer, his voice charged with a fury that I'd yet to see. Not anger but something far worse. Something darker.

I couldn't look him in the eye. "Not in the way you're thinking."

"Well you better explain in what way, Peacock, because my head is exploding with a thousand different scenarios right now." Dez gritted his teeth, stopping when he reached the threshold of my door. A part of me still couldn't believe that he was here, standing in front of my house.

"I need to hear it from your account," he said, "Not from NBC or CNN or some other news site. I need to hear it from you."

I looked up at him, at the carnage tearing through his face, and I had to remind myself how to breathe. Questions—yes, I had so many of them for him too. But with the way his gaze was burning through me now, I knew those questions would have to wait.

So I stepped forward, shutting the door behind me before I took a seat on my front steps. 

I angled my head up at Dez. "Are you going to sit?"

He only crossed his arms and stared, waiting.

Alright then.

"Where would you like me to start?" I said.

"From the beginning. Who was he to you?"

I shut my eyes and braced myself before I forced the ugly words out of my mouth. Because whether I liked it or not, Dez knew the truth now—or at least, whatever the news articles were able to tell him of it.

"His name was Samuel Arbor," I started, fighting back a cringe. My fists clenched. The name brought back the face—the deranged green eyes, the straight white teeth wreathed by cracked lips and a smile so inhuman, it pillaged my dreams for months afterwards.

It brought back the memories of what he did. 

And of what he made me do.

"He's a year older than us," I went on, nails digging into my palms, "I'd only ever seen him in passing—sometimes in the halls, sometimes at parties, but other than that he was a total stranger. I bumped into him at school once, or—he bumped into me. He introduced himself as Sammy to me then, and I didn't think anything of it. There was something off about him. Something in the way he smiled, in the way he looked at me, but I just . . . I didn't know what it was. I knew in my gut something wasn't right, but because I couldn't pinpoint what it was, I just shrugged it off." My nails pressed in harder, but I welcomed the pain against my skin over the one in my chest.

Warm hands wrapped around mine, easing my nails from my palms as Dez laced his fingers in between my own. I looked up to find him sitting on the step beside me, his strong hands entwined in mine. There was still hell blazing in his eyes, but his touch was gentle, soothing. 

He glanced at the red marks on my palms before bringing them up to his lips, closing his eyes as he did so. His face hardened, as if he were the one who'd felt the pain of my grazes—and he didn't let go of me, didn't open his eyes as he whispered onto my skin, "What did he do to you."