She shifts and it’s then that I really see her appearance. I gasp, my jaw dropping open painfully as her face becomes clearer.
“Oh Kristine,” I choke up and tears start falling down her face. Her battered, black, blue, and green face from all the old, semi-old and new bruises and wounds of a girl who was beat up badly, over and over as it seems.
She has a cut lip crusted with blood, a black eye closed shut, swollen and puffy, constantly made fresh by repeated assault. And the rest of her face, Jesus.
The last time I saw Kristine, she was pregnant and slightly showing but right now, her belly is swollen and round with child. She’s probably six or seven months along and she looks really bad.
“I look great, don’t I?” she spits angrily, but the sadness can’t be missed. “This must make you happy.” Happy? That she’s was beaten this badly, not only that but she’s pregnant! Who does that? “And anyway, it’s not like you look any better. In fact, you look horrible.”
I feel horrible but right now, it’s not about me.
“Who the hell did this to you?”
“Shane and his fucking brother,” she moans softly, tears running down her face so more. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Kristine cry, not in all the years I’ve known her. But then again, we’ve never been here, suffering at the hands of sick, twisted, disgusting men. God, my heart shatters for her. “Don’t look at me like that, Ice Queen! I don’t need your fucking pity.”
Something—a vivid memory—breaks through my consciousness at the familiarity of those words. I said those words to someone. I said them to Julian when he saw that I was cutting myself!
Julian…
My heart starts pounding harder against my ribs. My insides feel like they’re shrinking, twisting up, bringing an onslaught of a different kind of pain I wasn’t anticipating.
Where is Julian? Did my father get to him as well?
“I don’t pity you, Kristine,” I say sadly. “I just… no one deserves to be treated like this.”
“Why?” she spits. “You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Kristine.” I look up at her as I say that. I can only imagine how the pair of us looks. Vulnerable, in so much danger right now and the fact that we might not see tomorrow. “Despite what you and anyone else might think, including the incredible RACK, I’ve never hated you. In fact, I’ve always considered you a friend.”
She blinks at me with one eye. It would’ve been funny any other moment but this—this is too fucked up to even muster up half a smirk.
“Seriously, how hard did they hit your head?” she murmurs, looking confused.
“Pretty damn hard,” I groan low in my throat. “It’s like I have helicopter blades whirring up in there but even without that, I’d still say the same thing. When you were shitty to me and hated me for whatever reason that makes no sense to me, I never hated you.”
Warm drops of liquid fall on my face, she’s crying.
“Shit, stupid hormones.” She sniffles, wincing when she tries to wipe the tears away. “Well, I can’t say the same, Mia and my reasons for hating you were, well, petty.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I focus on what can actually help us.
“Kristine, we need to get out of here,” I whisper but she’s already shaking her head before I even finish talking.
“That’s close to impossible,” she says hurriedly. “The assholes have this place in some kind of lockdown, and they made sure that there’s only one way in and one way out.”
“Where are we?”
“Some eerie slaughterhouse type or maybe it’s an abandoned warehouse, but wherever we are, it’s definitely at the outskirts of Los Angeles,” Kristine whispers. “You know, the shitty outskirts with even shittier shit happening.”
“But—”
“Mia, we’re a long way from home.”
Oh God.
“Surely you’ve tried to call for help,” I ask, hope blooming in my chest.
“Yes, and I got beat up to within an inch of my life, Mia. I can’t risk it anymore,” she says, cradling her baby bump protectively, a sad note to her voice that unsettles me for some reason. I have a feeling she isn’t just talking about being shacked up in here either. “I don’t have a voice anymore.”
Those words cut deeper than ever. Not having a voice and looking the way she does, the way I feel… we’re really in trouble.
It’s clear that the abuse she suffered isn’t new and it sure isn’t just physical. There are wounds that go deeper than what I can see that have obviously broken this girl who used to be my best friend.
“How long, Kristine?” I ask softly.
“Longer than was necessary,” she whispers, and I close my eyes, the raw pain in her voice clear as day. “I’ve been subjected to this for a pretty long time.”
“How?” She chuckles, but it’s dead and flat, my chest aches. “Is it because of me?”
“You liked him, well, I thought you liked him. So, I was jealous of you and I thought I could get him from under you, just to spite you.”
“And the ‘him’ we’re talking about is…?”
“Shane.”
“Ah.” Figures.
“I thought you liked him but you… I have to hand it to you, Ice Queen, you didn’t even seem like you cared. You never flinched when I paraded myself all over him at school, hell you never looked twice or noticed how I practically fell into a monster’s lair. It was as if you were in your own world.”
I look away, thinking of the weeks that led to Nancy’s death and suddenly all I feel is shame and guilt.
“Kristine, I—”
“But then I soon realized you didn’t give a damn because you were now existing in a whole new world! A world that included the fucking amazing gods of Palos Verdes, the sexy Fitz brothers.”
My heart starts beating as melancholy and a wave of heavy sadness slam into me. I miss my boys. I want them all, at least to see their beautiful, perfectly chiseled faces and the eyes that captured my heart right from the start, just one more time. To see them and forgive past hurts because now, the future is highly uncertain.
“When?” I whisper. “When did you know?”
“The night of the race,” Kristine says. “Everyone saw that pissing off show Liam Fitz put out to fuck with you, but it was the way Julian handled you and the way you screamed when his car went up in flames… that bomb was meant for Julian. You knew that too because your reaction… it put you on their radar.”
I jerk up right, biting down on my bottom lip as pain screams at my body, but I need to hear this.
“What do you know?” I ask, tears welling up in my eyes. Kristine holds the answers I need, and it seems we’re currently alone. I don’t look at the huge warehouse full of rusty, old industrial equipment as I clutch the sheet to my body. Kristine must have taken this from the uncovered machines. “You have to tell me, Kristine, what do you know?”
“I really shouldn’t…”
“Kristine!”
“We don’t have any time. They’ll be back soon,” she says, her eyes wide with fear, but I’m not having it.