Page 61 of Last Rites

23

Penny

Ididn’t make it home.

Not without pulling away from Kit and retching into the grass.

Not without collapsing next to the puddle of vomit and burying my face in my hands.

Not without flinching when Kit reached for me, fighting when he tried to pull me up, causing a scene for everyone within eye and earshot.

My wrists hurt, my head ached, and my stomach burned with acid that I spat up until I was wrung out and wiped my sleeve across my snotty, bloody, tear-streaked cheeks.

And Kit stood there in silence with his back to the sun and his face cast in shadow.

People were staring. Whispering. He must have hated that. He didn’t like drawing attention, and certainly not this kind. Creating the sort of spectacle that got the rumor mill running.

I couldn’t bring myself to care or move or wonder if it would be better if Kit collapsed beside me, or if realizing he was as beaten as I was in that moment would break me once and for all.

Merrick would have killed me. Without poison. Without proxy. He held the knife, and he would have ended my life with it.

And he wasn’t sad. Not the least bit remorseful.

More than that, he hadn’t even looked at me while he was preparing to do it. Hadn’t said a word. Like I was so unimportant I didn’t even merit a parting comment. No goodbye or good riddance. He was more concerned with spiting Kit than he was with ending my existence. I’d become a pawn, less than a person. The liability that Kit always believed I would be. A tool being implemented against my will.

I hated it.

The shift from wretched sorrow to anger finally got me moving. I was still teary and sniffling, still cringing through the throb in my skull with every sob. But I finally accepted Kit’s hand up, and I walked.

Kit followed, as quiet as before, and vacant. He did that sometimes: retreated into his mind and got lost there. He left me alone, and I knew he didn’t mean to. I was just one more thing he couldn’t handle right then. Not in the wake of so much tragedy.

So, I kept walking.

Up the hill and back to our little house, I returned to the place that had once been so cozy and filled with love. Now it felt like a cage. A pen for animals awaiting slaughter. And I entered willingly into it because I had nowhere else to go.

Kit came in behind me. He pushed the door shut, then leaned against it while I kept moving, though with the walls now boxing me in, my purposeful strides took the shape of a circle, round and round the room as though I could stir up the very air.

After several minutes, though, all I’d stirred up was dust and⁠—

“Penny?” Kit’s voice cut through the clutter in my head.

I froze mid-step, irritation burning through me. “What is it, Kit?”

His eyes were red but not wet. Like he’d wrung himself dry long ago and had nothing left. When he spoke, his voice came quiet, hoarse. “Was it worth it? If we die?”

I wanted to snap at him. To tell him not to ask me that, not when I could feel the answer pressing against my ribs like a knife. Instead, I grunted, “I don’t know.”

But I did know.

No.

It wasn’t worth it to come here and find out all the ugly truths about Merrick and what he’d done to my father, to my mother and sister, what he was willing to do to me.

It wasn’t worth it to suffer and ultimately fail.

Merrick said it. He’d bragged. We hadn’t stopped anything—only stalled it.

And it wasn’t worth it at all.