Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (30)
“Just g-go to Target.”
“But I like DIY,” I reply with a shrug, setting my rose next to the others. “My fiancé—God, I hate that word—is moving in tomorrow and I wanted a bold statement piece so he doesn’t think he can just bring in some shitty bachelor pad furniture. And since I like to take a little trophy from every pedo shitbag I delete from this beautiful world, I figured two birds, one stone, you know? I need a coffee table, you’re a pedo shitbag—it’s kismet.”
“You have the wrong m-man,” Patrick begs as I open a new pot of glitter and start on a fresh rose.
“No, I don’t.”
“I never meant to hurt anyone.”
“Yes, you did.”
“If you let me go, I swear I’ll never go near another school again.”
“Well, at least we can agree on your last point. You’ll definitely never go near another school again.” With a faint, menacing smile, I lean into his enclosure and blow across the surface of the rose, dispensing a fine cloud of sparkling dust across his skin. “You’ll never lure another student. Never touch another child. Never steal another future. Never break another soul.” I hold Patrick’s eyes for a long moment, the gray-blue shade of his irises contrasting with the network of tiny red blood vessels that lace through the whites of his eyes. Not for the first time, I wish Sloane knew about this side of me. Her talent for removing her victims’ eyes is maybe a bit gross for my tastes, but there are some people who simply deserve to be relieved of their body parts, and this Patrick O’Neill is certainly a good candidate.
But as tempting as it might be to clue Sloane in on my hobby, one that was in fact inspired by her, it would also be unsafe. So I tell myself the same mantra I always repeat when the urge to confess rises:
The more Sloane knows, the more danger she’ll be in.
I take a deep inhalation of a fresh rose and the petals whisper against my skin, the scent almost strong enough to mask the fumes from the resin. For a little while, I just watch the epoxy ripple from the tap. A sense of calm washes over me, despite Patrick’s endless swears and begging. There’s a rightness to the sweet fragrance of the rose and the shimmer of gold. There’s beauty in terror when it sparks to life in dark souls.
My watch alarm goes off, cutting through my momentary peace. Eleven in the morning. Sloane will be ready to pick me up by one, and the wedding is at two sharp. And I’m truly hoping that this adventure in table-making will help calm me down, not just for my upcoming nuptials, but for facing Sloane. It kind of went down like a lead balloon when I told her two days after her own wedding that I was going to marry Lachlan Kane, and she’s been hounding me for details in the few days since then, details I’ve avoided sharing. But I guess it’s time to face the music, as they say.
“Well, Patrick, this has been fun and all,” I say as I spray the final rose and dust it with glitter to set it on the table with my other flowers that I’ll tie in a ribbon, “but I really have to get going. Big day and all. I want to look my best, you know? These overalls probably won’t cut it, even though I am marrying a certifiable asshat.”
Patrick’s never-ending pleas grow louder as I stand and dust off my overalls. “You can’t do this,” he says as he struggles to keep his head lifted above the viscous liquid that fills his box.
I smile as I turn the tap fully open on the barrel of epoxy and change songs on my playlist. The heavy beat pumps through the speakers mounted on the walls. “I can do this, actually,” I reply as I walk back toward Patrick’s head and grasp the metal handle of the cart his casket rests on. “And I will.”
Hands gripped around the cold steel, I push the cart forward. The caster wheels squeak as they spin on the polished concrete.
“P-please, I’m b-begging you,” Patrick sobs. His eyes bounce between me and the golden liquid that sloshes around his body as I roll him closer to the tap. It coats his legs. His hips. His lower abdomen. Veins protrude beneath the pale, sweat-slicked skin of his temples as we roll closer, inch by inch. “I’ll g-give you anything you w-want. Anything.”
“Mr. O’Neill. You probably should have figured it out by now.” I push the cart until the tap of the suspended barrel hovers just over the notch of his throat. His hammering pulse disappears beneath shimmering waves of resin. “I want things that no man can simply provide.”
With a final shove, the cart stops where his mouth lines up with the viscous stream. Patrick squeezes his eyes shut. Thrashes his head side to side. Sputters and spits, shooting spatters of resin against the plexiglass. He begs for help, for a God who will not answer.
“Don’t bother asking Him for help,” I say as I pull on my long leather work gloves and slip my hands into the pool. Palms pressed against his temples, I hold his head steady beneath the stream. “He never answered me either.”
Patrick fights and shakes and holds his breath until he can’t anymore. Air escapes his lungs in a rush. There’s only liquid waiting to fill his mouth on the next inhale.
I know he can’t hear me beneath the resin as I list the names of every girl I know he harmed. But I say them out loud anyway. I name every child he made into a survivor as his lungs seize in a rhythmic pulse. And when his body goes still, I pull my hands from beautiful swirls of gold and watch until his face and body disappear beneath the shimmering surface.