Page 66 of Boys Who Hunt
The filthy grin on his face pulls me back into the here and now. Standing, he drops a few hundred-dollar bills before I can even process what just happened. “Now clean. It. Up.”
CHAPTER 17
Ivy
Silas has walkedout of the room to answer a phone call, leaving me to myself. I don’t know when he’ll come back or if he’ll come back at all. Not that I care.
My hand slowly reaches across the floor, and I grasp the bills, crushing them in the palm of my hand. I hold them as I get up from the floor and tear the outfit from these thin bones. I cast everything aside and grab my own clothes, putting them back on before rubbing my face with the towel in his bathroom. I look at the girl in the mirror, the submissive girl I’ve been forced to become.
My fist lands on the glass, which cracks beneath my skin, and blood erupts from the crevices in my hand.
Dammit.
I let my rage overpower me.
I wash off the blood and exit the room. Luckily, Silas is nowhere to be seen.
I breathe out a sigh of relief as I head toward the stairs but stop in my tracks the second I come face-to-face with Max. “Ivy?”
The bewildered look on his face makes me rush past him.
“Wait!” he yells.
I run down as fast as I can, tucking the money into my pocket before I head out the front door.
“Ivy, please. What happened? You’re bleeding.” I can hear his footsteps behind me, but I ignore them.
“Did someone hurt you?”
Your friend.
“No.”
“Let me help you,” he says.
But when he nearly catches up with me, I turn around and say, “I thought I made myself very clear last time that I don’t trust you.”
His lips curl. “But …” He holds up a bag of noodles. “I have food. Wanna share?”
I make a face. “You really don’t understand, do you?” Food will never fix this. Food can’t prevent me from unraveling. “Your friends are destroying me. You think food will make it okay?”
“No, but …”
I sigh out loud and turn around. “I’m not hungry. Now, please go away. I want to be alone.”
Finally, he doesn’t follow me anymore, but my heart still aches as I leave to grab my bike. He’s so eager to please that it’s hard to deny him, but he’s part of that society, part of that deranged friend group, and I can’t trust any of them, no matter how nice they pretend to be.
What if it’s all a ruse? A way to get me to spill the beans? He tricked me once before with that money. What’s to say he won’t do it again?
As I bike, I pause momentarily near The Shack.
Should I still try to spend the night there instead of at home?
Those fuckers already have me in their pocket. It’s not like hiding out is any use.
But what if they still end up following me home?
I swallow back the nerves.