chapter 27: monster

"Stop the car."

"What? Why?" Willow asked in confusion, looking over at the girl who stared at her phone with her mouth slightly ajar, an unreadable expression on her face.

"I said stop the fucking car!" August screamed, her breath becoming heavy. She felt so many things at once, so many thoughts flooding her mind.

Willow widened her eyes at the girl's tone, never having heard her scream at her like that. She didn't know what was wrong, but she knew whatever it was was horrible by the inexplicable queasiness in her stomach. She slowed the mustang down and pulled over to the side of the road, putting the car in park and looking over at the girl with expectant eyes.

August swallowed, her eyes reading the text over and over again. Feelings of betrayal danced with feelings of anguish in the pit of her stomach, the rabbit in her chest going a hundred miles an hour. Suddenly, fear rose in her stomach. Willow was planning on killing her?

"August...?" Willow mumbled as the girl looked over at her with eyes so wide she thought they'd pop right out of her skull. She reached for her phone, taking it from August's limp hand that stayed frozen in the air. She read the text on the screen, her heart dropping in her stomach. She never told Darragh that she had changed her mind about killing August, as she had originally planned several days ago when she abducted her.

"So when were you gonna fucking kill me, huh?" August snapped, feeling tears well up in her eyes. She wanted to run away and cry, but the anger inside her begged her to find the answers it was so vehemently searching for. "Last night in my sleep? Were you gonna poison my hot chocolate this morning? Does the necklace have some sort of bomb in it, huh?" She angrily spoke through gritted teeth, salty tears finding their way down her beet-red face.

"August," Willow shakily began, turning towards the girl with her hands up. "I need you to please listen to me."

"Listen to you what, exactly? Lie to me? More than you already have?" She looked into Willow's green eyes that she no longer found comfort in.

"No, baby, I can exp—"

"Don't fucking call me that. I'm not your fucking baby," August spit, her features laced with anger.

Willow could feel her heart inside her chest shatter to a million pieces as she stared at the expression on August's face that she had never seen before. "August, listen to me. Literally, the whole reason I was taking you back to Ithaca today was to surprise you by letting you get the spade tattoo."

"Spade tattoo?" August asked with gritted teeth, not wanting to listen to a word Willow was saying.

"Yes. The spade tattoo." She slipped her hand behind her neck and lifted her hair, turning around to show August the tattoo on the back of her neck that read Blue Porcelain and had a black spade under it. August remembered seeing it first on the rooftop then at the party.

"How the fuck is this even relevant, Willow?!" August yelled, getting angrier each second.

"Because," Willow tried to hurriedly speak so August would hear her out before making any irrational decisions. "If you have the spade tattoo, that means you are a trusted and protected member of the gang. Not an active member like me or Darragh or Ronnie, but a protected member. Like Ronnie and Cornelia's wives. They both have the tattoo." She searched August's eyes for signs of believing her, and she felt relief when she did see August's face soften a little.

"But wait, how does that fucking explain Darragh asking if you had killed me yet?" August asked, her defensive walls that had gone down for a moment rising back up again.

"Because I haven't told Darragh yet that I was no longer planning on killing you. In fact, I really was gonna tell him tod—"

"No longer?" August softly interrupted her, only focusing on those two words.

Willow froze, remembering that she had told August she wasn't going to kill her. She opened her mouth to speak, but she could find no words.

August felt as if she was going to faint. "You told me that night at the diner that you weren't going to kill me," she whispered, looking down at the floorboards. "You told me in that cave in Utah that you had kidnapped me to protect me." Her lips quivered as she felt tears roll down her face. "But all along, you were planning on killing me?" Her voice broke as she turned to look at Willow.

Willow felt pangs of guilt shoot her in the chest like bullets with every tear that rolled down August's face. "No, not all along," she denied, running a hand through her hair. "J-Just...at first," she admitted, remembering the day in the cave when she had the gun raised to the back of August's head.

August felt her stomach twist into a painful knot as she grew ill. "When?" she whispered tonelessly, keeping her blank stare on the floor.

"When what?"

Swallowing, August said, "When were you going to kill me?"

Another few bullets of guilt shot through the woman, each one adding an empty spot in the now gaping hole in her chest. She licked her lips and looked down. "The cave," she mumbled, her eyelids pressing down with her words. She hated herself for what she had almost done, and she knew August would, too.

The words of Willow from that day rang in her head. To protect you, the woman had answered when she asked her why she had taken her to Utah. Now as she realized the woman had been lying, it seemed as if her whole world was crashing down upon her. She felt so incredibly stupid. She had believed that her abductor was trying to protect her. She had allowed a friendship between them to blossom and then blossom into something much more. She had let her abductor have sex with her. But August realized that nothing had ever "blossomed." She was simply deceived and used like a worthless sex doll.

"So what made you change your mind, huh?" she began, her leg shaking up and down as she snapped her head towards the woman who stared at her with pleading eyes. "The fact that you got to see my tits?"

"No!" Willow exclaimed, putting her hands in the air. "No, August!"

"Were you gonna kill me now? After having fucked me and got your couple of orgasms in?" August felt her cheeks grow hot at her own words. She felt embarrassed to have let the woman touch her and be so intimate with her the way she did. Her embarrassment grew into fury. "Or were you gonna tell me pretty little lies about how you love me and then literally stab me in the back afterwards? Were you gonna use your own knife? Or my dad's butcher knife? Were you gonna kill my fucking family too?! I fucking let you in my house—with my dad and my sister. I really fucking believed all your bullshit, you asshole!" August's tone grew to yelling as her face beamed red with rage.

"August, calm the fuck down! I changed my mind, obviously!" Willow yelled, becoming frustrated that August wouldn't listen to her. "I fucking fell in love with you, August. You really think I would've let you live if I hadn't have fallen in love with you, as much of a threat you are to my own safety and the safety of my men?"

"You're a liar," August muttered, quickly getting out of the car.

Willow tried to quickly press the lock button for all the car doors, but she wasn't fast enough as she already heard the door slam shut. "August!" she yelled, growing sick of having to deal with the girl's rage.

August was blind with anger as she opened the trunk of the Mustang, pulling her two bags out and then slamming it closed.

Willow stepped out of the car, feeling the cold air nip at her nose as she walked to the trunk. "August, stop!" she yelled, grabbing the bags that the girl was holding and trying to pry them from her.

"Let go!" August yelled, using all the strength in her body to keep the bags in her hands.

"August, you're not going anywhere! You are being stupid!" Willow yelled, her muscles in her arms flexing as she pulled hard on the bags, almost getting them as she saw August stumble forwards, but the girl regained her stance and pulled back just as hard.

"You're right, I am pretty stupid to believe anything you have ever said to me!" August yelled, feeling her throat burn as her vision blurred from her tears.

The woman's anger grew as she just wanted August to believe the truth she was telling her. The girl kept pulling on the bags, causing Willow's anger to fester. "Stop it!" the woman barked at the top of her lungs, her booming voice and exploding anger boosting her adrenaline and strength, causing for her one hard yank on the bags to send the smaller girl hurtling to the ground, falling forwards and hitting the pavement of the road with her head.

Willow immediately let go of the bags, hands shaking as she leaned down to the girl who laid face down on the pavement. "August!" she shrieked, turning the girl's body to see that there was already blood trickling from a wound on her forehead. "Oh my God," she breathed.

August thought she had passed out, but as she looked up at the teary-eyed woman crouching down in front of her, she ignored the pounding headache in her head and screamed, "Get off me! Get the fuck off me!" She kicked at the woman who stood up and backed away to avoid getting kicked, although she inwardly thought about how much she deserved it.

"August, you're hurt!" Willow yelled, seeing the blood drip off the girl's face and down onto the road.

"I wonder why!" she screamed back, her face almost as red as the blood pouring from her forehead.

Willow stayed silent, just standing there and not knowing what to do. She watched as blood trailed down the girl's face she had kissed over and over the night before. She watched tears pour out of her beautiful blue eyes and mix with the blood. Guilt wrapped like a noose around her neck and August's words only kicked the chair beneath her.

"Leave me alone!"

Her heart, once cold but melted and warmed by August's love which left it completely vulnerable without its icy wall, cracked and broke, falling into a heap of shards in her stomach that felt like they were slicing her intestines and causing her to bleed from the inside out.

"Go away!" August sobbed, holding her pounding head as the blood transferred to her hand. "Leave me alone!" she repeated.

Willow only stood there frozen, not being able to breathe or think or feel. Silent tears just rolled their way down her cheeks.

"I said go away!" August screamed so loud that the black crows in the field next to them all cawed and flew up into the air away from the huddle they were in in the tall, dead grass.

Willow did the only thing she felt she could do right at that very moment, the only thing that would make the girl happy—she turned around, got in her car, and left.

She didn't look in the rearview mirror—she didn't want to. She knew she would only be met with the girl she loved crumpled on the ground around her bags, crying from the pain Willow caused her both emotionally and physically. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel, tears blurring her vision. She couldn't see anything. She knew it would have been safe to pull over and get the tears out so she wouldn't wreck from her blurry vision, but she didn't care. In her mind, she deserved for the worst to happen to her.

Even though she really had fell absolutely, totally in love with the girl, she hadn't been honest with her. That day in the cave, she should've just told her that that was why she brought her there. Her plans to murder had truly turned into plans of protection for the girl, but she didn't go about it the right way. She knew that to August, all she looked like was a monster.

And maybe that's all that she was, after all. No love or kisses or kindness or hugs or warmth or French vanilla perfume could change that about her.

She was Willow, leader of the Blue Porcelain gang who killed people for a living. She had broken August in half the way she had broken nearly hundreds of people in half, except her mode of breaking was way worse this time. She had broken August emotionally.

She realized that was the only thing she was good at—breaking people. Because that's all she was, at the end of the day, whether August was holding her hand in the passenger seat or crumpled on the road screaming at her to go away—a monster.