GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 74: MARBLE CAKE & HARSH TRUTHS

''Cause now I'm a warrior

Now I've got thicker skin

I'm a warrior

I'm stronger than I've ever been'

"Yes, I know it was bad, and I could have aimed somewhere not deadly, talked... But Douglas was a bad person. He was about to rape Angel, and I didn't know at the time, but she wasn't the first girl. He's raped many girls and always got away with it," I pleaded, trying to convince her as much as myself as the moment spun again and again before my eyes, at the tip of my fingers, and through my veins.

The adrenaline and shivers were as intense as that night. However, today, it wasn't a bang that froze it all.

It was two words, and they were as ear-piercing, heart-stopping, and deadly as a gunshot. "I know."

"You k-know?" I repeated numbly, unable to even blink my eyes to make sure I had imagined it.

I had imagined it; it was the only possibility because Daisy was supposed to tell me that I was a murderer, that I'd made a mistake, and that Douglas was an honor citizen and the gentleman every lady was dreaming of.

She wasn't supposed to know the monster he had been. The only people who knew were the ones who had witnessed from afar or too close–

"Daisy?" I leaned my head down, searching for her gaze and refusing to contemplate why she knew, refusing to see the obvious from her frozen stance to her eyes down as she was hiding again. "Daisy... please, look at me. You're scaring me."

Could it be called fear, though? Yes, there was this nagging dread in the pit of my stomach, but the shivers running through my body weren't out of fear, nor from the cold of her freezing hand as I reached out. It was from powerlessness, and each second of her silence was sending it deeper into my bones until I was paralyzed when she lifted her gaze to me.

There, I couldn't avoid the evident answer, and before she even opened her mouth, I saw it, the way she had frozen when Mom had mentioned Douglas during one of her visits; I felt it, the protectiveness with which she had taken Spencer's side to prove he was much better for me, and I heard it, Douglas's last words to me when he'd cornered me in that courtyard... 'You're more difficult than your sister.'

"I know because I was one of those girls... he raped." These words were indeed worse than a gunshot, and Daisy's whisper landed straight into my chest, a numbness spreading like a shiver from there until the tip of my finger, which seemed to be the only thing in my body moving, twitching in a trigger motion again and again.

Many times I'd asked myself what I would do if I could turn back time. Would I still pull the trigger? In that instant, in front of my sister's glimmering eyes, I had no doubt. I would do it again and again and again–

"It's okay. It was a long time ago." She softly stopped the movements of my hand with hers, offering me a small, reassuring, and polite smile that only tensed me more, and my lips could barely move to let out a single 'when?'.

"In senior year of high school, you know how I was always staying late to practice with the cheer team." Her gaze automatically went down again, though I didn't know if I hated that she was hiding from me again, or if I was thankful when the empty breath she took in and her trembling voice were already too heavy on my ribcage. "One day, I found myself alone, and he cornered me in the locker room..."