Chapter 6—

"I can't do it Kathryn."

I breathe in a little before I reply.

"Where are you?"

Silence.

I check my phone to see if the line went dead. I see that the line is still intact.

"Where." I ask more definitively.

"The beach we used to go to."

"I'm there."

The wind rippled through our hair as I speeded down the highway at 120mph.

I don't ask questions. I don't glance sideways. I don't let my curiosity get the best of me. I know I'll get answers soon enough.

So I keep my cool. I stare straight ahead. And the silence envelops us both for a while. I think about the chaos we've left behind and I smirk at the prospect of search parties being dispatched. They, of course, would never find us.

"I'm in love with someone else."

And suddenly I feel as if I've been slapped across the face.

"What?!"

"I couldn't do it because I'm in love with someone else."

"Who?"

We simultaneously glance at each other before she turns away.

I hear her mutter something.

"Michelle."

She stares out her window and looks like she's in another world.

I begin to prepare to let my anger get the best of me when she starts talking.

"I thought I'd get over him. I thought if I married Tom that I'd be able to escape. Escape from giving myself to someone so completely. I was afraid then. I couldn't… I couldn't let myself lose control. So I made sure that he'd catch me in bed with his best friend. I wouldn't have been able to pull off breaking up with him. He would have made me look in his eyes and say that I didn't want to be with him. And I wouldn't have been able to do that. God, I was so stupid Kathryn. I was stupid to believe that what I was doing had to be done to preserve my independence, my freedom."

She pauses. I could feel her eyes on me all of a sudden. I could see that the air had tensioned around us.

"I broke him. And in the process, I broke myself."

I couldn't think of what to say. So I did the only thing I could think of, to get us as far away as possible from reality and pushed the car into the 200mph zone.

Once we arrived at the villa, Michelle walked forlornly to one of the rooms and locked herself in.

I turned on The Roots at full blast before I threw myself down on one of the couches in the living room.

The air felt different when I stepped into the wing. An unexplained chill went down my spine as I quietly moved towards the only door with light seeping through it. I delicately placed my ear on the oak wood.

"Did you think you would get away with what you did Abby?" I heard someone drawl with a hint of malice.

"Do what you will Anthony. But I will never be yours." I heard my Aunt Abby sternly reply.

Quick footsteps followed and I heard struggling on the other end of the door. I clasped my small hands over my mouth.

"YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MINE!!! Do you hear me Abby?!"

The next sounds I heard was clothes being ripped and a controlled desperate cry from what I could only imagine as my aunt. I was at a lost at this point. I wanted to help. But I saw this Anthony asshole at the ball earlier and knew he could overpower me in all situations I could imagine in saving my aunt.

The cries grew louder after a few minutes and I stayed rooted to my spot. Suddenly a hand found their way across my waist and I instantly jumped at the surprise.

Sebastian was looking at me through eyes I couldn't interpret and pulled my body flush against his.

"There's nothing we can do Kathryn. We have to run." He whispered into my left ear before letting me go and taking hold of my hand.

He starts to walk away and I take one last glance at the door that separated me from my aunt. The aunt that taught me to hope for the best in people, how to tie my shoelaces correctly, the one that held me while I cried in her arms after fights with my god-awful mother. She was being taken away from me and I suddenly started feeling the innocence left me in me being taken away as well.

Sebastian tugged me away as the sound of screaming started dying down.

Vengeance is mine.

My eyes open then. And I remember the satisfaction of accomplishing my task of castrating Anthony. His cries. The blood. How he could be barely called a human being afterwards. But even after I destroyed him, the hole in my heart was never repaired. My aunt was still dead. And no amount of pain and suffering could ever remedy that.

Night had fallen by the time I had awakened. The music had stopped. And I let the silence wash over me.

Then

My phone started ringing.

I didn't bother looking at the caller id before I flipped it open.

"What?!"

"Kathryn, where the fuck are you?! I've called your phone a million times. Michelle's gone missing and Erik's been driving like a maniac through miles and miles of countryside and I have no idea where he's driving to. He refuses to stop…"

I decide to cut him off and ask him the only thing I was interested in.

"Will I be given access to your journal if I tell you where I am?"

I can hear his frustration and the low growl he gives.

"I take that as a no. Then no, Valmont. Fuck off."

I hear him protesting in the background when I click off the phone and turn the thing off.

I was slightly startled when I heard Michelle start speaking from somewhere in the room.

"You know, you shouldn't be so hard on Sebastian. There are things in his journal that you wouldn't be too pleased to read."

I turned my head in the direction towards where her voice came from and saw that she was lying on the carpet staring up at the ceiling.

"How long have you been there?"

"Since sundown."

"I take it that you've seen his journal then."

"No. I just know what's in it after he relayed some of it to me in different periods of time. Times when he found himself completely lost and frustrated."

"I need him to let me in first before I let him in. Because once I let him completely in, there's no turning back. I won't be able to go back. And I need to know that we won't break each other. Like what happened between you and this other guy you won't tell me the identity of. I can't run anymore. And I need to know that Sebastian won't run."

I turn my head to the floor and we regard each other in the moment of vulnerability we're both in. She turns after a little bit and continues her examination of the ceiling.

"Erik. I ran from Erik."

And for the second time in a day, I felt another slap penetrating my cheek without any way I could've stopped it.

Summerlandlover: Thank you. And I love Kathryn in this too. Hope you enjoy this chapter.

S: There. An update. Now, please do not flashback in desunt. ;)