“You just said shit in front of his mom too.” He slapped him back, and Trig hit him in the back of the head.

“You just f**king said it again,” Trig snapped, and Ella got lost in a fit of giggles.

“All right, boys. This is a hospital.” The nurse gave them a stern look with her fists on her hips. The both mumbled apologies as she shook her head. “Let’s let Mr. Bentley sleep. He needs his rest.”

I gripped Ella’s hand so she wouldn’t go as the others filed out of the room.

“You know how they say when you are close to death, your life flashes before your eyes?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not true. All I saw was my future. All I saw was you and Macie. I won’t ever put that in jeopardy again. I promise.”

Monster

Epilogue—Rellik

Monster: Ryder “Rellik” Bentley

It had been two years since I was shot. The wound had healed long ago, leaving behind a small scar that was a constant reminder of the moment Ella told me she loved me for the first time. The other events of that day faded into the background, letting my past remain where it belonged. Coach was dead, and Bryce committed suicide after hearing that his father had been killed and the police were looking for him.

* *

I’d waited months for this moment and as I watched Bryce ascend the stairs into his shitty apartment, I knew I’d finally be able to put the past behind me.

I crossed the desolate street under the cloak of night, griping my pocket knife tightly in my hand. My ribs ached as I jogged, but the rush of adrenaline made it bearable. Nothing was going to stop me from ridding the world of the one last monster that haunted Ella’s dreams.

I’d been watching Bryce for several weeks, letting my body continue to heal. I couldn’t wait any longer. As I reached the front of the run-down building, I slipped inside, my eyes dancing up the stairwell toward the sound of his boots stomping heavily above me.

I grinned as I gripped the banister and followed after him, taking three steps at a time. As I reached the second floor, he was putting the key into the lock of his door. Glancing over his shoulder, his face went pale when our eyes connected. My hand holding the knife went over my rips as I struggled to slow my breathing and alleviate some of the pressure in my chest.

“You’re not an easy man to find,” I walked slowly toward him as he fumbled with the keys, desperate to get inside.

As he pushed the door open, I chuckled. I needed this to happen inside, away from any possible witnesses that may come out of their apartments. At two in the morning, the odds were slim, but I wasn’t going to be reckless. I had too much to live for now.

I slammed my palm against the wooden door, the thud echoing in the empty stairwell as I stopped it from slamming closed.

Bryce ran for what I assumed was a weapon as I stepped inside and glanced around the sad, pathetic excuse for a home.

“I’ll call the f**king cops,” He yelled from another room as I closed the apartment door behind me.

“Not a smart move for a man on the run.” I tapped my finger on the mouse pad of his laptop and the screen lit up. The desktop background picture was of a girl who looked like Ella, but a little bustier and in obvious pain as her naked, bruised body was tied to an unmade bed.

“You’ve been keeping yourself busy. I guess that’s one way to cope with the death of your father,” shaking my head I walked through the living room and toward the sound of things being thrown around.

“What is it you want, man?” Bryce’s voice wavered as he stepped from one of the rooms, holding a bat beside his head, poised to swing. “I have a little money. Not much. But I can give you anything you want.”

“I want you dead.” I squeezed the pocket knife, the blade not extended from the handle. “But luckily for you, I’ve promised Ella I wouldn’t kill anyone else.”

Bryce sighed, his lips quirking up in a smile. He was hopeful and it made my palm itch with the need to cut the smirk from his face. “You’re still going to die, Bryce. You’re just going to do it yourself. You made Katie feel helpless. She felt like she had no other way to escape you. That’s how you’re going to feel.” I stepped closer to him and he readjusted his grip on the bat but I knew he was scared to swing. Bruce liked to pick on helpless girls, not grown men who could knock him down a peg or two. “You destroyed Ella’s ability to trust and f**ked up her perception of what a man should be. I mean, look at me, Bryce. She f**king loves me and I can’t f**king wait to watch you bleed out. How f**ked up is that? Not that I’m complaining. I’d probably be dead right now if it weren’t for her.”

“You should thank me then,” Bryce took a small step backwards as he spoke. My eyes narrowed as I clenched my jaw, biting back the urge to yell.

“Thank you?” I stepped forward, trying desperately to keep calm.

“So I f**king hurt her. So what? Look at you. You f**king kill people. You killed my dad,” His chin quivered like a f**king child and it almost made me feel sorry for him. Almost.

“You are the reason Katie is dead. Ella was dead inside after what you did to her. I brought her back to life. I’m going to make this right.”

“Listen to yourself. You think I’m a monster but what you do is okay? You and I are the same.” His voice rose as he grew desperate for me to understand. But I was beyond talking, growing tired of playing with my food, so to speak.

I unfolded the blade of the knife from the handle, looking down at my reflection in the metal. “You and I are nothing alike.” I shook my head as I pressed the pad of my index finger against the point. There was a noise from the living room and he looked past me, his eyebrows drawn together.

“That’s my man, Trig. He’s f**king amazing when it comes to technology. Right now he is pulling all of your twisted, f**ked up kiddie  p**n  off your hard drive.”

“No! I’ll delete it all. I won’t touch another girl ever. I promise,” Bryce’s eyes glossed over with tears.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and held it up for him to see. “When I send a message to my boy Phantom, he’s going to call the cops from a burner cell. He’s going to tell them his name is Bryce Alexander and you couldn’t live with what you’d done any longer. All the evidence they need will be here, along with your body.”

“No,” he shook his head, his eyes wide. “Janel knows I’d never kill myself.” The bat lowered to his side as he tried to think of a way to outsmart me.

“Like she knows you like to f**k little girls?” I stepped forward again, leaving only a few feet between us. If he swung, he had a good chance at hitting me.

“That’s why my other friend, a crazy ass**le by the name of Hangman is sitting outside of your step-mother’s house right now as she drowns herself in tequila, wondering where her life went wrong.” I hit the speed dial and Hangman picked up as I clicked the speaker phone button.

“You want me to put this old bitch out of her misery?” Hangman sounded a little too enthusiastic for his part in the plan.

I eyed Bryce as I thought it over. His shoulder’s slumped and shook as his past finally caught up with him.

“It’s not her fault. It’s none of their faults,” he cried and it made me physically ill to see a grown man reduced to such a pathetic sobbing mess.

“Not yet, Hang. I think Bryce is willing to play ball,” I smirked as I looked down at his bat that he let slip from his fingers, clattering loudly off the wooden laminate floor. He ran his palm over his face, trying desperately to calm himself.

I slipped my cell into my back pocket and used my shirt to wipe my fingerprints from the knife before dropping it to the floor and kicking it toward him. He looked at me in confusion, hesitating before bending down to pick it up.

“You have two minutes to make your peace with God and beg for his forgiveness, because you won’t be getting mine.” My eyes narrowed as another sob wracked his large frame. “Remember to cut vertically. We wouldn’t want you living long enough to hurt anyone else.”

He dropped to his knees. The monster that terrorized so many was reduced to a f**king baby, begging for mercy. His words were incoherent as he pressed the blade to one of his wrists. As blood sprang from around the wound I pulled my phone back out of my pocket and called Hangman. “It’s begun.” I slid it back into my jeans and sank down to eye level, wanting my face to be the last thing he saw before he faded out into nothingness.

“Don’t be a pu**y. Press harder. If I have to do it for you, I won’t be gentle. I’ve heard all about the joy you get from inflicting pain,” I watched the blade sink lower as he dragged it up his wrists a few inches. “Now the other.”

Trig stepped beside me and I glanced up at him. He held a bottle of aspirin and a beer. “Trig brought you some parting gifts.” I took the pills from his hand and dumped a pile into my palm while trigger cracked open the beer. “Take these and wash it down with this. It will make this go a little faster, not that I want this to be easier for you. I just don’t want to have to look at your face for any longer than necessary.”

“For the pain?” Bryce held out his bloodied palm as I dumped the pills into his hand. He dropped them into his outh and washed it down greedily with the beer. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. These will thin your blood and make you die faster,” I laughed as I shook my head. “Now finish cutting the other wrist.”

Bryce’s tears were back, running down his face. He wiped them away in an attempt to hide his fear but he only managed to smear blood across his face.

“I’ll be out here reviewing the evidence,” Trig patted me on the shoulder and disappeared toward the living room.

I sank down onto the floor and rested my back against the hallway wall. As the knife pressed into Bryce’s wrist, blood poured from the wound. “You hit an artery. Thank f**king God.” I ran my hand through my hair, banging the back of my head off the wall, lightly.

“She wrote about you all the time, you know,” His voice was like nails on a chalkboard, “in her diary.”

“She had a diary?” My eyes cut to Bryce who was sobbing in his pool of blood. “Dad burned it after she died.”

“Now why would he burn her diary?” I wanted to punch him in the mouth, make him choke on his teeth so he couldn’t talk, but it was important that this looked like a suicide.

He shook his head, his cries growing louder and I knew it was because she had confessed what he’d done.

“How many more girls were there?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer.

“None, I swear.” Bryce wiped his hand under his nose, his white shirt now vibrant red. He leaned his head against the wall.

“That computer background isn’t Ella or Katie and I know all about the timeshare.”

“That f**king bitch can’t keep her mouth shut,” he mumbled and I began to clench and unclench my fists as every muscle in my body begged to hit him.

“Don’t talk about Ella like that or I will make sure your death is as slow and as painful as humanly possible. I’ll bury your body in a shallow ditch if you f**king piss me off.”

He sighed, his body sagging against the wall opposite of mine, his words slurring. “Five,” he confessed as he looked down at his bloodied arms before his eyes met mine and a hint of a smile played on his lips. “But Ella was my favorite.”

“Shut the f**k up, Bryce.”

“When she was pregnant, she would cry and beg for me not to hurt that baby. My baby. So I would force her to lie on her stomach.”

Next thing I remember I was on my back, several feet from Bryce as Phantom stood over me, his head shaking as Trigger pressed against my chest, my old wounds burning under my skin. My face was damp with tears as I thought of the suffering Ella endured at the hands of this monster.

“He wants you to kill him so he doesn’t have to suffer and you get caught. Think it through, Ryder.” It was the first time I could remember Phantom saying my name since we left Silver Lake. I took a few more ragged breathes before I nodded and Trig released his hold on me. I sat up, looking at the sad, bloodied excuse for a human before me. “Is that what you want, Bryce? Huh? Since we’re sharing secrets, I have a few of my own.”

“What’s that?” his head bobbed and his eyes were hooded as he struggled to focus on me. “You also will be implicated in the death of Ella’s dad. The night I shot him, your father’s whereabouts are accounted for, but his gun and you have no alibi. Ella and I will live long happy lives with our daughter Macie. No one will miss you. No one will cry over you.”

“You…,” Bryce mumbled. “You murdered her father?”

“No, ass**le. You did.” I smiled as his eyes closed and I pushed to my feet. He’s bleeding out pretty heavy now. It won’t be too much longer,” I tried not to think of how long Katie laid in the woods, suffering and alone. Without anything to thin her blood it could have taken hours for her to die. “It’s been about a half hour. Let’s finish this up so I can go home to my family.”

I walked around Trig and Phantom to the living room, sitting down on the couch as I waited for the life to finish draining from Bryce.

“It’s over. You want me to make the call to Hang?” Phantom was in front of me now, trying to pull me from my thoughts. “No. Let him rot,” I sneered and Phantom patted my shoulder as they walked around me toward the front door.

* *

Janel disappeared into a bottle of liquor and was forced to live after losing everyone. That was enough of a punishment for me and Ella.