Never Better: A Dark Obsession Novel Read online

  Never Better

  A Dark Obsession Novel

  Charlotte Stein

  Never Better

  Copyright © 2017, Charlotte Stein

  Edited by Chris Allen-Riley

  Cover Art by Sweet and Spicy Designs

  Published by Charlotte Stein

  Released February 2017

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author, Charlotte Stein.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other Books by Charlotte

  Prologue

  Lydia knew immediately that they were in trouble. She could tell by the sounds the people downstairs were making—hissed whispers, shuffling boots, the tinkle of glass breaking. Quite clearly, it wasn’t the Hendersons returning early. Or workmen, come to collect something they’d forgotten.

  It had to be intruders.

  Though, god, she had no idea how to deal with that. Her first thought was call the cops, but the moment the idea occurred she knew it wasn’t possible. There was no landline in here. No computer for her to frantically message anyone. And her own phone was downstairs—she was sure it was. She’d left it there so the ring would not wake Emily, then fallen asleep next to her on her tiny duck-duvet-covered bed.

  So now there was only one option left: escape.

  Though god knew how they were going to go about it. On her own, she might have been fast enough to make it to the front door. But carrying a sleeping child? She knew for a stone-cold fact that she had no chance. They probably wouldn’t even make it to the top step before someone stopped them.

  And she really didn’t want to think about what might happen then. Whenever she did, she remembered the home invasion over on Pinter Street, and how that had ended.

  With everyone stabbed to death, her mind helpfully informed her.

  Then suddenly, she was on her feet. She was whispering to Emily to stay quiet, and do exactly as she told her. And to her great relief, Emily obeyed. The kid didn’t even ask any questions or protest being woken up. She just stared with too wide eyes and held out her little arms in a way that almost made Lydia lose her mind. She had to grit her teeth and look at the ceiling to stop the tears from coming.

  But her face was still wet by the time she got to the window. Her heart still beat like it wanted to break out of her body. And worst of all, her arms and legs seemed to have lost all their strength and coordination. She tried to shove up the window with one hand and found it completely impossible.

  Even though she’d done it a thousand times before.

  She had done it only last week.

  So, what exactly was going on here?

  It was almost like she’d become a completely different person. Just some pathetic weakling, instead of the tough girl she’d always thought she was. That other Lydia—the real Lydia—would have easily managed to get them both out onto the porch roof.

  But this new one could barely lift a window.

  She had to put the kid down and use both hands to do it, and even then, it was incredibly hard. For some reason, she had started shaking uncontrollably. Her palms were slick with sweat and kept slipping on the wood. Twice, she almost whammed her knuckles into the frame.

  And there was no relief when she finally succeeded in getting it open.

  They were just making way too much noise, she knew. Her breathing alone sounded like a freight train barreling through the house. The kid had started crying loudly—and she cried louder when Lydia tried to get her through the window. “No, not without you,” she said, so desperately Lydia almost changed her mind.

  Then she noticed it.

  The sudden, tense silence.

  Followed by the clatter and thump of boots on the stairs.

  They were coming. And they were coming fast. All she really had time to do was hide Emily out of view before they got to the door—but even that was a close thing.

  She was still halfway out the window when they burst into the room.

  And after that there was nothing else.

  There was just them, in the doorway.

  Both tall, very tall, and broad. And clearly experts, rather than simple opportunists. Their clothes were practically uniforms, from their thick canvas jackets to their utilitarian boots. Even their masks were identical—just thin black material that turned every single part of their faces into a sort of featureless hump.

  Including their eyes.

  For some ungodly reason, they hadn’t cut holes to see out of. There was just a dark blank space where those holes should be, as if two sightless aliens had come here just to silently observe.

  Apparently, they wanted to know what panic looked like.

  But she was damned if she was going to show it to them.

  Instead, she unwound herself from the window as calmly as she could. Then almost as an afterthought, she pulled it closed behind her. As if there was no one out there at all—or at least, no one that they should concern themselves with. It was just her who had tried to escape. Just her who should pay for it, if that was what they were thinking.

  And she suspected it was.

  The smaller of the two had made a fist, and was currently grinding it into the palm of his other hand over and over. Like some movie cliché of how tough guys acted when they wanted you to be scared.

  Only this was not an act.

  The guy lunged before she’d even finished the last thought.

  He practically knocked things out of the way to get to her.

  And his hands, when he took hold, were brutal. He didn’t just grab her. He bunched her t-shirt into two ugly fists, and hauled her off her feet. She actually felt air between herself and the floor, and after that, only snapshots of sensation. The jagged hills of his knuckles pressing too hard into the tender flesh of her breasts; the rattle that happened in your head when someone shakes you.

  Then the rush of air that comes with being thrown.

  She remembered it from childhood, from the time she had been tossed in the air by her father. Her mother looking on, fretful. Turtle barking at his feet, the sun shining through the trees, the sense of contentment that she had thought would go on forever from there.

  Didn’t everyone think it would go on forever from there?

  No one could predict an end like this. Even the people who did probably didn’t believe, deep down, it was going to happen. It was hard to believe even as she experienced it. She tried to tell herself clearly and soundly: I am going to be raped. That is what this is. It is the reason he has thrown me onto Emily’s narrow bed with the ducks on the bedspread. There is no other explanation.

  Yet still she clung on to some other, happier reality, in which they just locked her in and disappeared.

  Later, she could relay the whole thing to Letty, who would gasp and lo
ok concerned in all the right places. She would say that she was thankful Lydia got out of it okay, instead of what she was actually going to do: read about Lydia in the paper tomorrow. Breckinridge Student Found Dead in the Home Where She Was Babysitting, Lydia thought.

  And then suddenly something shifted inside her.

  She didn’t know what it was. She had no idea where it came from.

  It was just suddenly there, all teeth and claws. It made her kick and bite and make sounds she had never made before in her life—long vicious snarls that seemed to come up from her gut and screams that didn’t seem like screams at all. They seemed like something an animal might make, when it knew it was going to die. They seemed terrifying and terrified and most of all loud.

  So loud, in fact, that she didn’t hear the other guy.

  Not at first, at least. At first, she was just busy trying to survive.

  The man on top of her suddenly had a hand on her throat. He was squeezing, and the world was starting to turn purple. It was a struggle just to breathe and think and fight, never mind listen.

  Then suddenly his words were getting through.

  Though it wasn’t the volume that made it happen.

  It was the tone he used. The haunting, heartbreaking tone—as if she was more than just some random stranger. She was someone else, someone he cared for. His wife, she thought, in a wild flash, and though later, she would think the idea was absurd. In that moment, nothing had ever been truer. It was threaded through his voice. It was in the word god and the word have and the word mercy.

  But most of all, oh most of all, it was in his actions.

  She felt the weight on her lift.

  The hands abruptly disappeared.

  And then came the bang.

  Good god, the bang.

  It was a thunderclap, pressed directly to her ears. It was too loud to stand—so loud that she could barely hear a thing, in the aftermath.

  There was only a thin sort of ringing, followed by the strangest muffled sound.

  Then she realized, in a rush.

  It was him. He was trying to speak to her. He was trying to ask her to do something—though it took her an age to figure out what exactly it was that he wanted. His voice was like listening to the ocean, through a big shell. It was all blurry and faraway, to the point where almost none if it was clear. In the end, she had to guess, based on nothing more than his gestures.

  But luckily, they were good gestures.

  They were the best, in fact.

  He put a hand one her shoulder, so light she could have mistaken it for a summer breeze. Then just when it became too much, he drew back. He put that hand to his chest, in a way she could never have misunderstood. It was clear as day: I’m sorry.

  Though she had no idea what he was sorry for.

  He had just shot a man to save her life.

  She knew he had. It was the reason her ears were ringing.

  The reason for the spray of blood on the bed by her side.

  And it was why he gestured for her to wipe her face, before she went to get the kid.

  So Emily wouldn’t see it, she thought, as she staggered to the window. So it would look like everything was almost okay—though she wasn’t quite sure how that was going to happen.

  Even without the blood, there was still him.

  Or so she thought.

  But when she turned with the girl in her arms, he was gone.

  Chapter One

  Lydia knew as soon as she walked in that she had made a mistake. The group therapy flier had seemed so cheery, but this was not a cheery place. It looked like the thing it was: an abandoned dance studio on the crappy side of campus, half-falling down and full of sad relics. On the far wall, there had been a bar where girls probably did ballet moves. Now it was just a shorn off hunk of metal, hanging down at an odd angle. The once glossy floor had warped, and turned greasy and dark.

  It almost felt like her shoes were sinking into it, when she took a step inside.

  And the whole place was cold, very cold.

  Somebody had boarded up a broken window on the left-hand wall, but the cardboard flapped and whistled. Not even the groaning, over-hot pipes that ran along the baseboard could make up for it—as evidenced by the amount of people still wearing their jackets. She spotted a girl she vaguely knew from her class on Freudian theory, in full winter wear.

  Hat, scarf, gloves.

  Then wished she was wearing the same. Her leather jacket made good armor, but it wasn’t particularly warm. The pockets did absolutely nothing for her frozen fingers, no matter how deep she buried them. She had to get a cup of hot coffee just to heat them up, but that proved to be a mistake.

  It tasted like dirty water.

  And by the time she’d finished not drinking it, everyone was seated in the circle of chairs. They were waiting for her, so silent and wide-eyed it made her pulse pick up. Her mouth was suddenly dry, despite the coffee—and the flippant words she’d said to Letty before leaving their apartment: They’ll probably recognize me from the news and want all the gory details.

  It had seemed like a joke, back then. She had laughed.

  But now, it was a terrifying reality.

  She was going to have to sit in that circle, next to complete strangers.

  And then, she was going to have to describe everything. The knuckles, the smell of blood, the sound of their boots on the stairs. Maybe she’d even slip up and tell them about the other guy, and fuck knows what would happen then. Most likely, one of them would tell the police that she hadn’t had a lucky escape at all. That her attacker hadn’t shot himself by accident. There was someone else, they’d say, and the next thing she knew, she’d be in prison for covering up crimes.

  She wouldn’t even be able to say why she had done it.

  Most days, she wasn’t sure. It had just seemed right.

  Like the thank you she longed to give him.

  But knew she never would.

  “Would you like to sit down, Lydia?”

  The question had been posed in the least threatening manner she could imagine. And the woman asking was the very definition of kindly. Her gray hair hung in a fat plait over one shoulder. She had sandals and socks on her feet. Her cardigan was covered in knitted bees.

  Yet, still, Lydia couldn’t quite go over there.

  The thought of that lie kept her rooted to the spot.

  “I just thought maybe I could stay here and listen this first time,” she said.

  “Of course you can. But wouldn’t it be nicer to sit down to do it?”

  “Sitting down kind of seems like it comes with a talking price tag.”

  “I can assure you it doesn’t.”

  That got her feet moving. It also helped her sit in one of the plastic chairs, even though she suspected it wasn’t true. They were all still looking at her—so expectantly she could feel it, digging away at her insides. If they kept it up, they were probably going to pop out some important organ.

  But they all carried on anyway.

  Well, all except for one guy.

  She didn’t notice him right away, even though he was directly across from the seat she’d chosen in the circle. It happened slowly, like the prickling awareness of someone following you.

  Only without the actual following part.

  Every time she glanced at him, he was busy staring at someone else. He focussed on people who never spoke and people who did; on the broken plié bar and the whistling window. Hell, even when he gazed in her direction he seemed to be seeing something just to the right of her head.

  Though that was probably down to the kind of person he seemed to be.

  She’d never seen anyone so self-contained in all her days. It was like he was surrounded by invisible armed guards. Curious stares and questions simply bounced off him, as if they were barely there at all. And when the group leader finally said it was his turn to share, his answering smile was a wonder. He allowed it a quarter of warmth and a half of sincerity, and the r
est was all control.

  Though what he was controlling, she couldn’t say.

  His story was completely unremarkable. It was the same one most of the other people had shared: an unfulfilling job he had just quit, feeling aimless about the direction his life was going in, wondering if he was ever going to realize his potential. Just a series of generic issues that no one would have cared about—if it were not for the way he was.

  And oh, the sound of his voice.

  Nobody was prepared for his voice.

  He seemed like the kind of guy to talk in a really macho, terse sort of manner. Everything about him suggested it, from the armed guards, to the heavy-duty leather jacket, to his face. He had a jaw like a sheer granite drop. His nose was busted to fuck. Yet, when he spoke, it was almost a sigh. She thought of a summer breeze stirring through long grass, so faint people had to strain to hear it.

  Hell, people did strain to hear it.

  Two girls were leaning so far forward she wanted to put out a hand to stop them toppling off their chairs. One of them was getting so close to him she could have licked him without much effort, and for one hair-raising second Lydia wondered if she might. The side of his face was very tempting—mostly smooth and tawny, with just the barest hint of that good sort of stubble.

  Like iron filings beneath the skin, her mind supplied, in a way that made her feel kind of weird. Her stomach tightened, for reasons she couldn’t place. Suddenly, she was perspiring, and not in her usual I fucking hate therapy kind of manner.

  This was different, much different.

  Though she didn’t get much time to figure it out. Suddenly Gray Plait was telling everyone to stand. Even worse: she was telling everyone to find a partner. And though Lydia wanted to obey, doing so was way easier said than done. She glanced around quickly, searching for likely candidates.

  But almost everyone in the room was staring at her way too eagerly.

  In fact, two girls were actually whispering and pointing.

  She couldn’t pick the whispering pointers.

  So where did that leave her?