Tear You Apart by Sarah Cross Read Free Book Online Page A

hair over her face, just … shaking, and I put my hand on her shoulder and told her she was still my favorite. No matter who my dad liked better, she was
my
favorite. I was so stupid; I can’t believe I said that. And then she started crying and she said,
I love him
. And I told her,
Then don’t
. As if it was that easy.
    “I don’t want to be blindsided again. When—
if
—Henley decides to do it … I want to know it’s coming. He’s pissed at me a lot. But I don’t know how to tell if he hates me. I wish I knew. I wish it could just … be over, so we didn’t have to feel this way anymore.…”
    Viv wiped her eyes, looked around for a mirror. She didn’t want Blue and Freddie to see her like this. “Are my eyes as red as blood?”
    “They’re barely even pink,” Mira said.
    Viv hung out there until Mira’s godmothers said the boys had to go home. Mira invited her to spend the night, but Viv didn’t want to leave her animals unattended. So Blue and Freddie drove her home. By the time they dropped her off around midnight, her anxiety had mostly leveled out, and it stayed that way until she went to put her key in the front door and noticed it was already unlocked.

CHAPTER SIX
    VIV OPENED THE DOOR as quietly as she could and crept inside the house. She left her shoes on the mat so they wouldn’t make noise. Set her purse down on top of them.
    The air in the hall smelled like a sweaty animal.
    She could hear voices coming from Regina’s office—the room where her stepmother kept her yoga gear, her computer, the handwritten recipe books she’d gotten from witches:
Five Delicious Ways to Braise a Heart
.
    “It was amazing,” Regina said. “The violence that boy is capable of. He’s come a long way from being her pet.”
    “It’s about time.” A man’s voice. Worn, scratchy.
    “You think I waited too long.”
    “Not saying that. Some like the game. The chase. Me, I prided myself on being efficient. No queen should have to live like this as long as you have.”
    “That’s sweet—I think. But we’re not all born ready to kill someone. It certainly wasn’t my life plan.”
    “Just your destiny.”
    “Some of us need time to warm up to our destinies. But, like I said, I think the boy’s ready. If you can call him a boy anymore.”
    “He’s a boy, all right. But he’ll man up fast once he feels a knife in his hand.” The man’s low, dry laugh creaked like old leather. “He can have this one. Cuts through anything.”
    Viv heard the scrape of one blade against another. Her breaths came harder and she skidded back, her bare feet sticking to the floor.
    And then a voice crawled out of the wall behind her.
    “Gorgeous. Sheer perfection.”
    The voices in Regina’s office went silent. One heavy boot heel cracked down on the wood—and Viv ran.
    Down the hall, through the kitchen. She flung open the back door and kept running. She tore through the moonlit yard, past the well, and as she ran through the ring of fruit trees it seemed like every sleeping songbird woke. They took off into the air, the mad beating of their wings pointing her out like a spotlight.
    She swung her arm and hissed at them to go away, but they couldn’t understand her, just kept flapping after her.
    It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
    Breathless, she stumbled through the forest, stones gouging her feet, branches grabbing her dress. The trees had scattered the birds, but the leafy canopy blocked out the moonlight and made it impossible to see. Viv was only making it through because she knew these woods so well. She’d played pretend games here with Henley. She’d spent hours just roaming the trails.
    Henley lived on the other side of the forest. Could she get there? He wouldn’t want to see her tonight, but …
    Her lungs were burning. A deer crashed after her, then seemed to sense her distress and leapt away. She could hear the animals going this way and that, drawn to her but nervous, and the rustling