Chapter 42-2

Fury raged behind his blackened eyes and for a moment my life flashed before my eyes as I realized that my tactic might not have worked, but from the words that spewed from his mouth afterwards, I knew I had baited him into my trap, right where I wanted him. "I could get any girl I wanted and you know that!  You were just another whore that didn't want to put out until I showed you how much you really wanted to." His words struck me across the face harder than any physical blow ever could, and it was all I could do not to double over from the god awful things he had just spoken about me and my character, but I knew I had to keep him riled up, keep him going so I could attack and wrench the gun from him by using his belligerence against him. "Why would anyone want to put out for someone with such a small-" He charged at me, forgetting the gun entirely and I saw that as my opening to show him what I was made of. I met his body in the middle as he ran full force towards me and I immediately went for the hand that was still holding the gun, but he saw where my eyes were heading and was faster than I was. He used his elbow to smash my face in and I could taste the blood dripping into my mouth before I felt the pain exploding behind my eyes. I was knocked backwards off of my feet and landed in a sticky puddle of what I hoped was water but the pain from the fall was nothing compared to the sheer terror coursing through my body when I looked up into his half crazed eyes and realized that that was the moment I was going to die. I wanted to close my eyes, and more than anything I wanted to see my life flash before my eyes. Every happy and sweet, tender moment I shared with my mom and dad, I wanted to relive the family dinners and even the awkward conversations when they told me about the bird's and the bee's. I craved that more than anything as the cold metal of the black barrel sliced through my hazy memories and found its way onto the sweat slicked surface of my forehead. I tried to swallow in fear, but the saliva was all dried up and my tongue was a sharp sheet of sand paper in my mouth. The toiling in my stomach silenced the aching of my chest, the incessant pounding of my heart causing a soreness I had never felt before. I almost wished I could go back to the hollow feeling that I contracted after he hurt me in New York, almost as if I were empty inside, no pain, but also no happiness either. The pain was something that was too much to bear. "Tell me something, Caroline. Who owns you right now?" A sinister smile twisted his face into something resembling more of a grimace and I wanted to vomit up the food that I had eaten at the family dinner with Kieran, an event that seemed like it happened lifetimes ago instead of about an hour and a half ago. I could have said something to appease him, to keep him from shooting me, but I didn't want that. I knew who I was, and I wasn't going to wallow in self sacrificing pity before my death. I refused to have my last words be that Nathan McCormick owned me. "No one owns me, especially not you. Not now, and not ever." I stared up into his dead eyes and gathered up as much courage as I had, and bit my tongue hard to bring some saliva to the surface of my mouth and spat in his face with as much force as I could muster. He used his free hand to wipe the glob of spit from his face. "Wrong answer." He pulled the gun away from my head long enough to cock it and I took that as my opening to lunge forward and I used my upward propulsion to punch him in the groin from my sitting position on the ground and he doubled over in pain, dropping his weapon. Big mistake. I lunged for the gun but he tried to beat me to it, his body forcing me out of the way and he landed another hard blow, this time in my abdomen that knocked the breath out of me, but I kept fighting. I wouldn't stop fighting until I was dead. I used his weight to my advantage and grabbed both of his arms, twisting with all of my might and he flopped to the ground like a surfaced fish, his legs kicking and flailing all around trying to stop me with all he had. One kick even got me in the side of my head but still I continued on with spots dancing behind my vision. I jumped on the ground for the gun and finally felt my hands wrap around its cool, metallic surface and stood back up in just enough time to be able to point the gun at Nathan who was still half recovering from the number I did on his downstairs, his hands gripping it with all his might. "That hurting you? Maybe I should just shoot it off," I suggested to him, feeling the power bubbling up in my body. I could do it-end everything right then and there and he would never have the power to hurt me ever again. There was a giddy feeling that tasted like adrenaline and pain surging across my taste buds but I knew it was a sickening addiction that I couldn't allow myself to give in to. Who would I be if I gave into it, the disgusting power that Nathan so desperately craved? The same as him. I wouldn't stoop to his level, I couldn't kill another human being, no matter what that human being had done to me. I wasn't the judge, jury and executioner in that situation, and I didn't want to be. "Fuck you, bitch! I should've killed you in New York when I had the chance!" "You're really not helping your case here," I notified him and his eyes glazed over with an emotion that I hadn't seen since the second I had walked through those doors: fear. I noticed a sliver glint on the floor and saw my knife that I had brought with me. "I thought I would come in here and take you out with the very weapon that you used to carve me up and instill so much fear into me with, but then you had to make everything so much more complicated." I did what he was unsuccessful in doing, and I cocked the gun. One in the chamber. "So, should we do this the easy way, or the hard way?" He charged at me. If the hard way was how he wanted it, then that was what he was going to get. I smiled. One gunshot rang throughout the building, unforgiving and harsh, and I tensed as his body hit the ground, his arms frantically trying to stop the bleeding from the hole in his leg that I had just put in him. His screams echoed in the drafty space and my body began to shake from the reality of what I had just done. And then came the sirens.