29

                                    

                                          
Police vehicles and ambulances clustered around the street in front of the woods that blocked off Norman's hidden house. The sun hung confidently in the blue sky, and the morning heat rubbed its fingertips along the exposed areas of Bella's clammy skin. 
The world was moving, but Bella felt still. She was dizzy, nausea knotting in her stomach. She couldn't hear anything over a white noise that crackled in her ears. She couldn't believe that this had happened. Cole was alive and Norman was done. She wanted to kiss the uneven gravel beneath her bare feet. 
She could see James running up to her, she could feel his arms wrapped around her, and as she buried her nose into the crook of his neck, she could smell the salt of his sweat mixed with musky shampoo. But she couldn't hear him, and she couldn't speak.
She looked over James' shoulder to see officers holding onto Norman. His head was down, mainly because one of the officers gripped the nape of his neck harshly to keep it down. But slowly, through his thick framed glasses, he tilted his head up to connect his eyes with hers.
She pulled herself away from James, and quickly walked over to Norman. She felt people grabbing onto her, trying to stop her, as she plastered the sickest smile on her lips.
"I win," Bella told him before a loud belt of laughter. "I win!"
She pretended that Norman was the sickly thin woman who started it all. The woman with ginger hair that fell like straw, with graying roots gathering at her scalp. The woman with tiny black eyes that only hosted a flicker of emotion when she was torturing someone. The woman who had robbed her of her childhood, her life, her ability to be healthy. The woman who single handedly ruined her and two boys who were also in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Rose's face as Bella inched the blade of the knife deeper and deeper into her jugular had always stuck with her. Rose's small eyes were wide, her wrinkled mouth was open, gasping for air, and her skin was rapidly losing color.
"I win," Rose had croaked out. Her final words. So simple yet they haunted Bella for years. She didn't know the weight of those words at the time, but she knew now what Rose meant.
You didn't. Bella wanted to spit at her. You didn't fucking win. I did. I win.
Norman's eyes fluttered shut in defeat. He could no longer bring himself to look at her. The officers shoved him into the back of the police car and slammed the door shut behind him.
As Bella was pulled away, dragged towards the ambulance vehicle with its back doors open just for her, she looked over to find Rich being walked to meet Norman's same fate. The other guard wasn't too far behind him, two officers on either side of him.
Rich briefly made eye contact with Bella. The frustration on his face, the slick layer of sweat on his forehead, and the twisted look of anger in his eyes took Bella's breath away. She tried to ignore the weakness in her legs.
Instead of allowing herself to buckle, she lifted her lips into a devilish smirk. 
His glare narrowed, and if looks could kill, she'd be buried. But they couldn't, so Bella winked at him.





A few days passed, and Bella was back at home with her father. 
She didn't see much of Cole, mostly because her father was so scared, he'd hardly let her out of his sight. He stayed home from work for three days, which was unlike him. 
On top of that, James was being very tight-lipped about the investigation and information they'd found. He wanted her only focus to be on healing, which he'd stressed to her at the hospital she'd stayed in while she was being examined.