Chase won't cover my father's debts to Val Brolik anymore, and he's going to come after us. But I won't even be able to see that if Chase kills me first.
"How could Achilles do this to me?" I croak as my best friend parks in front of her trailer.
I hit the back of my head against the car seat.
"The real question is, how could I be stupid enough to believe him? Every single interaction I've had with him was just him proving to me that he was an asshole who couldn't be trusted."
"This is a lot, Nyx," Lena says gently. "You should get some rest and turn off that overworking brain of yours. It's not something we're going to solve by overthinking for hours."
I turn to her, smiling weakly. "Thank you for picking me up."
"Of course. I'll scold you about the men you choose to hang out with when you're feeling a bit better, okay?"
We both laugh, though they're the exhausted kind. She's working endless shifts, and I'm putting myself in trouble left and right. We need sleep.
"Your choice of not having any time for men sounds like a wise option tonight. I'll text you tomorrow when I get to campus. I love you."
Hopping out of her car, I walk home, looking around me before I unlock the door and rush inside. I lock it again, fast as lightning.
"Dad," I call out in the dark while reaching for the switch. "You home?"
The light turns on, and I jolt back, hitting the door behind me.
"He is," Chase says in a low voice, sitting on our sofa. "But he's taking a little nap."
On the floor, right by his feet, my dad is lying unconscious. And I'm sure the bat Chase is holding had a lot to do with it.
"Dad!" I cry out, rushing to him.
Chase is quicker. He stands up, pointing the bat at me just as I'm reaching them. I stop dead in my tracks.
"Don't hurt him. He's got nothing to do with this. Hurt me."
"Oh, I will, Nyxie. But unfortunately, you love this piece of shit despite everything he's put you through. So putting him in a fucking coma will probably hurt you more than beating you to a pulp, am I right?"
I gulp. The idea of being beaten to a pulp by someone as big as Chase makes my legs tremble. I don’t want to die. No matterhow much I've hated my life in the past, this city, the things everyone around me has put me through, I've never wanted to give up. I'm a dreamer. I'm naïve. That's what I do. I always have hope that there's better somewhere and that I'll reach that place.
It doesn't feel like that now, though. Facing the man I used to have feelings for is a death sentence, and I'm coming up short on hope or solutions.
"Take a seat. You're going to answer some questions for me."
He grabs me by the upper arm, violently forcing me to sit on the sofa as his black eyes take me in. There's something that feels familiar in that deadly look. The night we met, he had the same intention in his gaze before he decided to spare me.
I don't think he'll spare me tonight.
"Chase—"
"No." The simple word is accompanied by a slam of his bat on my dad's TV, the violence making me shriek and retreat on the sofa. "No more sweet-talking me, Nyx. From now on, you only answer what I ask."
I bring my knees to my chest, pressure building in my stomach and behind my ears.
"What's wrong? Are you scared? Yeah, you get real terrified when someone breaks into your house, huh?"
There's one person in this world who knows what happened to me. I shared it with him in a moment of weakness because he wanted to understand what had made me so scared in life.
Achilles wants to know because he wants to use it for himself. Selfishly, to feed his sick, psychotic need to see people suffer. The thing that inspires him about me is my agony. That's who he is.
When Chase asked me back then, I still want to believe that it was out of a need to protect me. But does it matter since he's now using it against me?
