“You took it out on the wrong girl earlier,” she says, smiling like a curse.“That club bunny was not the one you wanted.”
My teeth grind.“Stop talking.”
She never stops.Her voice slides in under skin and bone.
“Did she moan for you?”she asks.“Or did you close your eyes and pretend she was me?”
My breath leaves in one deadly slow pulse.
She laughs.“You are so easy to unravel, Royal.”
I slam my palm against the wall beside her head.Dust falls like snow.
Her smile widens.“There he is.”
Something inside me snaps its leash.
“You don’t get to mock what happened tonight,” I say.My voice is rough and shaking for all the wrong reasons.“The Reverend is holding girls.Moving them like cattle.Maybe murdering them under that church.”
Her face drains of humor.She whispers, “I knew it.”
A tear slides down her cheek.
I reach before I can think.
She jerks her chin up.“Do not touch me unless you mean it.”
I stop cold.She is right to say it.She is wrong to think I’m strong enough to obey.I should leave.I should lock her away.I should forget her.
Instead, I breathe her in like she is the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
She steps closer.The chain pulls tight behind her.She offers herself like a dare.“You want to feel something real after what you saw?”she asks.“Here I am.”
I take hold of her.Hard.She lets out a sharp breath, her eyes glittering like she expected nothing less.
Then she says it.The words that rip me open.“You didn’t do anything to save them.You came home to me.”
My forehead drops to hers, too fast, too rough.I breathe her in like penance.
“You are gonna destroy me,” I whisper.
She answers, cracked and wicked, “Good.”
My hand rises to her neck.Her pulse slams against my thumb as I apply pressure.She leans in until her lips graze mine.
“Tell me what you found,” she murmurs.“Make me hurt with you.”
I almost tell her.About the names.The blood.The way the basement smelled like pain that had never been washed away.The way my stomach turned when I saw the shackles bolted to the floor.The way it reminded me of her locked in my room.
And made me sick.
Made me feel like a monster.
The way I thought about Cider, my sister who ran away from Pearly Gates, from Hell, so long ago, after I patched into the Kings.How we never heard from her again.How until now I never connected it to the girls who went missing in the last couple of years.How my eyes scanned every name on that wall, searching for hers.How I was overcome with relief, joy even, when I didn’t see her name there.Or Becki’s.
I almost confess everything.
“How did you know about the basement, Becki?”I ask instead.
