My body’s trembling. My voice cracks. I don’t care.
“I begged him to stop.”
Silence.
“Wanna know what he said?”
Priest’s jaw ticks. His eyes blacken.
“I bet you taste as sweet as you scream.” I step closer. My heart pounds. “But in that moment, it wasn’t him hurting me.”
I stare up at him.
“It wasyou. I sawyourface. Heardyourvoice. All those sick, fucked-up things you said to me. How much you love hurting me. Making me scream. Bleed.”
Tears burn my eyes. I let them fall.
“And when that fucker finally broke me…it wasn’t him, it wasyou. So tell me, Priest. Did they fucking rape me?”
My voice shatters. Tears spill.
He takes a step forward, and I bolt, slamming the door to my room so hard that the walls shake. And then I collapse. Onto the bed. Onto the mattress Arsen helped stitch me up on.
And I scream.
She flinched.
She fucking flinched.
She’s never been afraid of me before.
Not when I made her bleed. Not when I threatened her. Not even when I had her tied up, hand wrapped around her throat, fucking the tears out of her.
I can’t get the image out of my head—the way her body jolted, that breath hitching in her throat, pupils blown wide with fear. Like she’d seen a ghost. Seen her worst fucking nightmare…
And it was me.
There’s an ache in my chest I don’t know what to do with. Something tight. It’s been there since I heard her scream my name with a gun to her head.
It won’t leave.
I want it gone. Want to carve it out with my fucking knife.
Rain patters against the windshield as I sit parked outside Theo’s place. I should be moving. I should’ve stormed in already—put a bullet in his head and been done with it. But I’m frozen. Like a sick part of me wants to hear him say it. Wants to know what they did.
My boots splash in a puddle as I finally get out and walk up to the house. Music’s thumping. Laughter filters through the windows.
I pound on the door with my fist.
Theo answers, shirtless, high as fuck, pupils dilated.
“Yo—Priest?” He grins like a goddamn idiot.
I shove past him. The smell of weed and alcohol hits me in the face. Some half-naked Slut is on her knees in the living room, snorting coke off a table cluttered with empty bottles and cash.
She looks up, licking powder from her lips. “Mmm, you’re hot. You wanna play too?”
Theo slaps me on the back, hands me a beer. I take it. Grip it. Feel the glass threatening to shatter in my palm.
