I don't expect she'll bite, given her relatively docile nature. I know you don't typically put multiple snakes together inside one terrarium because they can get stressed and attack one another. But these snakes were farmed, raised to know only one another. The six of them here now are far fewer than what there were in the pit.
My stomach twists as I think of the pit, of the girls still locked away there, of Madam and Joker and everyone else who we didn't bring down with Jenko and Browen, Bear and Kev, and Garrett.
I'm a killer.
Does that mean I have to kill in perpetuity?
The reality is that I transformed into vengeance.
I got justice for myself, for Katrina, for the guys and girls, and for everyone else who was hurt by them before me. But with them gone, it doesn't mean that the game ends.
A new rank will rise to take their places, and new victims who haven't yet had justice served in their honor will be hurt.
“Little doll?” Cal's voice drifts down the steps toward me, but I don't answer him. I don't think I can right now. I'm busy thinking about how I lost my voice in the back of that truck when Jenko took me. I'm busy thinking about all the people who will still be taken, about how there's nothing I can do except pick up that knife again and not set it back down.
“Love?” He asks when his feet land on the last step, and he spots me standing there with the snake resting lazily against my collarbone.
I heard him, but it takes a minute before I'm aware enough of his presence to look up and find him already walking toward me.
He frames my face, unbothered by the reptile resting her head just inches away from his touch. She's similarly unbothered by him.
What a strange complicity we all have with one another... victims, bonded by life's cruelty.
“What's wrong?”
I start to shake my head because I don't know how to explain the tide of sorrow and anger, relief and grief, hope and despair that I’m feeling.
I don't know how to quantify the fact that I did something morally heinous, and I don't regret it, but I don't think I should feel proud of it. I don't know how to explain to him that I'm aching for everyone who ended up in places worse than this, and I also feel angry at myself for not hating him when he did this to me.
If men like him didn't exist, then my life never would have become this. But what would it have been?
“I'm lost.” I tell him quietly, because it's all I can manage without opening the floodgates. I can already feel tears burning the backs of my eyes.
“You're not lost.” He tells me calmly. “Why would you think that?”
I bury my head against his chest because it hurts to try and speak without sobbing, and touching him grounds me, makes me feel like I'm tethered in the storm inside my mind.
I need time. I need to do what I’ve always done and ignore the hurt, but it’s too much to shove away and act like it doesn’t exist.
I need my mind to stop thinking, but I don’t want to stop living. I don’t want to die. Not yet. I just need a break with the promise of better days to come.
“Little doll,” he presses a kiss to the top of my head and pulls back just enough to force me to look at him. “You're exactly where you belong. With me.”
There's no holding back anymore. The first sob escapes me as I bury my head on his chest, the pain in my own like a knife between the ribs, like someone prying me apart.
Because I think he's right.
I think I am right where I belong, and I don't know how to quantify that with everything else.
42
Cal
“Make me your doll again.” She breathes, her voice so soft that I barely catch the words the first time.
When I blink down at her, she pulls away enough to look up at me through the fringe of her wet lashes, clumped together by the tears she cried. Her face is red, and there's so much pain in her eyes it fucking hurts.
It hurts more than anything I ever thought possible to hear her ask what I think she’s asking me for.
