“I think so?” I drink a little juice. I feel clearheaded, and not as sore as I would have thought I would be. What happened last night was a ritual of sorts, a cleansing. It was supposed to free me from all the bad feelings I had.
Luke slides a stack of pancakes over to me with a handsome smile. I look into his eyes, and for a second I see a flash of Teddy in there. It all comes back, a void opening in the pit of my stomach. I remember things I have seen, been a part of. I may not have had a choice, but that doesn’t feel like a good excuse because there’s always a choice.
It didn’t fucking work.
My eyes fill with tears as I realize that shit isn’t going to be magicked away in one torrid gangbang. Now that I say that inside my head, I wonder why the fuck I ever thought it would work. Then I remember. Aiden said it would. He said I’d atone for my sins and it would all be over and that would be that. He lied.
“I don’t think I’m hungry,” I say, pushing the plate away. “I’m sorry, I thought I was, but…”
“Eat.”
The order comes from behind me in a firm, low voice. Aiden has followed me into the kitchen, almost as though he knew this moment was coming.
“I don’t want to eat right now,” I say, my voice straining with the effort to be polite.
Aiden is behind me now. “Eat,” he says. “Or I will feed you myself.”
Luke is looking at the two of us with a confused expression, because he’s too much of a sweet guy to understand. Aiden gets it, though.
He puts his hand on the back of my neck. There’s no pressure yet, but it is his way of reminding me how much control he can exert if he feels like it.
He reaches around me when I still don’t move, pushes the fork into the pancakes, and brings a bite to my mouth. He moves to the side, so he can see what he’s doing, and now it is me, his hand on my neck, and his other one in front of my face.
I smack the fork out of his hand, jump down from the chair, and run.
I get all of three steps before Aiden catches up with me. I curse at him, try to kick him. I go full Ethel on him, as much as I dare. He doesn’t say a word, he just carries me upstairs.
“What the fuck is going on?” Luke mutters to himself behind us. I feel sorry for him. This must be so confusing.
Aiden takes me back up to the bedroom. My stomach is growling because I am absolutely starving, but I still feel that faint nausea that comes with realizing nothing is ever going to actually make me good. I’m fucked. Like, old school fucked. Fucked forever.
“Tell me what you’re thinking and feeling,” Aiden says, making the most unreasonable request of all time.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I am not.”
“I don’t tell people what I think and feel,” I say. “I keep that shit a secret to everyone, including myself.”
He grips my chin firmly and forces me to look up at him. “That might be how this story started,” he says. “But it’s not how it is going to end. Now. Spill.”
“Fine. I think last night didn’t work.”
Aiden lets that sit for a moment, before asking, “In what way?”
“You said I was going to be a better, forgiven person afterward. But I’m not. I’m still evil.”
“Baby girl, that is a judgment you’re putting on yourself,” he says with remarkable softness. “We have forgiven you.”
“I didn’t get you killed. I got Teddy killed. And he can’t forgive me, because the dead can’t do that.”
“Teddy would have forgiven you first out of all of us. You didn’t get him killed. He was a man of our family, the Levin line. He knew what kind of beasts hunted him, and if he put himself in harm’s way, he did so while making a calculated risk.”
“It was my fault. He was off guard because of me.”
“Maybe, but that was his mistake.”
I close my mouth. He doesn’t get it. They can tell me hundreds of times over that I’m forgiven, but I don’t think I can forgivemyself. I don’t deserve pancakes, and I definitely don’t deserve the sole attention of all three surviving Levin brothers.
