Regardless, my face feels prickly with heat. I don’t know what I’m doing; I have never had a chance to fight back. And what happens, anyway? We stay here and wait for the calvary to come? There is little odds in my favor that anyone will takemy side over my father’s. He might not be the leader of Writhe anymore, but he still has connections, money,influence.And I have seen enough to know people will follow those evil three to their own death on the desperate hope it will scoop them up to heaven if only for a brief moment on earth.
People are despicable.
They never choose good for good’s sake.
Besides that, I amnotgood. If Stein is evil, I am only his disgusting son.
I clench my teeth, hating the thought, and knowing it is true all the same.
I swallow all of that down. She is biting back, lashing out, because she is upset about something I do not understand.
I think of her last words and I say, “I like all versions of you, Karia.”
For a moment, she seems stunned, her eyes widening, brows lifting, her pink lips parting into a surprisedO.Then the second passes and she is glaring once more. “I have never been nearly naked before a man who then sprung away from me. It seems there is some version of me you don’t care for at all.”
My body tenses, thinking of the men she has been naked for. The ways I have seen it myself in one room of this house I will never show her. It was a gross violation of her privacy, what Stein did to Ritual Drive with his cameras and his cruelty. Even I, who have never had a sliver of true, untarnished solitude in my life, understand this.
But it doesn’t erase the videos from my head. The ways she has been motionless for Cosmo, quiet and submissive for Von, gazing up at him in adoration.
I don’t say anything. I cannot express the grief, the ache, the loneliness I felt watching her without me, and yet being unable to turn away, like I was at the Night of Lies.
“What?” she asks, her voice whisper-soft as she steps forward, one foot in front of the other, until she is right in front of me, arms still crossed, chin tilted up to stare at me in a challenge. “Tell me what you’re thinking. Argue with me.Fight with me, Sullen.”Her eyes are glassy, bloodshot, marks of exhaustion beneath them.
I shake my head once, half a gesture. “Get in the shower.”
“No.”
“Karia.” My heart races. I inhale through my nose, nostrils flaring, catching the scent ofherbeneath the cleaning products and the filth of me. She is intoxicating; she always has been. It is nearly enough to bring me to my knees.
“Say something,” she says, her voice cracking. “Tell me I’m doing this for a reason. Tell me there is… something here for us. Tell me you feel something for me.”
“Stop begging me.”
“Isn’t that what you like?” she arches a brow, pink flushing her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away.
I likeyou. I swallow down the confession. She should know it’s true by now. “What do you want from me, to prove it to you? I have been stripped by your friend, slashed across the face from my father,stabbed,” I wince as I say the last two words, but carry on. “I have damned my entire life to save you. A blade thrown at our heads by a man who was so muchworsethan Stein. I have…” I swallow tightly, my stomach knotted into ache and grief and hurt. “What do you want? What is it, tell me, and I’ll?—”
“Shower with me,” she says softly. “Like before, but…” She trails off, and I think of her on her knees in the hotel before Sanford interrupted us at the worst possible moment.
The slithering of the pipes. The pounding on the door.
Our world changing, once more.
“But?” I press, knowing what she wants. Knowing I cannot givethatto her.
She must see it, in my eyes. The way I have guarded so much of myself, the battlements are permanent. They cannot be taken down. Her face falls, throat rolling as she drops her gaze.
Then her arms.
Then she leans against me, her temple to my sternum. I drop my own arms just in time to let her find refuge in my body.
A shocked gasp of breath leaves my lips. She does not hug me or touch me with anything but her head against my chest, but it is enough. I feel all of her sorrow; for us, for her friends maybe, her parents. For what could have been and never was. For the ways I may not survive any of this, and even if I do…
She wants me to tell her there is something here for us, but as I let her rest for this single moment, my body tense and still and impossibly her shelter even as I don’t touch her, scared to frighten her off, I don’t know if that will ever be true.
“Nevermind,” she whispers, her lips moving against the fabric of my hoodie. “I know you can’t.” She says it without disdain or mockery, yet it feels like a slap in the face all the same. “Just wait for me, while I shower. Then, can we just sleep?” She looks up at me, her palms replacing her temple on my chest.
I swallow the tight lump in my throat. I feel the patch of my mangled skin there, disfigured from the man who claims to be my father. It is a sickening reminder of how I will never be fit for a princess like Karia.
