I wiped my eyes. “OK.”
He didn’t say anything else. He left the room, and I sank back onto the bed, a fresh wave of tears coming over me.
I didn’t know what to do, and that scared me.
5
EVAN
Ethan came out of Rosalie’s room, a grim expression on his face. I knew she was fighting with herself about walking out, and it hurt me to see her struggling. I’d been talking to the guys, and we all knew it was time for me to step out of the darkness or pull Rosalie back into it with me.
“Can we talk?” E asked as he came into the living room. He stared right at me.
“Uh, yeah,” I muttered, nodding for him to follow me to Klaus’s office. I caught Klaus’s eye and knew he was concerned. Anson gave him a slight shake of his head, as if to tell him to let me do this.
I breathed out and walked down the hall to Klaus’s office and took a seat in a chair, E following.
I stared at him from behind my sunglasses, waiting for him to speak.
“There are a million things I have wanted to say to you since I heard you died,” he started, his voice soft. “But I never thought one would be I hate you.”
I said nothing. There wasn’t fuck all I could say. It hurt, but if he hated me, then he hated me.
He breathed out. “I don’t want to hate you. I just… I loved you. Like deep love. You were my best friend. I’d have died for you. In fact, in a lot of ways, I did.”
I continued to stare at him, saying nothing. I wanted him to get out whatever he had to say to me. The last thing I wanted was for him to have words locked away inside, eating at him. Even the ugly, painful things, I wanted them.
“Twenty-seven,” E whispered. “That’s the number of times I fucked Celeste. I kept count. I cried every single fucking time. She would lean in and whisper my name. Kiss me. I’d kiss her back and gag. She would say she couldn’t wait until Rosalie found out that I picked her over my sweetheart.” He paused. “Fifty-two was the number of times people pushed their cocks into my body. And twelve was the number of dicks I sucked. Of course, it may not have been twelve different dicks since they wore fucking masks, but yeah. The number doesn’t change.”
My stomach twisted at his words. He went quiet and stared at his feet.
“Forty-eight,” I whispered finally. “That’s how many times I was fucked. That I can remember since some days they drugged me, and I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. They told me that every time I said no, they’d hurt you more. So I said yes in the hopes it saved you once.”
E nodded and finally dragged his gaze from the floor to me.
“They told me the same. I’m sorry you suffered,” he said. “I tried to save you.”
My throat tightened. “I know. I tried to save you, too.”
He got to his feet and stood in front of me. I watched as he slowly unzipped his pants and pushed them down his thighs. He was heavily tatted on his thighs, which was a huge surprise since I hadn’t known E to be into tattooing. He unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the floor, revealing more tattoos covering a large portion of his torso.
I stared at him, wondering what he was doing.
He breathed out and pushed his boxers off, displaying himself to me.
I frowned. It took me a moment to understand what he was doing.
“You have… bite marks,” I whispered, staring in horror at his groin and thighs. Hundreds of scars greeted me beneath his tattoos.
Gently, I reached out and traced my fingers lightly along one at the top of his thigh. Perfect teeth imprint.
“They held me down and bit me. Made me bleed. I-I screamed for you. I did. I begged you to save me. I never told Enzo that Celeste was one of them.”
My throat tightened at his words, words I fucking knew to be true. I reached out and cradled his balls in my hand, taking in all the scars.
“H-He tried to castrate me with his teeth,” E said, his voice shaking. “The hospital had to sew me back together.”
My stomach rolled with his words. Even his dick had scars on it.
