Present
Micah dropped her to her feet, took her hands, and twirled her around before pulling her in and holding her close. They danced and laughed, and my chest swelled, feeling too much all of a sudden, my arms weighing a ton.
I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I watched her. We all heard the music, one by one, each of us making our way down to the ballroom.
Micah couldn’t resist, instantly gravitating toward her, and it wasn’t until he had her in his arms that I saw the tears on her face.
She was quickly smiling, though, and it was heart-wrenching, because I knew I’d made her cry. No matter how many times I told myself she deserved to suffer, this wasn’t in my nature.
I’d be lost without some second chances myself. There were always two sides to a story, and everything was just a matter of perspective.
But finding out that she was the one who sent us to prison was almost a relief. It finally gave me permission to hate her and not just resent her because she had rejected me.
Micah swung her out, and she twirled, stepping on her tiptoes, and the both of them danced the Mashed Potato or some equally dumb dance, and I smiled even wider. For a few moments, we weren’t in Blackchurch. We were friends, hanging out and having a good time.
And suddenly, I missed home a lot.
“Go to her,” Alex urged me.
Taylor, Aydin, and Rory hung back, amusement written on their faces, and part of me wanted to go to. It was like a whole other world to see her like this.
But years of disappointment and doubt kept me rooted in my spot.
“Ow, ow!” Emmy suddenly yelped.
I shot my gaze up, seeing her stumble before Micah rushed in and pulled her up to him, keeping her steady.
She hissed, lifting her leg off the floor, and I saw blood stream down the bottom of her foot.
I took a step, but then Aydin stormed in, heading to the middle of the dance floor, and I stopped, watching him.
“Ow,” she grunted, but then chuckled, looking around the floor. “Shit, the glass.”
Aydin glared at Micah. “I thought you said you cleaned it up.”
“I did clean it up,” he rushed to explain.
Aydin swept Emmy into his arms, a couple of drops dripping off her heel, and my blood boiled so hot I felt nauseated, seeing her in his arms.
Goddammit. If my head would just settle on one emotion where she was concerned, that would be fucking fantastic. I hate her, but she’s mine. Go away, but don’t go with him!
He carried her past us, and we followed as I zoned in on her hands locked around his neck. He took her up the stairs, to his room, setting her on the bed as we all lingered by the door.
He could’ve taken her to the kitchen. He had a first aid kit there, too.
She lifted her foot up, setting it on her knee, probably trying to keep the blood off the carpet, but he knelt down in front of her and took it, holding a cloth to the bottom.
“It’s okay,” she said, trying to pull her leg away and hold the cloth herself.
He wouldn’t let it go.
Lifting it up, he inspected the damage, and I got angrier by the second. She’d stepped on a shard. She was an architect. She’s had her share of splinters, asshole.
Aydin looked up, jerking his chin at the guys. “There’s a bottle in the pantry,” he told them. “Go have fun.”
“Fuck, yeah,” Taylor said, sliding back out of the room.
Rory slapped Micah’s stomach. “Pool party.”
He breathed out a laugh, and they all left, heading back down the stairs and leaving Alex and me with Aydin and Emory.
I looked after the guys as they disappeared down the stairs, a sinking feeling in my gut. They were going to be drunk in an hour.
Aydin wanted them drunk.
I stepped closer, watching her and him, bracing myself for the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself.
“I want a bottle,” she joked to Aydin.
He looked up at her, a smile playing on his lips. Without taking his eyes off of her, he reached over into the cabinet on the bedside table and pulled out another container and a glass, setting them both next to the lamp.
She grinned as he opened the bourbon and poured her two fingers.
“Here you go.” He handed it to her.
I could smell the amber liquid from here, my tongue suddenly ash in my mouth as he returned his attention to her foot.
Alex remained near the door, and I just wanted to pull Em out of the room and get the girls away, but I had plans for Aydin, and I wasn’t ready to escalate it right now.
Even though it looked like that decision was getting more and more out of my control.
Emmy cupped the glass in her lap, staring down at it. “My brother got so drunk on this stuff once,” she said. “I remember how it tasted like it was yesterday.”
Aydin tore open an anti-bacterial wipe with his teeth, his eyes darting to hers before cleaning the blood off her foot.
“I could never figure out why he hated me so much,” she continued. “Like where did the anger come from, you know? We had good parents. They didn’t abuse us. He wasn’t bullied.” She trailed off, staring at the glass. “But he was always like that. As early as I can remember, everything had to be perfect. My hair. What I wore.” She started breathing heavier as the memories played behind her eyes. “Something was always out of place, and it never pleased him. Everything I did was wrong.”
She fell silent, and I forgot the others in the room, remembering her dirty, untidy cuffs, and the hair always in her face.
“So I stopped talking,” she nearly whispered. “The outbursts got worse, and then the shouting started. Waking me up in the middle of the night, because I forgot to unload the dishwasher, or there were streaks on the bathroom mirror.” The look in her eyes grew distant, like she wasn’t here anymore. “I peed my pants one night at dinner,” she said. “I was fifteen.”
I frowned, imagining going home to that every day after school.
“I realized he was sick, and nothing was going to be good enough,” she told us as Aydin bandaged her foot, “so I stopped trying. My clothes would be wrinkled and my hair not brushed, because if he was going to hit me anyway, then…” She met Aydin’s gaze. “Then fuck him.”
I watched him watch her, the space between them disappearing as he held her leg, but neither of them moved.
“I hardly ever saw him drunk,” she told us, “but one night, he passed out with a quarter of this bottle left. I emptied it into a water bottle and took it to school.”
She chuckled, but a look of sadness crossed her eyes, remembering that day. When was it? Did I talk to her that day? Mess with her? Was I nice?
“He thought he drank it all. He never knew.” She paused before continuing. “It was just one time, but that was a good day. I didn’t feel a thing. Not even the cracked rib.”
I knit my brow, thinking about Emory Scott sucking down bourbon in math class or stumbling through the cafeteria, and how easy it must’ve been to hide it, because no one ever noticed her.
She’d needed that bourbon more than she needed air that day, and I got that.
God, I got that.
You smile and laugh, not just because your head and everything in it feels lighter, but because when you’re drunk or high, it’s like a vacation. When you’re away from the same people, the same places, the same work…you don’t think about it. It’s a break from everything that worries you or makes you anxious or keeps your world small and shallow, and everyone who wants to take a piece out of you, and when you’re high, it’s like that. It just doesn’t even matter. Suddenly, you’re seeing Machu Picchu from your front porch, and you didn’t even have to leave town.
She got drunk and loved her brother again.
What made her stronger than me was that she only did it once.
She closed her eyes as she lifted the glass to her lips, and I could tell by the longing on her face that she was escaping again. I charged over and grabbed the glass, the liquid sloshing onto my hand as I tossed it to the side.
It crashed against the wall, the glass shattering.
Don’t. I stared down at her.
I’d rather eat my hands than see her do that to herself. If this was who she was, I’d rather this than see her become what I became—someone who needed to hurt myself day after day in order to fucking smile.
“Clean it up,” Aydin ordered.
But I remained still. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do with her yet, but this—whatever this was going on between them—was not happening. She didn’t get to find herself with Aydin Khadir. She was coming with me.
“He didn’t save you then,” Aydin told her. “He won’t save you now.”
He watched her, and she watched me, and even though I knew she’d told me the truth last night in her bed when she said she loved me, I also knew Emmy was an oak. Her roots were firm, and love would not save the day.
“Am I going to save you?” Aydin asked her.
“No one needs to save me.” She kept her gaze on me. “I got it handled.”
“You do.” He finished, setting her foot back down on the floor, and then stood up, cleaning off his hands. “I can almost see it, can’t you?” he asked her as he gazed between Alex and me. “Them together? How good they look together? Him driving into her like he’s done a thousand times and looking down into her eyes as he does it?”
I tensed.
“All the times he was alone with her, inside of her, coming and forgetting about you,” he told Emmy. “You can see it, right?”
You son of a bitch.
“But we don’t care,” he went on. “Do we? We don’t care that he’ll fall back into her bed at the first sign of trouble.”
I flexed my jaw, the scent from the anti-bacterial wipes stinging my nostrils. My brain was fried. I didn’t know how to get what I wanted anymore without resorting to just taking it.
“Go ahead,” Aydin told me, his eyes flashing to Alex behind me. “Take her. I want to see how it was with you two. All the things she let you do to her, because that’s how easily she forgets and moves on.” Then he gestured to Em. “We’ll watch.”
But before I could act, he grabbed me and shoved me onto the bed. I fell, Emmy whimpering and jumping off the mattress as Aydin came down on me and dug a knee into my gut. I growled as he gripped my neck with one hand and backhanded me with the other.
I squeezed my eyes shut, the pain shooting through my jaw and up the side of my face, but after a moment, I slowly turned my head back to face him, ready for more.
Come on.
His eyes pierced, and he leaned down, his breath warming my lips. “Mine,” he breathed out. “All of you are mine. You’re not leaving. They’re not leaving. And when your little shits arrive, I’m going to hang them in the cellar by their ankles like dead deer.”
He hauled me up off the bed, and I stumbled back before he came in and punched me in the stomach, sending me hunched over.
“Will…” Alex stepped forward.
But I shot out my hand. “Stay back,” I told her. “Stay back.”
It took a few seconds, but I rose again and faced him, taking his shit but not taking it lying down. I can be a team player, but I’m strong.
He walked up to me, slamming another uppercut into my stomach. Bile rose up my throat. I hunched over again, out of breath and my head spinning.
“You don’t have what it takes to be me,” he gritted out, standing over me.
“Will,” I heard Emmy call.
And then Alex. “What the hell are you doing?” she growled at me. “Do something!”
“He can’t,” Aydin told her. “Because he can’t lead. This is all he is. Don’t you see it?”
I rose up to see him glaring at her.
“Don’t you?” he yelled at Alex again.
Aydin punched and kicked, and my eyes watered as fire tore through my body. He knocked me down and then fisted my throat as we rolled around on the floor. I wouldn’t fight back. Not yet.
Not yet.
But I wouldn’t cower, either. It was the only way. Men like him needed to feel power, but he wouldn’t respect me if I begged like Micah.
He needed me.
He wouldn’t be able to tie his shoes without me someday.
Blood dripped out of my nose, and my ribs hurt. I barely registered the girls on us, trying to pry us off each other, but we rolled, forcing them back. Locking my elbows, I gripped his jaw and pushed him away from me. Sweat broke out across my forehead, and he breathed hard, the scratch I accidently left on his cheekbone red and jagged.
“Entertain me,” he said. “Let me watch, and let your girl watch, so she knows exactly how hard you missed her during your time apart.”
“I did miss her,” I whispered up at him, so only he heard. “Several times a day, in an array of fascinating places.”
His eyes flared, and he growled. “Fuck you!”
I broke out into a laugh, even through the pain, because he was coming undone.
That was it. For some reason, he was jealous, and I didn’t know why, but that was it. Did he want me or something? Maybe Alex?
“Come on!” I bellowed. “Hit me again!”
Break. Fucking break, because it was time.
He pulled back his fist, and I braced myself, but then something swung down behind him, slamming against the back of his neck.
He jerked, his eyes etched with pain, and then he fell over. I looked up at Alex standing there with a lamp in her fists.
He rolled over, hissing through his teeth as he locked eyes with her. “You better be ready to finish what you—”
She shot out the lamp, headbutting him, and he fell back, blood pouring down his mouth. He held his face.
“Alex…” I gasped.
Shit.
But the next thing I knew, the lamp hit my nose, too, a searing pain shooting through my head. I dropped back to the floor next to Aydin as the girls went to work.
My eyes watered, and I couldn’t even open them, but I felt one of them pull off my belt, and I barely realized what was happening as I was dragged to the wall, catching glimpses of the girls struggling to move us.
By the time I came to and was able to open my eyes, my arms were secured, and I couldn’t move.
I looked up, seeing my right wrist tied to the treadmill with one of Aydin’s neckties, and my other wrist bound to his wrist with my belt. I looked over at him, seeing his left hand was also tied with his belt to the hook holding back the drapes.
I belted out a growl, yanking my arms and grunting as I glared at the girls.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “What the fuck!”
They walked about the room, doing things and ignoring us, and I stared at Em, who wouldn’t even look at me. I wasn’t the one out of control here.
“Hey!” Micah said, Rory, Taylor, and him all rushing to the doorway. “What the hell’s going on?”
But Emmy charged over and kicked the door shut, propping a chair underneath it.
“This is bullshit!” I shouted.
But Aydin just laughed, shaking his head. He wasn’t threatened by them.
Emmy poured herself another glass of bourbon and then pulled off her T-shirt, leaving herself in Rory’s cut-offs and a bra.
She tried to look over her shoulder, and I could see a red spot forming on her back. Did she get hurt in that tussle? I remembered them on us briefly, but I didn’t know she’d fallen.
She took a sip of the drink as Alex inspected the damage.
“I’m okay,” Em assured her.
But Alex spun around, fire in her eyes as she glared at us like she wanted to kill us. “None of this is okay!”
She wiped the sweat off her face and walked into the bathroom, turning on the faucet while Emory downed the alcohol and poured herself another shot. She stood there quietly, and I continued to yank and pull on the six-hundred-pound treadmill like I’d actually be able to free myself. What the hell was the plan here? What were they going to do? Take control? Enlist the others?
Emory looked over at us—or me—through her glasses and hesitated a moment before bringing her glass over and sitting down on the carpet in front of us, just far enough away that we couldn’t reach her.
I held her eyes.
“The time you drove me home from the away game,” she said, “and we stopped at the Cove, I had a thought that night.”
All she did was think that night. She overthought everything.
“Part of me resisted you because I didn’t want to bring you into my horrible life,” she told me. “I was embarrassed and full of anger and without hope. I couldn’t give you anything.”
I tipped my chin up, remaining silent.
“But a part of me also resisted you because I feared I’d just be trading one abuse for another,” she explained. “How you coerced me, pushed me, wouldn’t leave me alone when I told you to… Tried to scare me.”
My gaze twitched as I studied her. I wasn’t abusive. I was a little spoiled and cocky, but I never wanted to hurt her.
She dropped her eyes, taking a sip. “The thought left me as quickly as it came,” she added, “because I wanted you, and deep down I held so tightly to the hope of you. I needed that.” She raised her gaze again. “But now, I wonder if I was right. Here I am, covered in bruises again. Maybe your world is just as bad as mine.”
I shook my head, but any protest I wanted to offer back died in my throat.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, as if Aydin and Alex weren’t in the room. And then firmer, “Huh? What do you want?”
Alex dropped down behind her, peering over her shoulder as both women sat there, challenging us.
“Who put me here?” Emmy asked. “Who thought I should be here with you? Damon, maybe? Michael?”
“Maybe it’s someone who hates you?” I shot back. “Your brother?”
She hesitated. “Why now?”
I grunted as I pushed myself up, using my shoulder to wipe off the blood dripping over my upper lip. “I think you know why.”
A look passed between us, because she knew what I was talking about. She was his loose end. The only other person who knew what they had orchestrated to send my friends and me to prison all those years ago.
“This place costs money,” she argued.
“His new wife has a lot of that.”
She does? I’d never met her.
But I countered. “He’d save the money and kill me if he actually thought I was a threat.”
“Would he?” I retorted. “In his head, I’m sure he thinks he loves you. Like Humbert Humbert.” And then I shrugged. “Perhaps he wants to teach you a lesson. Make you suffer.”
To my surprise, amusement crossed her eyes. “Because he loves me so much, right?”
Typical abuser. He never hated her, just like Damon’s mom never hated him, and none of us ever hated Rika when we were stealing her inheritance, kidnapping her family, and burning down her house. The diseased mind only sees its own intentions, and everything they did and everything we did justified the end.
The path to who we want to be is winding, at best. Everything was justified because we were all the victims in our story.
“There’s no one we make suffer more than those we love,” Aydin chimed in.
His arm sat on mine, our fists grinding against each other as we tried to squirm our way free, but I gazed at Emmy and the valley between the olive skin of her breasts and her toned stomach, and I could almost feel her in my hands.
She was so close. Do you still want to hold me? I blinked long and hard, trying to push away the swelling in my groin.
“Do you want to know what I did to get in here?” Aydin asked her. “The awful shit I pulled?”
She watched him, and despite the cool air, a light layer of sweat coated my neck and chest.
“I refused…to get married,” he answered. “That’s it.”
Alex’s eyes fell, and she looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.
“And I can get out anytime I want,” Aydin continued. “As soon as I agree.”
I didn’t actually know that, but it changed nothing. I knew of Aydin before I came here. He was in Meridian City frequently, and we were often at the same clubs and parties, although we never met.
“Did you think I killed someone?” he teased Emory. “Fucked my sister, maybe?”
Maybe, out of all of us, he was sent here for the least, but he was capable of the most, because he knew people almost immediately upon meeting them. It had happened with Rory, Micah, and Taylor. Even I had been here so much longer than necessary, because he proved too difficult to maneuver.
“My future wife is beautiful, smart, she comes from the right family,” he said. “The hand-picked, perfect spouse and mother to build my life around. And I was completely on board…until one night.”
“The artist…” Emmy said.
I shot my eyes up, looking between them and seeing him nod.
Artist? How did she know anything about it?
“What did she do?” Em asked.
He stared at the women, and I followed his gaze, both Emmy and Alex looking so beautiful that I swore I felt myself back in my old room in my parents’ house, nestled in my damn bed as the morning light heated the sheets.
“That,” he answered.
Alex’s chin rested on Emmy’s shoulder, and she slid her fingers around her naked waist, caressing her.
“This?” Alex taunted.
Aydin and Alex stared at each other, unblinking, as the pulse in my neck throbbed faster.
“I just watched her through the computer screen,” he said, as if in a trance, “and it was like my skin had sliced open, releasing all this pressure I’d gotten so used to feeling my entire life.” His chest rose and fell more rapidly by the second. “And I could finally breathe and see color and shit. I felt hot, and the world suddenly looked so different, because…”
He swallowed as Alex splayed her hand across Emmy’s stomach, touching her softly and gently. Em sat frozen, but after a moment, she relaxed into Alex, inviting her in.
“Because no blade cuts as deep as something that beautiful,” he whispered.
Cuts… I dropped my eyes to the tattoo I’d done on his shoulder. Claw marks dug into his skin forever.
“She had these eyes.” He stared at Alex, scared and desperate. Like the memory hurt. “I swore I could reach through the screen and touch her, the way she looked at me and made everything else disappear. I didn’t care what I lost, what I risked,” he told her, “I had to have her.”
I gazed at Emmy, remembering how stubborn I thought she was, but really she just made sense, and I resented her for it. We were a part of two different worlds, my friends would be difficult with her, and I was outgoing and loved to be around people, and she preferred to be alone. We were so different.
But those moments, like when I had her in my arms in the theater, confirmed what I already knew.
It would be worth it.
“But when I finally worked up the courage to claim her, she had survived without me,” Aydin explained. “It hurt. I’d been tearing myself apart in my head, going crazy, and she’d…she’d let everyone have a piece of something that was mine. I was a memory. I didn’t matter.”
“And she was a whore for it,” Alex said.
He held Alex’s eyes as she pulled one of the straps of Emmy’s bra down her shoulder, and Emmy didn’t stop her as her stomach rose and fell.
But Aydin answered, “No.” He gazed at the girls as Emmy’s other strap came down, and Alex’s hands trailed over her body. “She puts one foot in front of the other, does what she has to do, and lives honestly. She’s unashamed with her fucking chin up.” His voice grew stronger. “She’s loyal, everyone’s mother with warm arms and a kind smile, a survivor, and she solves the problem without dwelling on the loss.”
His eyes hardened, filled with pride.
“She’s a fucking Viking,” he said. “And I won’t have anyone else.”
My heart sank a moment as I looked at Em, because it was all true. Nothing else mattered. If it killed us, she was the one. In that moment, I didn’t care about her sins, if anyone else had touched her besides me, or that we were both our own worst enemies.
That was my girl, scarred, tattered soul, and all. She was beautiful.
Alex stood up, her body rigid as she slowly backed up, and Aydin rose, too, his gaze locked on her.
Bringing his and my hands up to his mouth, he worked the belt loose with his teeth, and Alex breathed so hard I could hear it as she continued to retreat.
The belt loosened, and I pulled at it, finally freeing my left hand as both of us turned to our other arms and untied ourselves.
Aydin growled, unable to free himself, and Alex gasped as he ripped the hook out of the wall and charged for her. She scurried into the bathroom, and he grabbed her under the arms and lifted her into his.
“Touch me,” he panted over her mouth.
She broke down, closing her eyes and sobbing. “Not now,” she cried. “Not after everything. How could you do this now?”
He buried his mouth in her neck, holding her head to his body and squeezing her tight.
I looked at Emmy, her eyes rimmed with tears that hadn’t fallen. She stood up and backed away from me, and I advanced, gazing at her naked shoulders and the straps laying lazily down her arms.
She ran, I caught her, and the next thing I knew we had all stumbled into the shower, a chaos of arms and legs as I twisted the knob. I turned on the water, drenching and trapping her as my mouth covered hers. I slipped my tongue between her lips, caressing her tongue, and the heat cascading right down to my groin as I pressed her into the wall and moved over her soft, full lips.
“Take it, Emory,” Aydin told her next to us. “Let him touch you everywhere.”
I stared down into her eyes, almost amused that he thought he still had any power over her. “Let him try to stop me,” I challenged and then asked her, “You ready for this?”
“Unless you’re telling me to fasten my seatbelt,” she fired back, “shut up, Will.”
I grinned, ripping off her shorts, tearing her bra from her body, and twisting her around, pulling her panties down to her thighs.
She whimpered, and I reached around, cupping her throat as I took off her glasses, setting them on the soap dish, and breathed into her ear. “This isn’t young love anymore,” I told her, pressing her tits into the shower wall. “It’s not a crush. This is a man who’s long overdue in showing you what he can do.”
And I slammed my mouth down on hers again and ripped open my jeans.
