With Toby, everything had a habit of moving so quickly. It only took one phone call for strangers to become friends, two for him to decide I was the woman who’d bear his children. It only took seconds for me to live in the possibility of it all, another two to feel the loss sink in around me.
Tears made it impossible to see, but I was certain I could make out Alex at the door, locking the thing in place before taking a careful peek out the window. Toby’s cries of pain could be heard just above my screams, above my begging for him to let me go. His forearm dug painfully into my ribs, and when my fingernails made it impossible for him to carry me any further, his fingers were knotted in my hair again.
“What the fuck did I tell you!?” Alex snarled, following close enough behind us for me to smell his cinnamon cologne.
“Shut up!”
“If those shithead cops trailing Jax saw her, we’d both be screwed!” Through blurred vision, I could make out Alex’s careful glance at me, another sob bubbling forward as Toby dragged me up the stairs and back to my coffin. “You can’t control her, Toby!”
“Shut up!” His snarl could have cut flesh. With a final throw, the man tossed me into the room, another screech leaving my lungs as I doubled over to grab at my injured foot. Not that any of it mattered anymore. Before I could examine the reopened wounds, he was already on top of me, his hand smothering out what little oxygen I could find. “I said shut the fuck up!”
“Toby, stop.”
Alex’s growl, his hand on Toby’s shoulder, bought me a moment of freedom, and I choked out the only plea that I thought would work.
“I’m sorry, Toby!”
“You ain’t nothin’ yet.”
“Toby!”
This time, I’d run out of tears. The fear had a way of heightening everything, of making the entire scene sicker. His greedy fingers bruised my arm as he dragged me across the floor, leaving my face pressing into the old wood as I prepared for the thing he’d been dreaming about most. I kept my eyes shut as I heard the sound of his buckle, the snarl building in Alex’s chest as the leather slipped through each belt loop. Then, a white pain colored everything I’d ever known. The only thing that dampened my screech was my teeth biting painfully into my lip, but it wouldn’t be enough for the second impact of his belt. The force tore the skin on my back, one last scream filling the room before Alex finally stepped in.
“Get the fuck off me!”
When I found the strength to peek my eyes open, I glanced to the two men to my left, the brothers locked in a dangerous game. While Toby’s shoulders raised to his ears, his back curving painfully, Alex remained firm, strong, a gentle hand when his brother needed it most.
“Not like this, Toby,” he finally conceded.
Moments passed like hours, release only coming when a new kind of chill filled the room. I watched Alex soften before Toby dropped the belt, the brother sensing the calm before I ever could, and while I wanted to believe that this was all over, Toby’s inability to look at me told me it was far from. The man’s teeth cracked as he rooted through his nightstand, pulling out a pair of silver cuffs before tugging me back up onto the bed. The pleas that fell from my mouth were unintelligible at this point, nonsensical and repetitive as Toby locked me into place on his bedframe.
“You’re not sleeping here tonight.”
Alex’s order tightened Toby’s muscles again, but as his eyes trailed down my body, he seemed to relax some. His hand drifted over exposed skin, danced along my breasts before I could tear myself away. Alex wouldn’t speak again until I shifted my position in the bed, pressing my back against the headboard and stealing a look at the only man capable of giving me a moment’s rest.
“One week,” Alex rushed, finally turning Toby’s head to the side. “You sleep on the couch, and tomorrow, go see that prick and tell him I’ll have his shit ready in one week.”
Chapter Four
After two hours, I still wasn’t sure if it was the scent of food or the reek of death that made my stomach churn. In that house, they smelt the same. The quiet that once calmed me was now chewing away at me— another lost sanctuary. With the ghosts that roamed the halls, I’d never truly be alone anyway, and the living had no business interacting with the dead. Maybe that was why I’d spent two hours cleaning every inch of the kitchen, pulling out the fridge, digging the floor wax out from beneath the sink. Maybe that was why it felt so fucking wrong to be in the same house as her.
I had called in my order for the parts I needed yesterday afternoon, checking in on them twice that morning. I had finished washing smoke-stained walls, bleaching the disgusting kitchen counters. I had organized and reorganized the closet off the entranceway, and still, no part of me felt any better. The only thing that could take my eyes off of that awful door, the one that seemed to weep of the corner of the kitchen, was to take in the gentle noises that came from the top of the stairs.
After hour two, I wasn’t sure which hell was worse.
When the timer on my phone finally buzzed, I flew across the kitchen at record-breaking speed. The only things Toby had left in the fridge were some frozen crab cakes and a handful of veggies— not that that was surprising. Toby’s ability to scavenge started and ended with what he could fit in his nose, and while I wanted to be annoyed with him, practicality came above all else. I was half-way through mopping the floors when the knocking upstairs became impossible to ignore, and when I went to investigate, when the woman finally revealed that she was starving, shitty crab cakes was the only real option. So, I wouldn’t let myself feel guilty as I slid them onto a plate, as I tossed vegetables next to them.
Though, I’d always been too much of a masochist to avoid it for too long.
I’d spent the last 20 minutes assuring myself that this didn’t have to be the end of the world. I wouldn’t speak to the woman upstairs, wouldn’t feel sorry for her, wouldn’t be sickened by the blood on the wool of another sacrificial lamb. I wasn’t stupid enough to get caught up between the two of them, but as I started up the stairs with a hot plate, even that was becoming harder to remember.
It was hard to be around anything with a living soul.
It had been so long since I’d been so close to something with a beating heart.
I wouldn’t sleep when the woman was upstairs— my body wouldn’t let me. Downstairs lived that awful fucking door, the stench I would never get out of my lungs. Upstairs lived the sacrifice I had been all too willing to make. I could blame it on a lumpy couch, on not being able to crawl into bed when she was sobbing across the hall, on the annoying creeks that came from her shifting in my brother’s bed. I tried to blame it on anything, but when I finally opened the door, when I truly saw her for the first time in 48 hours, the lies felt useless. Guilt was the only reason I wouldn’t dare climb the stairs— even the frightened rabbit had to know that.
She had sat herself on top of a pile of pillows from my brother’s bed, allowing her the slightest bit of movement from her chained position. Bruises Toby left still covered her face, but the purple marks didn’t do much to detract from her natural appeal. Knotted hair was a far cry from the slick ponytail she used to spot, and her wrinkled clothes wouldn’t accentuate the curves they normally did. Still, even from our pit of hell, I found myself getting caught on her dark eyes, on the smattering of freckles along her cheeks, on the perfectly imperfect birthmark along her neck. As desperately as I wanted to remember her the way she looked when Toby dragged her into the house, I couldn’t help but see her as the same woman Toby dragged me to see weeks before, the one I had watched from outside her bedroom window.