And when he rises moments later and I open my eyes, his hands are on either side of my head trapping me as he pushes into me and I’m filled with him, his cock inside me, his body on top of mine, his eyes watching me and I think he knows too now. He knows what they did. He must.
But it doesn’t matter. Not right now.
Nothing matters but this, him inside me, and when I feel him come, I hear the sounds he makes when he doesn’t utter a word, and I watch him and I take those final, punishing thrusts as he empties inside me and I think how fucked up everything is. How fucked up everything but this is.
27
Hayden
I stay inside her for a long time afterward just looking at her. She watches me, too, and I think about her in all of this and I can’t think about what I read in that letter. What it means. I just look at her and she’s so fucking beautiful and I think I’ll never get close enough to her.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” she says. “At your office.”
“I know.”
Silence descends again.
“Why did you go to the chapel and not the cemetery?” I ask.
Her gaze drifts past me to the papers from inside that blood-red envelope that have fallen off the bed and onto the floor.
“I don’t know. I always go to the chapel. Every year since she...” She furrows her brow, quiet again, then returns her gaze to mine. “Nora gave me the drink that night. Told me to finish it. It wasn’t Jonas.”
She said that earlier too. At the chapel.
“You don’t remember right,” I tell her. “You were drugged.”
She shakes her head, rubs her face with both hands. “She told him to do it, Hayden. When he hesitated. When you found us.”
“No.” I feel the lump in my throat.
“It’s true.”
“She told him to rape you?”
Her forehead wrinkles. “I don’t know.”
“Think!”
“Blood on the stone. Virgin blood on the altar. Mine.”
Blood on the stone. Except in the end, it was Nora’s.
“She’s dead.” I get up out of the bed. “In the ground. You’re not going to do this to her.” I don’t look at the envelope or its contents on the floor as I head into the bathroom to shower.
“You saw the letter.”
I stop at the door between the two rooms but only momentarily. I walk into the bathroom and close the door behind me but before I’m even in the shower, the door opens, and Persephone is inside.
I switch on the shower.
“I think he loved her,” she says.
My jaw tightens and my hands fist. “You don’t want to do this,” I warn without looking at her.
“I think they both did.”
At that, I spin around, put my hand on her chest and walk her backward to the wall.
Her hands wrap around my forearm but I’m not hurting her, just keeping her there. Warning her.
“Your father raped my sister. Even if she didn’t say no, she was fifteen.”
“I don’t know what he did. I hope he wakes up so I can ask him. But you read her letter. You know there was someone else. Someone she loved.”
I swallow, grit my teeth. I let her go, turning, running my hand through my hair still wet with rain. I spin to face her. “Who?”
She cowers back and I wonder what I look like. How crazed I must appear.
“Tell me who.” She’s mute. “There’s no one else. No one!” I snap. Fuck. “Get in the shower.”
Obediently, she walks into the shower and I follow. She stands beneath the flow looking at me, studying me. Pitying me?
I watch her. My brain is going a thousand miles a minute. I pour shower gel into my hands and lather them up. I scrub her shoulders, her arms, her breasts then turn her, and I wash her back. I slide my hand between her legs to clean her then set both forearms against the wall on either side of her face.
She turns her head, shifts her gaze so our eyes meet.
We stay like this for a minute. I want to be sure she hears what I say.
“You are not my enemy, Persephone. I’m warning you to keep it that way.”
I mean what I’m saying. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want her hurt even if there’s no ending I see where she will walk away unscathed.
You know there was someone else. Someone she loved.
I shake my head, dislodge the thought as I switch off the water and step out, grabbing a towel for myself without looking back as I wrap it around my hips and walk back into the bedroom. There, I go into the closet to find the clothes I’d brought neatly folded and put on a pair of jeans.
A phone rings inside and I try to remember where my cell phone is. I’d left it in the SUV. This must be Persephone’s.
I pull a sweater over my head as I walk back into the bedroom to watch Persephone dig into the pocket of her coat to retrieve the phone.
It starts to ring again, and she looks at it, her face a little paler.
“Who is it?” I ask, coming up behind her.
She glances at me as I read the screen. Unknown caller.
I take the phone from her hands and swipe the green bar to answer.
“Hello.”
A girl sniffles on the other end of the line. Persephone is watching me, eyes wide.
“Who is this?” I ask.
“Is…Where’s Percy?”
“Who is this?” I repeat.
“Where’s my sister?” the voice breaks.
It’s Lizzie.
I put the call on speaker. “Persephone’s here. You’re on speaker phone.”
“Percy?” Lizzie asks meekly.
“Lizzie!” Persephone grabs the phone and puts it to her ear. “Lizzie, are you okay? Where are you?”
Silence as she listens to her sister.
“Stay there. Lock the door and stay there and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m leaving right now.” It’s quiet again, and Persephone nods. “Yes, okay. It’s okay. I’m coming. Just don’t open the door for anyone but me.” She disconnects and turns to me. “I have to go.”
She looks around wildly, then picks up her coat and begins to put it on.
I grab her arm to stop her. “What’s going on?”
“My sister’s in trouble. She’s at a hotel. I have to go, Hayden. She’s scared.”
“Put some clothes on,” I tell her, taking the coat. “What hotel?”
She tells me the name of the place and the town, which is almost a two-hour drive. She looks at the wet clothes discarded on the floor.
I walk her into the closet, choose the first sweater and jeans I see, and she’s dressed in a few minutes. We’re about to walk out when she stops.
“Wait. I need…she doesn’t have clothes.”
I process but don’t ask the obvious question.
She goes back into her closet to retrieve some things and while she does, I pick up the red envelope and the papers that were inside it and shove them all into my pocket.
“My phone’s in the SUV. I’ll send some men—”
She shakes her head. “She’ll think they’re with him.”
“I’ll just make sure they watch the room.”