He curses and lets go. The alleyway is sparsely lit with the headlights from passing cars. I see his huge silhouette before I see the man. The myth. The shadow. He hasn't changed much since we last met. He’s still six-foot-four of hard muscle and discordant sin. With steely eyes and a dirty blond buzz-cut to penetrate my surfaces more cleanly.
“First I’ll make you bleed, and then I’ll make you heal,” he repeats slowly.
I glance at the bodies on the ground.
Not if I make you bleed first.
4
Anna
The heart of a woman’s innocence beats to a lie.
That lie is a circus traveler throwing sharp knives at a spinning wheel. One slip-up and your fabric is pierced, flooding you with a truth you never wanted, and polluting what’s left of your soul.
The first time I saw him I was stumbling out of Eve’s apartment with last night’s red dress slipping from my shoulders. I was drunk on sex, life, a lack of sleep, too many margaritas… My thoughts were full of a man called Manuel who’d rocked my bed and my world. It was never going to be a long-term thing; we both knew the rules, so we’d savored each other like hope and honey for the short time we were allowed.
That’s the last time I tasted pure happiness, before the blindfold was torn from my eyes and the circus traveler did his thing. That night signified the final bow for a woman who, for twenty-five years, had been blessed with roses and encores.
The curtain fell for good the moment I caught Joseph Grayson’s attention.
Standing on the sidewalk by the black SUV, stone still, with a haunting presence about him, like a figure carved into an English mountainside. I couldn't tear my eyes away, and he couldn't tear his eyes from me, not even when his companion—the dark-haired devil my best friend seemed so enamored with—started talking to me.
He made me afraid. More afraid than I’d ever felt in my life. More afraid than the night my mother died, and the cold blue walls of loneliness turned her bedroom into a prison cell. He was a beautiful savage. A terrible monster… And he wore his danger like a Congressional Medal of Honor.
The wheel spun; the air parted as knives were thrown. I didn't know him, but he was the kind of corruption who would govern my world. In truth, he’d already started. I was drenched in the scent of another, but it was him who commanded all of my attention.
I flinch at the memory as he takes another sharp right.
“Are you injured?”
He’s driving fast—one hand loose on the wheel, the other clenched around the stick. His deep drawl is demanding answers, but offering nothing in return. I’m huddled up against the window, staring out at a blur of lights. The scent of his sin is an unwelcome backseat passenger. The front of his T-shirt is more red than white, and his fists are bleeding with another man’s blood.
“Do you need medical attention?” he demands again. “How bad did they hurt you?”
Not enough. Not as much as I deserve.
“I’m okay,” I croak.
There’s a pause. “You still high? What the fuck did you take this time?”
“Your lack of conscience.” I shoot him a look that's just as scathing. “The same thing you and Santiago built your kingdom of depravity on.”
More silence.
More time to drink in his dirty, savage profile without interruption.
His jaw is too rigid, too perfect for a man like him. Long straight nose, cut cheekbones, a golden tan and black tattoos on both biceps. He’s a cold heartbreaker all rusted up with sin. Captain America went rogue and landed in the devil’s playground.
“Five minutes, Luna,” I hear him rumble. “Five minutes later and there wouldn’t have been much of your ass left to save.”
I press my burning cheek against the glass and say nothing. That’s another thing I hate about him: I constantly find myself in his debt when he’s so complicit in my chaos. Then, I remember his declaration in the alleyway:
“I want the pleasure of breaking you all for myself.”
What a beautiful delusion he has. Why? Because he’ll never get the chance. I’m staying broken. It’s written in a sky that will never shine with stars again.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I say quietly. “But that doesn't mean I’m listening.”
His mask slips for a split-second, and I see the full flood of his frustration. Suddenly, I want to drive him so far away he’ll regret ever wanting to fix me.
“Maybe I was enjoying it… Maybe I wanted those men to do that to me. Maybe I like it rough, like they said. Have you ever stopped to consider that?”
He changes gears with a furious jerk.
“You're a bad fucking liar, Anna.”
To me?
To us?
To the dream of a possibility?
I hear the real accusation in his voice, but I block it out along with everything else.
“Do you want to know how I can tell?” He brakes violently as the lights change from yellow to red. “Because primal screams don't sound pretty, Luna, and yours were ugly as fuck.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms. Luna. He always calls me this, but I’m not deserving of that endearment. There’s nothing whole about me. I’m as empty as that word is complete.
“Open up,” he orders, his voice rough and abrasive like the carpet in the institutions he locks me up in.
“No.”
Never.
“Fucking do it!”
“It’s not your decision to make!” I dig deeper with my nails until I feel the sting.
“Staunch the wound. You’re bleeding out. You’ve been bleeding out for months.”
“This coming from a man who thinks stone-walling is a regular state of mind.”
I press my palms together to hide what I’ve done to myself.
“Tell your shrink what happened to you six months ago. Tell the mirror. Tell God, if you’re a believer. Don't keep it all inside. Trust me on this—”
“Does your skin ever burn when you say His name?” I mock, turning my inner masochism onto him. This man’s lack of morality is scrawled all over the gates of Heaven in crude graffiti. “I talk to God even less than I talk to my shrink.”
“Talk to Eve then.”
I turn back to the window. “I don't even know who she is anymore.”
“New last name, a little older, a little wiser, but the rest is the same.”
“How’s your Greek mythology?” I mutter, tears muddying my vision. “Hades and Persephone were just reincarnated in the twenty-first century.”
“Who gives a shit what they are if they work.”
“I do! She made the biggest mistake of her life marrying that man!” I swipe at my face angrily. “I hate her for making me her collateral. I was guilty by association the minute she fell in love with him. I was abducted because of that bastard, even though he’ll never own up to it.” And you’re just as complicit, I want to add.
“There are no mistakes, Anna, only consequences.”
“Bullshit. You’re all animals!”
“And you're self-destructing.”