Banging snatches my attention from above, and I stop breathing. Who is Patience, and what does it mean?
The door swings open and Jack steps forward. He still looks battered, but you can see he has attempted to tidy the wounds that are fresh on his face.
“Persephone fucking Hendry. The perfect little princess. How much money you are worth?” He tsks, shaking his head. “They’ll be very happy.”
“Who are they?” I ask, and when he reaches out to touch me, I rear backward and sneer. “Don’t fucking touch me!” He swings backward as the back of his hand swipes across my face. My face numbs and thuds with pain, blood filling my mouth.
I spit it out onto the ground. “Fuck you.”
He hits me again.
And again. Until I am sure that I’m going to pass out.
I’m curled on the ground, cradling my head. Jack finally pulls me up to my feet. “You’re going in the shed. You’re going to give me my own show.”
I yank my arm out of his grip. “Fuck—” A sharp needle stabs my arm, and I fall backward as fluid pulses through my blood. The ceiling spins as Jack’s face fuzzes in front of me. He triples. “Get used to this, Perse. This is how Patience does things.” The room spins.
I see grass.
Heavy boots.
Jeans.
His voice sounds deeper, funny, like a broken record or a flat battery. Swirls morph in my vision, everything doubling in effect. My head is slammed against the ground, my body frozen, and my head fuzzy. I don’t know. Where am I? What’s happening?
I’m yanked up to my feet, the smell of sweet marijuana filling the air.
“Dance,” Jack says, but his voice is distorted.
I can hear the distinct tune of Tool’s “Schism” with smoke clouding my vision. Or maybe that’s my brain. Everything hurts as my body sways from side to side. My arm throbs where the sting hit it and I slowly gather what has happened. Motherfucker drugged me.
He grips below my shirt and tears it off, and then works on my pants. Tears roll down my face as I fail to stop him.
Fail to fight. Being robbed of my control. I’m going to die here, or, at the very least, wish I did. Jack comes in again, and I watch as he brings the needle to his arm and blows out a cloud of smoke, injecting himself. He pulls my body into him and dances around the barn with me, lost in a drugged haze, before shoving me down onto the hay. The particles fly up around me, my eyes crossing together as I focus on one stick that’s floating down over his shoulder, slowly dropping and dropping. My eyelids flutter, my vision being cut black every two seconds as I fight sleep.
Jack bites at my breasts, and just as he swipes my underwear aside, King’s face appears over his shoulder, and I know I must be dead. There’s a lot of yelling, but I don’t know.
In a perfect world, King would save me, not want to kill me.
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be lying here, drugged and vulnerable, all for what? For the mistakes of my parents?
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be a broken girl trying to find her own way.
But this isn’t a perfect world. King isn’t here to save me, but I go with it. My blinking slows as I lean up on my elbows and watch as King’s figure moves fluently in triples. All I see are King and Jack, and then an explosion of blood. My tongue sneaks out, just as Killian and Delila drop down on either side of me. Metal slips over the tip of my tongue. “Revenge?” I whisper to myself, only to myself, because this is a dream. This is not real.
“Yeah, Little Bird,” Killian whispers, only it echoes into my head. “Fucking revenge.” But then Killian is being torn away and so is Delila.
I inhale, recognizing the smell of fresh burnt ash, leather, and honey. King picks me up in his arms and cradles me into his chest. My head tilts back as I finally lose myself in a deep slumber.
I wasn’t saved by Prince Charming. I was saved by a villain, and fuck being on his warpath.
My mouth feels like cotton, my limbs cemented into the mattress. I groan, raising my body off the bed. The smell hits me first, and then I scrub my eyes and open them. The large glass window to the left. The black leather bed, leather dresser, and large TV. The black walls and large white triangle of Kiznitch painted into the wall above the bed.
“Shit.”
The door opens, and King walks through, pausing when he sees I’m awake.
“What happened?” I ask, running my hand through my hair. It feels like straw and I smell. Badly.
“You don’t remember?” he says, attentively stepping inside the room.
“Not really.” I reach for the glass of OJ and take a sip slowly, rejoicing in the cool pulp juice. “God, I smell.”
King shakes his head, and when our eyes connect, we do that thing we always do. When our eyes say the words that our mouths cannot, I see the strain on his face. His pupils dilate, and his jaw sets to stone.
“You can go for a shower, P,” he whispers, stepping forward. “But I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
I squeeze the sheets. “That bad, huh?”
King chuckles. “Yeah, baby. That bad. Come on.” He reaches for me, my hand connecting to his. It’s a small gesture with so much meaning. That’s the thing with King and me. We write our story in invisible ink, so no one else can read it. He tries to carry me to the small steps near his bathroom, but I push him away.
“Stubborn,” he murmurs, and for a brief second, I see the old Kingston I knew all those years ago. Once we’re in the bathroom, he turns the faucet on and waits for it to heat up, closing the glass door. “I wiped your face down when you were asleep. I mean,” he kicks down the toilet cover and takes a seat, “Delila wanted to give you a full-on bath, but I almost killed her, so she didn’t try again.”
“King,” I whisper-scold, my heart clenching in my chest. He looks so…tormented.
He shakes his head and gestures to the shower.
I smile, taking a small step inside and undressing while I’m in here. It’s stupid because King has seen me naked before, but I’m not feeling very anything right now, and I need to sit in here alone. I close the glass door, knowing he hasn’t moved from his spot.
“Music,” I murmur, knowing he would hear me.
The door opens, and then closes, before opening and closing again. The sound of the sound dock picking up his phone dings through the air as I reach for the soap. Seconds pass before “Evil Angel” by Breaking Benjamin starts playing. My eyes close and I inhale, exhale through the waves of music surrounding me. Music has always and will always be the main part of me and how I express myself and vent my energy. I think that’s the same with everyone in Midnight Mayhem. I work on the shampoo and conditioner, rubbing it through my hair. Squeezing soap onto my palm, I scrub my face and then wince when I feel how bruised my cheek is. After I rinse off, I slowly slip to the ground, pulling my knees up to my chest. The door cracks open and King looks down at me. I draw my knees in closer. His eyes don’t drop. He doesn’t eat me alive with lust. He’s tortured and guarded and…broken.
Breaking Benjamin continues to fill the silence between us as he kneels down and reaches for my chin. The water cascades over my face, hiding the tears that are free-falling. “I guess that wasn’t going to be the last time you kneeled for me.” I try to joke about the words he used when I first formally met him on the boat, but hiccup and choke on my words when tears tremble out of me. “I remember everything.” I swipe across my cheeks even though I don’t need to.