“…threatened you…” I finally manage to carve out the words I wanted to tell him earlier. Sharp needles stab at my vocal cords, but it’s not enough. He needs to know. I didn’t leave them because I wanted to. I left because I had to. For him. For all of them. “Couldn’t… let… him… hurt… you…”
Each word is another wound, ripped freshly open and bleeding down into my stomach. I keep them going anyway. He deserves to know. His love was worthy. It’severything.
His love is obsessive and cruel. It’s just as he said. Lex’s love says, ‘if I can’t have you, no one will’.
Those words are imprinted on my soul. Perhaps before my life changed, I would have rejected him. Now… the thought of another woman putting their hands on his skin, of kissing his lips, of fucking herself over his cock… turns my insides to the fiery pits of hell.
If I’m so owned by him that no man is allowed to have me, then he’s so owned by me that one touch from another woman would sign her fucking death warrant.
Lex’s fingers seize against my palm and he turns, looking down at me. Gunmetal gray eyes are wide, pupils blown.
Yeah, baby,I think, trying to offer him a smile.Told you so.You were wrong about me. I have always been yours.I hope he can read the words in my expression because my throat is done.
“Threats?” he repeats the word. “Morpheus threatened you?”
I shake my head and nudge my chin in his direction, a silent correction since I can no longer speak.
“He threatened… us?” he asks. “Nolan and Gio and… me?”
I nod my head, but the action is difficult. Exhaustion pulls at me and I sink even deeper into the mattress and pillows beneath me. Maybe if I were standing, I could have kept my eyes open. But Lex’s punishment has wiped me. My lashes flutter as my hand goes slack in his grip, falling from his cold fingers.
A moment later, he recaptures it and I manage to lift my eyelids as he bows his head. Something wet splashes onto my knuckles and then he presses his mouth to my skin.
I hear his voice, but it starts to fade as sleep rolls in. I want to hear the words—I struggle and fight to remain awake, to listen, to hear him—but it’s too late. My body has hit its limit. My mind fades, oblivion rolling in.
Lex’s words are lost to me as my eyes close and oblivion sweeps me back into the dark that awaits me.
40
GIO
Secrets are an addiction. Once you have one, you can’t help but collect more. Your mother’s not happy in her marriage, but can’t tell anyone because then she’d be ashamed. Your father’s a piece-of-shit abuser, but you can’t tell anyone because then you’d be taken from your mother and she’ll probably die without you. You hate yourself. You envy your friends.
Worst of all, it doesn’t matter how much you laugh and smile and fuck around with your friends. It doesn’t matter that you have your whole life ahead of you. That you’re smart and athletic and actually have a chance to get the fuck out of the shithole small town you’ve lived in your whole life. Sometimes, when you lie in bed at night in the dark, just before you close your eyes for sleep to overtake you… sometimes, you wish you’d never wake up again.
I don’t even remember what my first secret ever was anymore, but I do know that I collect them now. I keep them tucked away and I don’t tell anyone. Because when you open your box of sins, most people run. No one wants the ugly pieces of you, only the perfect, whole parts.
Drugs. Money. Alcohol. And secrets. They’re all the same. The only difference is that some things have outward side effects. No one knows about your secrets but you and the skeletons you bury with them.
My cell buzzes for what has to be the millionth time in as many days, the sound loudly ricocheting off the chipped wooden dresser I tossed it onto last night or maybe the night before. How many days has it been again? One? Two? A week? Feels like an eternity since I last saw her.
I get it now. All that bullshit those dead, old poets spouted about love. When your heart is broken, everything tastes like ash. Even five-hundred-dollar whiskey.
Somewhere in the house, I hear the front door bang open. Definitely not Mama because she left to visit one of her friends—or so I thought I remember her telling me through the closed bedroom door. If it’s my dad, then he’s in a pissed-off mood and for a change, I don’t really give a fuck.
I always knew one of these days we’d end up fighting it out and one of us would end up dead. The way I am right now, it’ll probably be me.
The door to my bedroom slams open, louder than the front door—likely because it’s not muffled by the walls and distance. Instead of my father, however, standing in the doorway, it’s Nolan.
Panting, sweating, and an expression like thunder, he stands there for a moment. I roll my head to the side and know I should probably try to stand, but the room is still spinning from the… I glance at the dresser again as my phone goes off yet again. Huh, guess it wasn’t Nolan calling. Oh, but there’s the empty bottle of whiskey sitting next to a half-empty bottle of tequila. The whiskey was the expensive shit, but when I realized that it tasted like nothing on my tongue, I switched to the cheap-ass, gut-rottequila that’s been sitting in my parents’ cupboard since before I was born.
Can tequila go bad? Maybe that’s why I feel so sick.
“You smell like a dumpster,” Nolan says as he steps farther into the room, reminding me of his presence.
Finally, I do try to sit up and the world spins. I slump back down. “Go’way,” I mumble, shoving a hand out and waving at him.
Nolan shakes his head at me, or maybe he tries to, but I only catch part of the shake before the movement is too much and I have to close my eyes. Even with my lids shut, though, the space around still feels like it’s spinning. My gag reflex engages and I flip onto my side, shuddering.
