Catching Pretty (Lovely Broken Doll #2)

20. The Warden

THE WARDEN

I held out another vial to Ava, knowing what it meant. Knowing that she’d hate me for it.

And she did, standing there in the cursed nightgown I forced her to wear, her eyes burning into me, like the hatred she carried for me was an actual, physical heat.

I’d prepared myself for this, steeled myself against her hatred, against feeling anything at all.

But it was harder than I ever imagined to be the target of her disgust—her loathing. It dug under my skin in ways I wasn’t equipped for.

Her fingers brushed against mine when she took the vial, sending a shiver through me, one I couldn’t suppress fast enough. My body betrayed me every time she was near.

For a second, she gripped the vial in her hand, her forearm trembling, her knuckles white. I thought she was going to throw it, just like she had before. Smash it against the wall and unleash that fury I’d seen flickering behind her eyes since I’d brought her here.

But she didn’t. She pulled out the stopper and drank down the vial in one long gulp, her throat working against the liquid.

I watched her, my chest tight, desperate to say something, anything, to bridge the impossible distance between us.

She frowned, her nose scrunching.

“I added strawberry flavor,” I said, the words tumbling out too eagerly, my voice awkward in the silence. “It won’t affect the active ingredients, but… I just thought…”

I trailed off, watching her reaction, searching for anything in her expression that might show she remembered liking the sweet red fruit. Or maybe she didn’t anymore.

It had been five years. Five long years. Too long.

She’d grown into a woman, and the only way I’d known her was through the fractured lens of stalking her after I’d escaped from prison, watching from afar like a mere ghost tethered to her life.

And then I’d kidnapped her. The weight of that settled in my chest like a stone.

For a moment, jealousy ripped through me. Ciaran had been the one by her side, watching her every day. He got to be her shadow.

Hell, she even called him that now. Her Scáth .

It was a name I could never claim, not now, not after everything.

There was flicker of something in Ava’s eyes, maybe confusion, maybe… gratitude?

I couldn’t tell. Emotions had become a foreign language to me after so many years of deadening them, callousing myself over, like burying them under thick layers of ice .

At least, I thought they were dead.

But Ava…

Everything about Ava made my nerves raw and jangled. Like all the emotions I’d repressed over the last five years were all resurfacing at once, battering underneath a sheet of ice that was getting thinner with every second in her presence.

I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Any of it.

But I had to. I had to be her rock while she fell apart.

I had to be her safety as I broke her, so I could put her back together again.

My eyes never left her, watching every subtle shift in her body.

I noticed the tremble in her knees first, the way her breath caught as the drug started to take hold. Every little thing about her, I noticed.

And I was ready when she fell, catching her in my arms before she hit the ground.

Holding her close, my heart screamed with apologies that I’d never let pass my lips.

I’m sorry, Ava. I love you too much to stop now.

I carried her through the mansion, the eerie silence broken only by the sound of my footsteps echoing off the wooden floors. Every creak of the ancient wood, every shift of the shadows felt like it carried the weight of a hundred unseen eyes watching me.

This place, once grand, now felt like a tomb—filled with memories that should have stayed buried.

But it wasn’t just the house. It was the past clawing at my heels, threatening to pull me under with every step I took .

Especially as I passed the familiar polished wood of my brother’s now empty room.

I kicked open the door into Ciaran’s bedroom, the walls covered in posters of metal bands—Slipknot, Metallica, Iron Maiden—the kind of noise that made my head hurt.

The heavy smell of cigarette smoke hit me before I even spotted him, lounging by the open window like he didn’t have a care in the world.

His back was half turned to me, one leg hanging over the side of the window, the other propped up casually on the sill.

For a moment, I wished I could be him—untouchable, careless, cool, like the world couldn’t affect his fun no matter what it threw his way.

But I couldn’t be like him. I was too different. Too sensitive. I cared too much about everything.

“You stole my biology textbook,” I snapped, not bothering with a greeting.

I slammed the door behind me with enough force to rattle the posters on the walls and stormed across the room.

Ciaran glanced at me, flicking ash from his cigarette out the window, completely unfazed by my outburst.

“Nice to see you, too, brother,” he muttered, barely lifting his eyes.

I grabbed him by the collar, yanking him back from the window so he had no choice but to look at me.

“Where is it?” I demanded, my voice tight, my frustration boiling over.

Ciaran didn’t even flinch. He just flicked his cigarette out the window, watching it fall onto the gravel below before turning his lazy gaze back to me. “Chill, nerd. It’s just a textbook.”

“It’s mine . ”

Ciaran smirked, shrugging my hands off him like none of this mattered. And to him, it didn’t. Not anymore. Not since Ma died.

I’d thrown myself into studying after she passed. I needed something to focus on, something to drown out the emptiness she left behind. Debate team, science club, the fencing team, endless hours buried in textbooks. I thought maybe if I kept my head down, if I stayed busy enough, the grief wouldn’t catch up to me.

Ciaran… he went the opposite way.

He lit cigarettes instead of candles, downed whiskey instead of tears. Stole our father’s Rolls Royce to impress college girls or drove his damned motorbike recklessly through the county like he was invincible.

We used to be inseparable, almost impossible to tell us apart—we’d play the most outrageous pranks on our servants, tricking them as we pretended to be the same boy.

Our ma’s death several years ago was like a lightning strike, swift and cruel, cleaving us into two different people.

But he was still my brother.

And I missed him.

Even though he pissed me off more than anyone ever could, I still missed him.

Before I could yell at him some more, the sound of our father’s car crunching over the gravel below cut through the tension like a knife.

Ciaran’s smug look faltered for a second, a flash of something close to fear crossing his face.

I slammed his window shut before our father could notice us.

We both froze, staring out through the glass as the old doors of the Rolls Royce groaned open.

Our father, ever the stoic figure, stepped out in his usual crisp, tailored suit .

But it wasn’t just him.

The other passenger door opened and out stepped a girl.

She had dark hair, long and slightly tousled, catching the afternoon light as it brushed across her face like a soft whisper.

I sucked in a breath, my heart beating faster in my chest.

The way she nervously tucked her hair behind her ear, her delicate face framed by that cascade of dark waves—she was… ethereal.

She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

“She’s hot,” Ciaran said, his voice cutting through my awe like a blunt knife.

“She makes the stars pale by comparison,” I muttered under my breath, feeling a pull inside me I couldn’t quite explain.

Ciaran let out a sharp snort, giving me a sideways look. “That’s what I fucking said.”

With my nose pressed against the glass, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her as she stood there, staring up at the towering gothic structure that was Blackthorn Hall.

There was fear in her eyes, uncertainty, and all I wanted to do was protect her. To promise her that nothing in this godforsaken house would ever touch her.

“Dibs,” Ciaran declared, his own nose pressed against the glass now, mirroring mine.

I turned and shoved his shoulder hard. “She’s a person, Ciaran. You can’t just call dibs on her.”

“I can and I fucking did, nerd.” He shoved me back, his tone light, but his eyes gleamed with something darker, something more possessive.

Ciaran and I had been fighting for Ava ever since. For a while, I’d been winning.

But it appeared I had now lost .

I’d waited too long. Stayed away too long. Taken too much time in making sure everything was perfect. But perfection was a lie I’d told myself. A lie to mask my cowardice.

While I was planning, Ciaran was acting.

He broke his promise—the promise he made because of what I did for him . The sacrifice I made for him .

And now? Now he’d stolen her from me. He got to her first, wormed his way into her heart, into her soul. He had tainted her, twisted everything that was meant to be mine. Corrupted her in ways I couldn’t undo.

And the worst part? She loved him for it.

It was in the way she said his name, as if it carried a weight mine never could. It cut me, sharper than any blade.

Her eyes—when she thought I was him—burned with a kind of longing I’d never seen directed at me. She looked at him like he was her salvation.

What did that make me?

I wasn’t her protector. I wasn’t her savior. I was the one who let her slip through my fingers. And no matter how many ghosts haunted this place, none haunted me more than the thought of her loving him.

I’d lost her to him, and I wasn’t sure I could ever get her back.

The bitter truth gnawed at me, hollowing out the pit of my stomach, as I carried her to the place that haunted her.

The pain I would force upon her—even for her own good—would drive a wedge even further between us.

I could already see it happening, feel the distance between us growing. Every time she looked at me, she saw her captor, her tormentor. Her warden .

Not the boy who loved her, not the one who was trying to save her. No.

She saw the monster in me.

It didn’t matter, though. Saving Ava was the most important thing. More important than my pride, more important than my heart, more important than the future I had dreamed of with her.

Because that’s what it might come down to in the end. To save her, I’d have to destroy parts of her, rip out the darkness buried deep inside, expose the wounds that had festered for years.

I’d break her to rebuild her, and she might never forgive me for it.

But I had no other choice.

Even if it meant losing her forever.

I lowered Ava to the couch, taking my time as I arranged her limbs and hair. Even though she couldn’t move, tears shone in her eyes and her breath was jagged and shallow. She was terrified.

I reached for the buttons of her nightgown, but my fingers felt thick and clumsy.

As I undressed her, my heart pounded like I was a scared teenage boy again. I couldn’t help but stare at her nakedness.

At her creamy skin, marred only by fading rope burns on her wrists.

Her wide, frantic eyes glazed over, like she was staring into the jagged maw of whatever horrors lay buried in her past.

Her fear hit me square in the chest, knocking the breath out of me. The fear in her eyes, the way her body trembled even in its paralysis—it was unbearable.

I wanted to turn away, to pretend I wasn’t the one doing this to her.

But I couldn’t look away. I had put her here, forced her into this. So I had to be here with her.

Her pain wasn’t just hers—it was mine, a sharp, twisting knife that dug into my gut every time her breath hitched or her eyes glazed over with terror.

It made me want to pull her into my arms, tell her it was all over, that she didn’t have to do this anymore.

For a moment, fury surged within me—directed entirely at myself. What the hell are you doing to her? How could you put her through this agony?

Bastard. Evil. Monster.

The self-loathing clawed at me, but I pushed it down. I had to. This was the only way. The only way to save her.

She had to fall into the depths of hell before she could climb her way back out reborn—but I would do it with her. I would not leave her side. Even when she begged me to. Even when she hated me for it.

“It’s me , Ava,” I whispered, my voice breaking as I pressed kisses down her naked body, licking away the ghost of his hands, of his filth. “It’s my mouth. My tongue.”

She was already soaked when I reached her pussy lips, her inner thighs coated with her arousal.

The glistening proof that this was actually working—the therapy, the unraveling of her past—was the only thing that kept me going.

It was the single thread I clung to, the faint signal beneath her fear that told me I wasn’t just torturing her for nothing. This wasn’t cruelty for cruelty’s sake. It was a means to an end. A way to cleanse her, to rewrite her history.

Every tremble, every flicker of pain in her eyes, wasn’t just reliving the worst moments of her life—it was erasing them, piece by piece.

I was recording over her memories with my hands and my tongue, wiping them clean. Flushing out the darkness that had burrowed so deep inside her. If I could just suck that poison out of her mind, no matter how much it hurt in the process, then maybe— maybe —I could save her.

Her juices running down her thighs and soaking the couch was proof that this pain had a purpose. Proof that I wasn’t just breaking her but fixing her.

Her musky scent drew me in, inspiring a primal need in me that took over as I buried my face into her folds and thrust my tongue into her entrance.

“My tongue, Ava,” I muttered against her clit. “I won’t stop until there’s only me .”

Like a conductor, I slowly, achingly brought her body up to the edge, using all the minute signs of her body to guide me—the way her pupils dilated and her breath quickened. The hardening of her nipples and the goosebumps that scattered across her skin.

Deep down, beneath the need to save her, I had a selfish reason.

A hope—no, more than that, a desperate craving—that this therapy would do more than just cleanse her of the past.

That it would strip away any trace of my brother from her. Erase the imprint he’d left on her mind, on her body. I wanted her to forget the way her heart had learned to beat for him, the loyalty she’d mistakenly attached to him.

She wasn’t meant for him. She was meant for me .

Before Ava tipped over the edge, I pulled away and quickly stripped so that I was as naked and vulnerable as she was.

I pulled myself up her body, my cock naturally falling between her legs. The need to thrust into her surged in me at the feel of her soaked entrance, but I pushed it down.

Ava came first. Whatever my needs were, they came second.

She looked through me, seeing the ghost of the man who hurt her, fear and pain clouding her eyes, spilling over as tears.

I gripped her chin. “Eyes on me, Ava.”

Her gaze darted wildly around, then locked on mine. Her pupils focused, and the darkness cleared.

The corner of my mouth tipped up. “There you are, my hummingbird.”

I licked the salt from her cheeks and I held her, kept her eyes on mine, willing her to stay with me as I pushed into her.