Catching Pretty (Lovely Broken Doll #2)

9. Ava

AVA

I jolted awake, gasping for air like I’d been drowning. My body felt heavy, sluggish, but my mind quickly caught up, the familiar bedroom around me spinning into focus as I lay on the bed.

My prison .

The last thing I remembered was… touching myself and then… the gas—thick, suffocating. My throat felt raw, my lungs still burning from the inside out.

He stopped me from coming.

I looked down.

Fuck, I was in the same dress as before but he’d taken my fucking panties.

Between my legs, my inner thighs were soaked and I was leaking onto the covers.

There was an ache in my pussy. Like… like he’d done something to me while I was under. I felt stretched, used, like he’d filled me.

A heated shiver slid down my spine and more moisture leaked onto my thighs .

He’d stopped me from coming, put me under, and then he used my pussy?

Did he use his fingers? Or his cock?

What did it say about me that a part of me liked not knowing? That a twisted thrill ran down my spine at all the potential ways he might have debased me.

But one thing I knew for certain was he hadn’t let me come.

I was so turned on. So desperately unsatisfied. So hungry it felt like my body was turning on itself, the need clawing under my skin, mingling with the rage simmering just beneath the surface.

I could barely think past the hollow ache in my core. The need was primal, scratching at my insides like a beast, my body demanding to be fucked.

Bastard. He did that on purpose.

I leaped out of bed, my legs unsteady but driven by fury, and stormed toward the mirror.

He had to be watching. He always was.

“What’s your fucking game, huh?” I spat, glaring into the mirror, reflecting back my crazed wide eyes and hair wild around my face. “You sick fuck, tell me!”

The silence in the room was deafening, pressing down on me as I waited for a response, half daring him to show himself.

Speakers in the ceiling crackled to life, the sound making my stomach flip.

His voice followed, deep, smooth, and all too familiar. It slithered through the room like a serpent, making my skin crawl and yet at the same time, making me press my thighs together .

“You only get to come,” Ty’s voice echoed, cold and detached, “during therapy.”

His words were casual, like he was talking about something as simple as the weather. But the weight of them sank into me, like a heavy stone dropping into the pit of my stomach.

Therapy. The word twisted into something vile, something dark.

My fists clenched, trembling with a mix of rage and desperation, as I paced in front of the mirror, my dress swishing around my slick thighs, my nipples brushing painfully against the silky material.

“Therapy?” I shouted. “You think starving me of an orgasm will make me agree to that ?”

He chuckled—the asshole chuckled . “I guess we’ll find out, huh?”

“You cruel bastard, you’re fucking insane if you think I’ll ever bend to you!”

Tears welled up in my eyes, blurring the edges of my vision as the full weight of my fear, anger, and desperation crashed over me, too powerful to hold back any longer.

I was breaking apart from the inside, every emotion I had bottled up bursting through me like a dam that had finally given way. I banged my fists against the glass, sobbing uncontrollably, my voice trembling with the rawness of my plea.

The man behind that glass wasn’t the boy I knew, the one who protected me. But he was in there, I could feel it, buried under this darkness, trapped beneath everything Ty had become.

“Please, let me go,” I whispered, pressing both palms to the glass, feeling the divide between us like a wound. “The boy I knew is still in there. You . The one who would never hurt me. The one who kept me safe, who cared for me when no one else did.”

Silence echoed through the room, the tension so thick I could barely breathe.

His breathing came through the speakers, uneven, like he was struggling with something, like a part of him was trying to break through.

“Do you remember?” I continued, my voice cracking as I tried to push through to him—to Scáth, my Scáth. “The nights you stayed with me, watched over me, made sure I was never alone. You promised me we’d run away together one day, far from all of this. Where’s that promise? What happened to it?”

My fingers curled against the glass. I could almost feel him—so close, yet so far away.

The static in the speakers shifted, his breath heavy, but I couldn’t stop. I had to reach him.

“You’re not this… monster,” I said, pleading, my voice low and desperate. “I know you think you’ve changed, that you’re different, but… you’re still the same deep down. I know you are. You’re still the boy I knew… the man I love…”

I closed my eyes, pressing harder against the glass as if I could reach him through sheer force of will.

A low, bitter laugh rippled through the speakers, sending a chill down my spine.

“The boy you knew?” His voice dripped with cold disdain. “He’s dead, Ava. That part of me? It’s gone. I’m all that’s left. ”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head as my chest tightened. “You want me to believe that, but I don’t. I won’t .”

I closed my eyes again, feeling the heat of my tears sliding down my cheeks as the weight of it all pressed down on me.

What if Scáth was truly lost? What if Ty was right, and somehow, he had “killed” Scáth—his good side—buried him so deep that there was no coming back? What if this man, this monster standing behind the glass, was all I had left?

The thought gripped me with a terror so intense I almost broke down right there.

No. I couldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t.

I forced myself to take a breath, swallowing back the sob rising in my throat. I had to keep the faith, had to cling to the hope that Scáth was still in there somewhere.

I wasn’t going to give up on him, no matter how much Ty tried to convince me otherwise. I couldn’t let Ty win.

I would find a way to bring Scáth back to me, and once I did, we would figure this out together. We’d find a way to keep Ty at bay, to lock him away where he couldn’t hurt either of us again.

My chest ached with fear, but I wasn’t giving up on Scáth. Not now. Not ever.

“Please…” I begged, my voice barely audible as it cracked with desperation. “Let me go. We can find another way. We can—”

“There is no other way ,” Ty’s voice boomed through the speaker.

The finality of his words crushed me, hollowing out the last fragile thread of hope. Silence settled between us like a suffocating weight, pressing down on my chest .

I leaned my forehead against the glass, the cool surface offering no comfort as my breath fogged up the glass, blurring my reflection. I wasn’t sure I could take any more.

Ty sighed through the speaker, a soft exhale that rippled through the room. It was the closest thing to regret I’d ever heard from him.

“Perhaps I have been… too hard on you,” he said, his voice softened, just enough to make me pause. “Perhaps you need a carrot, not just the stick.”

A flicker of hope ignited inside me, fragile and fleeting, but it was enough to make my heart skip.

I pressed my palms harder against the glass, straining toward him. Maybe this was it—the small crack in his armor, the chance to reach the man I once knew.

“Yes?” The word tumbled out of me, hope making my throat tight.

“With every therapy session, more and more of the house will be open to you.”

My pulse quickened. Freedom. It sounded like freedom, even if it was wrapped in chains.

I pushed harder against the glass, as if I could somehow force myself through it, force myself closer to him.

“And when I’m done with therapy?” I dared to ask, my voice no louder than a breath.

There was another pause, the kind that gnawed at the edges of my sanity.

Then his voice came through the speaker, colder this time, sharper. “When you’re done… then, and only then, will we leave this place.”

The air seemed to rush from my lungs as my chest tightened, and the tiny flame of hope I’d nurtured withered .

I felt the floor beneath me fall away, as if I were sinking into the darkness of this house all over again.

Leave this place… The words tasted like poison. Because I had to go through hell first. The therapy. The memories. The red couch.

Panic crawled up my throat. Already I could feel the cursed velvet beneath my fingertips, could already smell the drug seeping into my skin, my mind, making me lose control.

My stomach twisted as the thought of those buried memories surfacing made my blood run cold.

How could I face that room again? How could I face the things I wasn’t ready to remember?

But I had no choice. Ty was making sure of that, bending me until I would break.

I forced myself to breathe, to pull air into my lungs even though everything inside me screamed to run, to fight, to get away.

Maybe, just maybe, if I agreed to this, if I went through the therapy, Scáth would come back to the surface. Maybe it would awaken him, bring him back to me. I had to believe that.

I bit down on the wave of nausea and nodded, barely managing to choke out the words.

“Okay.” It was a whisper of defeat. “I’ll go back to therapy.”