22. The Shadow
THE SHADOW
A va tilted back the vial and swallowed down the bitter liquid. The paralytic. The disinhibitor. The poison.
My heart stopped.
“Ava!” I roared, the knife in my hand slipping from my fingers and clattering onto the floor with a hollow distant sound like in a dream.
I was across the room in an instant, grabbing her by the shoulders, crushing her against my chest as if I could will it back out of her.
“What have you done, baby? What have you done?” My voice cracked, the words spilling out before I could stop them. I gripped her tighter, like holding her could somehow undo the damage, erase what she’d just done to herself. To us.
“It’s not too late,” I told her desperately, my hands shaking as I cupped her face. “You can throw it up—”
“No, Scáth,” she interrupted. “I want to do this. I need to. ”
Her eyes burned with conviction, and it killed me because I knew she wasn’t going to back down.
Ty’s voice cut through the haze. “If you love her, trust her.”
I tore my gaze from Ava to him, and the rage that had been simmering in my chest boiled over.
“You.” I let go of Ava to advance on him. “This is your fucking fault.”
His expression stayed maddeningly calm, but I saw the tension in his jaw. “She made the decision, Ciaran.”
“No,” I hissed, my fists curling at my sides. “ You made this happen. You planted the fucking idea in her head. Do you want her to suffer?”
“Of course I don’t!” Ty snapped, finally losing that infuriating control. “It kills me to watch her in pain. But that’s fucking life, Ci. You can’t bubble wrap the ones you love from pain. You can only stand by them, support them, and honor them when they suffer.”
I couldn’t hear him anymore. Red clouded my vision as my arm lifted, ready to break his perfect, stoic face. But before I could swing, a sharp cry broke through the tension.
Ava.
We both turned as the empty vial slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a dull clatter and she began to fall.
Ty moved first, faster than I thought possible, catching her as her legs buckled.
I froze, guilt wrapping around my throat and choking me. I should have been the one to catch her.
Instead, I’d been too busy fighting with my brother to notice the woman I loved being pulled under.
Ty carried her effortlessly, like she weighed nothing, and I followed uselessly as he brought her into her bedroom and laid her on the bed.
When I stepped beside him, he didn’t look up at me. He didn’t even acknowledge that I was there.
His whole attention was on arranging Ava’s body.
He straightened her legs, adjusted her skirt over her thighs. He lay one arm at time at her sides and pushed her beautiful raven locks off her waxen face.
Ava, the woman I loved, was a prisoner in her own body, looking like a doll to be maneuvered this way and it made my stomach turn.
She began to whimper, her breath hitching, her eyes fluttering open and closed as though caught in a nightmare. Her chest rose and fell unevenly, her distress clear and growing.
“Fuck, Ty, make it stop,” I begged, panic ripping through me. I’d never seen her like this before. Never seen her so fragile.
“I can’t.” Ty’s face was calm but lined with something that looked suspiciously like pain. “She just has to get through it.”
“That’s bullshit!” I shouted, grabbing his arm and shaking him. “Fuck you, Ty. We need to help her. Do something.”
His gaze turned sharp, meeting mine with an intensity that stopped me cold, his voice low and dangerous. “You want me to help her?”
“Yes!” I yelled back, desperation clawing at my chest.
Ty turned back to Ava, still fighting the demons of her past, locked away in her body. “You might not want to be here for this, brother . ”
Before I could ask why, Ty began to unbutton her top.
“Don’t you fucking touch her,” I snarled, wrenching Ty’s hand away.
With a move I’d never seen before and with shocking speed, Ty twisted my wrist back, my bone a mere flick away from snapping.
I grabbed his wrist with my other hand in turn and we strained against each other, locked in an impasse.
His eyes were black coals ringed with a sliver of ice in the soft light of Ava’s bedside lamp. “Do you want me to help her or not?”
I froze, every instinct in me screaming to keep fighting, to pull Ty away from her. To shove him against the wall and tell him to keep his fucking hands off her.
She was mine, damn it. Mine to hold, mine to comfort, mine to protect.
But as I stood there, torn between fury and helplessness, I knew that this was what they had done all summer.
Ty knew what to do, how to reach her, how to save her.
And that realization gutted me.
I hated that Ty knew how to bring her back. I hated that he understood her pain in ways I couldn’t, that he was the one she needed in this moment, not me.
It felt like a betrayal, even though I knew it wasn’t. Even though I knew this wasn’t about me, it still pained me to give in.
Another muffled sob tore from Ava’s lips and my chest constricted. The sound of her pain—it ripped me apart.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Okay!” The word burst from me like an explosion, my voice hoarse with frustration and defeat. “Help her. Do whate— just help her.”
Ty didn’t smirk, didn’t gloat like I expected. He only nodded, his focus already back on Ava as if I hadn’t been standing there about to rip him apart.
I felt like a fucking outsider in my own story, forced to watch as my brother—the twin I loved and hated in equal measure—was the one to save her.
A part of me wanted to close my eyes as Ty unbuttoned Ava’s top and pushed it gently to the sides to reveal her bare chest. And yet I could not.
I couldn’t ignore the way Ava shuddered beneath his touch, how her ragged breathing hitched when he murmured her name.
I didn’t know whether it was for Ava’s sake that I watched with rapt attention, to be there for her through this sadism. Or whether it was for mine.
Because as much as this whole fucked-up experiment revolted me, there was no denying Ava’s incredible beauty in the soft lamplight.
Light glowed over her curves, her pink nipples straining, and my cock swelled in my pants.
I froze as Ty sat at her side and dipped his head toward her breasts.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I growled, my fists curling instinctively.
He ignored me as his lips ghosted over her skin, kissing, licking, tasting her. He circled one nipple with his tongue till it glistened wet in the lamplight while grazing his palm over the other.
“I’m here,” he murmured to her, his voice soft, cooing, as if I weren’t even in the room. “It’s me. It’s only me.”
Her breath hitched, her body arching slightly toward him, but her eyes were glassy, staring out into nothing.
I was struck with a horrifying realization: Ava wasn’t here with us. She was back there, reliving her nightmares.
And Ty wasn’t comforting her. He was grounding her. Pulling her back. Anchoring her to the present where she was safe and loved.
And I hated him for it—because it was working.
My heart rate quickened as Ty kissed down her stomach and along the waistband of her skirt.
My fingernails dug into the sides of my thighs as he pushed the hem of her skirt up her legs before licking a long, wet trail from Ava’s knee all the way up her inner thigh.
Before I could protest, before I could even realize what the fuck was happening, Ty pulled aside her panties and buried his face in her pussy.
I stumbled back as my breath caught in my throat with such violence that it felt like I’d been punched in the windpipe.
It was like I was watching this behind glass, the only sound the crashing of my blood in my ears.
Ava lay like a doll as my brother defiled her.
This was how Ty had helped Ava resurface her lost memories, rolling her hard nipple beneath his thumb and forefinger, teasing her clit with his tongue, pushing his fingers into her wet pussy.
This was what he’d spent all those months doing over the summer.
I had been searching dark alleys, black snakelike rivers, the nastiest corners of the internet for her.
Not even in my most twisted nightmares had I imagined this .
It was beyond fucked up, me watching my brother defiling my girlfriend’s body as she lay paralyzed and trapped in her dark nightmares.
And yet a sick twisted surge of heat rushed through me, making my breathing quicken and my cock press painfully against my zipper.
As the air in the bedroom grew thicker and thicker and the sound of Ty’s tongue moving over her pussy grew louder and louder, I found myself clutching to the bedpost to stop myself from tearing him off her and murdering him with my fists.
Ava’s breaths grew shallow and heavy as moans squeezed from her heavy throat. Fuck. I knew that sound well.
Ava was close to coming.
No. That was mine . Her orgasms were mine.
I shoved Ty out of the way so suddenly he didn’t have time to counter me. He landed with a thud on the ground.
I pulled her panties out the way, sucked her clit into my mouth, and plunged my fingers into her soaking pussy and curled them around, coaxing her over the edge.
Mine.
I felt her pussy ripple around my fingers, felt the warm gush of more wetness over my mouth, felt her shudder. The only sound she made was a heavy rush of air from her lungs and a muffled noise in her throat.
When her body stopped twitching, I carefully pulled my fingers from her, my gaze roaming over her, trying to gauge where she was in her head, trying to read her the way Ty seemed to read her.
A soft sigh escaped her lips, and her tense shoulders sank against the pillow. Relief washed over me. Whatever nightmare she’d been trapped in had finally released its grip on her.
Thank God.
But as her breathing evened out, the reality of what my own brother had just done to her hit me like a freight train.
The relief twisted into fury, my chest tightening as the anger surged hot and fast. I turned to Ty, who was calmly picking himself up from the floor, as if nothing had happened.
“Is that what you fucking did to her all summer?” I growled, my voice barely more than a rasp, low and dangerous.
He met my eyes with that maddening calm, his expression unreadable, the look that always made me feel like I was the one spiraling out of control.
“That was part of her therapy,” he said evenly.
Part of her therapy? The words detonated in my mind.
Part of her therapy?
What the hell did that mean? There was more ? He did more to her?
I stepped toward him, fists clenched, my pulse hammering in my ears. “What else, Ty? What the fuck else did you do to her?”
“Doctor-client privilege,” the smug bastard said.
My hand instinctively reached for one of the other blades strapped to my body, fury coursing through me. “I’m going to— ”
A choked sob escaped from Ava, slicing through my rage like a blade of its own. My attention snapped to her.
Her lashes fluttered, tears spilling down her cheeks in silent streams. Her hands jerked to her face as though trying to shield herself from the world, her body trembling.
The paralytic was wearing off. And whatever she had endured while she was under was still haunting her.
I was at her side in an instant, perching on the edge of the bed, my movements frantic but careful.
My hands moved over her body, searching for something—anything—I could fix. Some wound I could close, some break I could set. Anything tangible that I could make better.
But there was nothing. No visible wound to heal, no scar I could soothe.
“Shh,” I murmured, the sound meant as much for me as for her, my voice wavering under the weight of my helplessness. “It’s okay, rabbit. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Except I didn’t. And it was killing me.
Ty reached for her, too, but I shoved him away before his hand could land.
“You’ve done enough,” I snarled, my voice cracking under the weight of fear I couldn’t suppress.
Ava cried softly.
I pressed my forehead to hers, needing the contact, needing to feel the heat of her skin and know she was still here.
I rocked her gently, my arms around her, though my own chest heaved with uneven breaths, my shirt clinging to my back with sweat .
The tension in me, the helpless rage—it coiled too tight, and I couldn’t ignore how wrong it all felt, how wrong I felt.
“Shh, shh, shh,” I whispered like a mantra, as if the words could drown out the storm inside us both.
“I saw something.” Ava’s voice cracked, a faint, haunted whisper cutting through the stifling silence.
“Quiet now,” I said quickly, my lips brushing against her temple. “Don’t speak.”
“But—”
“You don’t have to relive it.” My words came in a rush, my mouth moving to hers, the kiss meant to silence her, to comfort her, to stop her from spiraling any further. “It’s not too late. We can still run. We can leave it all behind. Just you and me, Ava. We can still—”
“No,” she said, her voice firm despite her soft sobs.
“What do you remember?” Ty interrupted, his voice flat, almost clinical, as though the weight of what she’d done hadn’t rattled him in the slightest.
I turned on him, fire blazing in my eyes. “You bastard. This is your fault. Can’t you see she’s suffering?”
Ava’s voice broke through the rising tension. “I remember the hospital room… the overhead lights, so bright… the doctor’s face covered with a mask.”
I froze, my hands stilling against her shoulders as her words stabbed into me.
She was clawing through her memories, unearthing things I wanted to keep buried for her sake.
I hated this. Hated Ty for making her do it. Hated myself for being unable to stop her.
“What else?” Ty asked, leaning forward, relentless.
Her knuckles pressed against her eyes as she shook her head. “Nothing. Just… I just want them to stop.”
“Did you see any faces? Hear any names?” Ty pressed.
“Alright, that’s enough,” I barked, my voice shaking with barely contained rage as Ava shook her head, her tears starting again.
“Anything,” Ty continued. “An eye color? A tattoo? A scar? A view from a window? A sign?”
“No!” Ava’s voice rose into a cry, the sound tearing through me. “No, there’s nothing else. Nothing—”
The air in the room grew heavy as her breath caught, and for a moment, she didn’t speak, her body stilling against me.
I froze, and it appeared, so did Ty, one of us leaning in with hope, the other bracing for the worst.
“A sign,” she whispered, her voice distant, her gaze unfocused.
Her fingers reached out, and mine instinctively brushed hers. I couldn’t tell if she even knew it was me.
“Yes, a sign,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “As I was being wheeled into the operating room…”
“Yes, Ava,” Ty urged softly, his voice low and coaxing. “Good girl.”
I clenched my jaw so hard it ached, but I didn’t interrupt. My anger warred with something else—an unbearable fear that Ty might actually get her through this.
“The name,” Ava murmured, her voice nearly drowned out by the frantic pounding of my heart. Her lips parted as if the words were too heavy to speak.
She blinked slowly, her eyes refocusing.
Then she said with a whisper that felt like thunder, “I saw the name of their clinic.”