Chapter Twelve #2
Before I can respond, Dash steps out of the shadows like he’s been summoned. He moves with a quiet confidence, cold steel and shadow wrapped in ink and restraint. He approaches without looking at anyone else. Just me.
He offers me his arm. “May I escort you inside?”
I blink, caught off guard. He’s usually the last to speak, the last to reach, but this time… he steps up.
When he leans close and whispers, “Please?” the word cuts through every defense I didn’t even know I still had.
There’s something about it. Not desperation. Not command. Just a quiet need that threatens to undo me.
Without another word, I slide my hand from both Wyck’s and Karter’s grasp and curl it around Dash’s arm.
“I would be delighted.”
The shift in his face wrecks me. The doubt in his expression vanishes like smoke, replaced by something reverent. Something real.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, patting my hand with surprising gentleness. Then he adds, “By the way… pink looks dangerous on you.”
“You think so?”
He nods once. “Deadly.”
I smirk. “Good. That’s exactly what I was going for.”
As we walk toward the store, I feel the weight of their eyes on me. The tension is palpable. I can sense Karter’s possessiveness simmering behind us. Wyck’s dominance stretching like a tether, taut and ready to snap. But neither of them say a word.
Not because they’re mad.
Because they’re watching me choose.
And Dash?
He just keeps walking beside me, jaw tight, pulse racing. Like he knows his time with me tonight wasn’t a gift.
It was a war he just won.
Two hours later, and four truckloads of furniture signed, sealed, and set for delivery, we finally emerge from the fluorescent hell of IKEA and step back into the night. The air outside is sharp, biting, like it knows something I don’t.
We climb into the truck, my body sore from walking but buzzing from the adrenaline of having all five Devils orbiting me like I’m their axis. Their obsession is becoming a shield I both need… and fear.
As we pull away from the lot, I finally speak.
“Wyck… I think I should go back.”
“Go back where?” His voice is a blade. “There is absolutely no version of this reality where I let you return to my father’s house. And you’re not running back to Josie’s either. Not yet.”
“I don’t want to go back to your place and face those journals.” My voice is too soft, too exposed. I hate how easily he can hear my cracks.
“Why?” he asks, not unkindly… but not gently either.
“Because I’m terrified of what’s inside.”
His jaw ticks, but it’s Onyx who speaks first, his voice muffled beneath that damned mask. “Then be terrified. But you won’t be alone.”
“You’ll read them with all of us around you,” Dash adds, his tone dry and shadowed. “What’s the worst that can happen with five Devils flanking you while you unravel the truth?”
“Grr,” Wells grunts from the backseat, his version of a battle cry. Or agreement. Hard to tell with him.
I exhale slowly, fingers twitching in my lap. “I don’t know what scares me more… remembering or discovering why I forgot. Josie told me I buried my memories. But how? Can someone really teach themselves to forget that violently?”
What’s waiting for me in those pages?
Who did I write about?
What did I survive?
“Athens,” Wyck says, his voice low and razor-sharp, “I’m only going to say this once. You’re not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever. Wherever we are, you belong. And whatever you find in those journals, whatever monster hid in your past, we’ll destroy it. Burn it out of existence if we have to.”
He turns, meeting my gaze dead-on. “You won’t go through that pain again. Not while we still breathe.”
I should be afraid of them. I should run from the men who speak like that, like gods who never learned to bow.
But I don’t run.
My heart is wildfire in my chest, burning for every one of them, and him most of all.
And yet… the question slips out before I can cage it.
“Wyck… do you already know what’s inside those journals?”
Silence swallows the car whole.
His face doesn’t move, but his eyes change. They go still. Calculating. Like he’s weighing how much truth I can survive.
A long beat passes. Too long.
“Wyck…” I whisper.
He looks at me. Not with guilt. Not with pity. But with warning. With the kind of burden a man carries when he’s seen the worst and chosen to keep it for himself.
Finally, his voice returns, cool and unreadable. “Come inside. It’s late. You need a shower. Some tea. And a locked door.”
A protest rises on my tongue, but dies there. Not because I’m silenced, but because I trust him . More than I’ve ever trusted anyone, and I hate that about myself.
So I nod once and step out of the truck, brushing past him with a quiet, “Okay.”
I don’t ask again.
Because I already know the answer.
He’s seen what I wrote.
And he’s willing to drag the whole world to hell before I ever have to live it again.
By the time I make it back downstairs, the air feels different, thicker, like it’s waiting to collapse around me.
Each step toward the living room weighs more than the last. Dread coils in my gut like something alive, something hungry.
They’re all there, already waiting.
Wyck. Karter. Dash. Onyx. Wells.
Silent. Watching. Shadows stretched long across their faces from the dim, flickering sconces that line the room. The fire crackles low in the hearth, the only warmth in a space colder than it has any right to be.
And in the middle of it all… the box.
The box of journals that feels more like a coffin. My past, buried in ink and pain. Calling to be opened.
I don’t sit. I drop . Right in the middle of them, the floor beneath me suddenly too real, too solid, too permanent. The weight of their presence presses in around me like a ritual about to begin.
My fingers twitch. My pulse pounds behind my eyes.
I haven’t even picked up a single journal, and yet I already feel like I’ve been bleeding memories for hours.
When I finally reach for one, it’s like grabbing a piece of the sun. Scorching. Blinding. Wrong .
The leather cover sears into my hand. My past recognizes me, even if I don’t recognize it.
I don’t open it.
Not yet.
Instead, I look up, eyes locking on Wyck. His stare is unwavering, his jaw clenched like he’s bracing for a war he can’t fight for me.
“Wyck…” My voice is nothing. Barely more than a rasp. “Please don’t make me do this.”
He doesn’t flinch.
“You have to.” His tone is steel, but there’s a wound underneath. “But we’re not leaving you. Not now. Not ever.”
I turn to Karter, my wildcard, my chaos, and silently plead with him.
He just shakes his head, slow and firm. “You need to see it,” he says. “Even if it breaks you.”
I swallow hard.
Dash’s knuckles drum a slow rhythm on the arm of the couch, his eyes unreadable. Onyx just nods once, still masked, still unreadable. Wells, his arms crossed, his body coiled tight like a fuse waiting for flame, grunts something that might’ve been support or warning.
I breathe in.
I square my shoulders like I’m about to slit open a vein.
And I open it.
The pages crack like a scream.
There, in thick childlike scrawl, is my name.
Athens Jane.
And a date.
“…My God…” I whisper, breath catching like it’s snagged on barbed wire. “I was five years old when I wrote this?”
I stare at the crooked letters. At the too-small handwriting.
“How the hell would I even know how to journal at that age?”
No one answers.
Because they don’t need to.
Whatever's inside these pages… whatever was done to me, whatever I was forced to remember or forget, it’s about to come out.
And the Devils of Cliffside are about to learn exactly what they swore to protect.
Even if it destroys them, too.
Athens – Age 5
Mommy had to work again today. She always works when it gets dark. I think she forgets I get lonely when she’s gone. The house is so big when I’m by myself.
Daddy came into my room before the moon got too high. He said little girls shouldn’t sleep alone, not when they have a daddy who loves them. He said mommies don’t understand the way daughters need their daddies. But he understands. He always understands.
He climbed in behind me, like he always does, and puts pillows between us. He says that way, no monsters can get me. That his body is a shield. That he’s my lion, just like Aslan. He uses a pillow instead, proof he’s here.
I didn’t feel scared. Not really. I just felt… small. Like my bones were too little for how heavy the room felt. But he told a story like he always does, about Narnia and magic and snow. I love the snow. I love the lion most.
He said he would take me there one day, if I was good. If I kept our stories a secret. If I didn’t tell Mommy how warm he gets when he holds me.
I didn’t want to ruin it. The story was so nice tonight. It almost made the heaviness go away.
So I closed my eyes and went to Narnia in my head. I saw the lamp post. I saw the lion.
Athens – Age 6
Mommy was putting on her lipstick again. The red one she wears when she works late. She smiled in the mirror like everything was normal. Like I wasn’t holding onto the hem of her coat with both hands.
“Be a good girl and I’ll see you in the morning before school,” she said, kissing my forehead. Her lipstick left a mark. I wished it would stay there forever.
“I don’t want you to go, Mommy.” My voice shook, just a little. Not enough for her to hear what I was really saying.
I looked over at Daddy. He was watching us. His eyes were hard, like cold coins in the dark. I hoped she would notice. I begged her to notice. But she never does.
“Athens, enough,” Daddy said, pulling me out of her arms like I was a toy he owned. “Your mother has to leave.”
“Cliff,” Mommy said gently, “she’s just a little girl-”
“I said go. I’ll handle her.”
He always handles me.
Mommy’s smile faltered, but she let him guide her to the door. “I’ll be back before you know it, baby,” she said, still trying to make it sound okay. Still pretending she wasn’t leaving me in a nightmare.