Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tied to a chair Dee wrestled him into, Harold fights against his restraints.
Blood gushes from his nose, down his face, through his gray chest hair, and over his stomach, where it pools on the seat between his legs.
Heaving for breath, eyes wild, one of them bloodshot, he spits blood from his lips at my sister.
Throwing her head back, Dee laughs like a psycho as I crack a smile. It’s small. Nothing too celebratory, but I can’t lie and say this doesn’t please me. At least a little.
“Fuck you, cunt,” Harold snarls, looking past Dee to me standing in the corner, keeping to myself.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on who you ask, he’s not privy to Dee’s protective streak and how calling me a cunt is wrong, wrong, wrong when she’s got your life in her literal hands.
Balling fists down at her sides, shoulders bunching under the cotton of her already stained tank top, a low grunt of rage rips from Dee’s soul half a second before she slams her fist into Harold’s cheek.
Head snapping to the side, his blood sprays the walls as she unleashes.
Bones cave, moans fill the air, loose teeth clatter against the concrete floor, and Penelope screams in heartbroken sorrow, knowing her father will soon rot in Hell, where he belongs.
Dissociating from the kill, I watch the horror, anger, and desperate need pour from my sister.
When the scalpel comes out, Harold’s chin is on his chest, but he’s still conscious.
His blood-curdling scream reaches a crescendo as Dee splits open the tops of his thighs in deep gashes, giving us a gory anatomy lesson.
Not wanting to watch more of what’s coming, I call out, “Don’t wear yourself out,” as I leave the room, with the door open so the cool breeze can offer Dee some relief.
Lost in thought, I make my way back to our cabin to grab my car keys before I trek through the woods to my car.
The fifteen-minute drive into town flashes by, and before I know it, I’m parking in front of the only sushi restaurant.
The chef behind the counter, making rolls, smiles as I enter and place my to-go order.
Ten minutes later, I’m back on the road and loaded down with lunch for everyone.
On my way back to the hunting cabin, I drop off my keys at home, grab bottles of water and chopsticks, and stuff everything into a backpack for easier transport. When I return, Dee is still playing with a barely alive Harold.
I set her favorite chopsticks, napkins, and a container with her sushi on the floor just inside the room whenever she’s ready to eat. Not knowing or caring what Penelope likes, I pull a California roll out of the bag, and when I open the door to her room, I slide it across the concrete.
Her red eyes and snotty face greet me with a glare.
Waving two fingers at the bitch, I try hard not to smile at her misery as I nod toward her meal before shutting the door. That is followed by a hoarse, very respectful, “Fuck you!”
Shaking my head, I chuckle and enter the room I’ve been avoiding all morning.
Maxim’s sitting where I left him last night, with bags under his eyes and sweat on his forehead and chest. The water and bread I left for him haven’t been touched.
Not saying a word, I drag my stool closer and set the backpack on top to pull out bottles of water and our meals.
I slide my favorite chopsticks into the back pocket of my shorts and slowly approach Maxim with two different sushi rolls.
Head tilted to the side, he eyes me like a cat would its prey, trying to figure me out.
My heart pounds the closer I get, and when I’m within arm’s reach, I offer him the food.
For a moment, he looks at the sushi with suspicion, then at me.
In the next breath, his arm shoots out as fast as a snake strike.
Without thinking, I reach back for my gun, and in the split second it takes me to realize I don’t have it, I grab my chopsticks and swing.
Maxim tries to block me. But what good that does when I trip and fall right into all six-plus feet of him.
The food containers hit the floor just as the chopsticks stab into his pec.
My body goes next, and we slam into the wall.
His skull knocks the wood as my forehead cracks against his collarbone.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, woman,” he grunts, grabbing me by the shoulders.
I wait for the punch, the choke, or something to hurt me, but nothing happens. There’s just a slew of muffled curses as a naked man’s front smashes mine for what feels like a lifetime, though it lasts no more than a few seconds.
“Are you alright?” he asks as he pushes me off him.
With my grip still wrapped around the chopsticks, they rip from his pec, leaving two holes trickling blood down his abs, to a very… holy hell, big dick.
An erect dick.
I scramble away before he remembers who I am and why he’s here. One of my feet catches the other, and down I go, landing unceremoniously on my ass. Pain rips up my spine as I try to catch myself. The blood-coated chopsticks go flying, and, worse, so does my wig.
I watch my brown hair hit the floor in slow-motion horror.
Tears well in my eyes as those gunmetal gray ones stare at me, sprawled out on my ass, with a bald head.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Maxim doesn’t comment, or complain, or do anything but stare as I scurry away crab-like to the stool, where I shove the bag onto the floor, then sit and drop my face in my hands in mortification. With a shaky breath, I force myself to breathe through whatever the hell just happened.
I didn’t have time to glue my wig down this morning.
I’ve been sweating all day.
It’s hot outside.
Fuck.
The sound of Maxim picking up the food, followed by a groan of pleasure, encourages me to peek through my splayed fingers to find him sitting, with a boner, eating sushi with his fingers. When he finds me watching, he winks, and I dunno why, but I laugh.
“This is good,” he comments, stuffing his mouth full and smiling like a chipmunk.
I dunno whether to laugh again, cry, or apologize. Though I don’t know what I’d apologize for. He’s going to die. A stab in the chest isn’t going to change that. Even if it wasn’t intentional.
He swallows his food before speaking. “For the record, I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you. I saw you were about to trip over these.” Maxim nods toward the shackles and the bolt that holds them to the floor. “I was tryin’ to stop you.”
“And I made it worse.”
“Yeah.” Maxim grins and probes the two holes in his chest oozing blood. “But it could’ve been worse. Hell, it will be worse when your sister does whatever the fuck she did to Harold to me.”
“She won’t,” I promise.
“She won’t what? Spend hours torturing me to death?”
“I’ll make sure she makes it quick.” Dee will listen to me. I can’t let her hurt him like Harold. He doesn’t deserve that. Harold was slow. It was playtime.
“I appreciate that.”
“No problem.” I offer him a tight-lipped smile.
“So, you wear a wig,” he comments, eyeing my lack of hair.
Running a hand over my smooth head, I shrug like it’s not a big deal when it’s a huge one. “I have a form of alopecia.”
“So, no hair?”
“Nope.”
“Anywhere?”
“Nope. Not anywhere.”
Maxim whistles. “Damn.”
I laugh without humor. “Yeah. Damn.”
“Your eyelashes and brows?” he asks as if he’s genuinely curious, not judging.
“Fake.” I flick said lashes. “I glue on lashes, and when I have the time, I get my brows done professionally. If not, I do them myself.”
Maxim bobs his head as if he’s absorbing the information to think about later. Not that it matters, given where we are, yet somehow it matters to me. Which is dumb, I know. Nobody outside my sister and Dad has seen me without a wig, and he doesn’t look horrified, so that’s a plus, I guess.
“You’re beautiful either way,” he tosses out between bites of sushi.
Dark
Squeezing my eyes shut, I exhale hard.
Christ. I’m a fucking idiot.
“You’re beautiful either way.”
I sound like a douchebag. Ava doesn’t need my approval of how she looks. She knows she’s a smoke show. She doesn’t need a walking dead man, who can’t control his erection, to tell her how attractive she is.
I sound like a goddamn creeper.
Hell, this is my fault anyhow.
If I’d let her know she was gonna trip, then I wouldn’t have gotten stabbed, and she wouldn’t have mashed that incredible, curvy body against mine. I wouldn’t have gone from half-hard when seeing her to an uncontrollable erection, to her falling on her ass and losing her wig.
After listening to Harold die for fucking hours and Penelope sob for the bastard, I’m on edge.
I can’t sit still. I’ve paced for who the hell knows how long, the few feet I can actually move, and then Ava shows up lookin’ as she does, and offering me a kindness with, from what I can tell, no ulterior motives. But what do I know?
Not. A. Damn. Thing.
I barely slept last night.
This is the first meal I’ve eaten in well over a day, or is it two?
At least my headache’s gone.
If only this annoying erection would get with the program. It pulses in time with the wound on my chest.
Not wanting to make this woman any more uncomfortable than she already is, I tuck into my food and take my time savoring the umami flavors.
It’s been ages since I’ve had sushi. Penelope doesn’t care for it, so it’s never around.
Which, I now realize, makes me sound like a fuckin’ tool.
Like, I couldn’t go out and eat sushi if I wanted. Sure, I could.
When Ava pulls her food out of the threadbare backpack and eats with her fingers, now that her chopsticks are somewhere around here, covered in my blood, I pretend not to watch her, but secretly do.
There’s an innocence to her as she sits forward, plastic containers perched on her thighs, head down, while she eats.
The sweat on her head shimmers in the sunlight.
I wonder if it’s soft. The skin there. As soft as the rest of her looks.
Christ.
I need to get a grip.
As if she can read my fucked-up thoughts, Penelope pounds on the wall. The vibrations rattle up my spine, and Ava looks up just as Pen speaks. “What’s going on?!”
I don’t reply to my wife. There’s nothing to say.
“Aren’t you going to answer her?” Ava asks, looking at me like I’ve suddenly grown two heads.
“No.”
“But she’s your wife.”
“On paper.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s a lot at play here, beyond what you know.”
“Do you care to share?” She offers me a lifeline, and do I take it? Of course not. What’s the point?
“No,” I grumble.
“Why?”
“Because it changes nothing. I’ve done what I’ve done. I’ve hurt who I’ve hurt. I can’t change that, and I can’t take it back.”
“Would you?”
“Take it back?”
Ava looks at me with such openness that it fucks with my head. “Yeah. If you could?”
“Some of it. Yes. But this…” I wave my hand around. “Was inevitable.”
Ava frowns but doesn’t reply. She finishes her food, I finish mine, and when I’m through, I shove the containers across the floor so she doesn’t have to get close to me to clean them up.
The last thing I want is her fear. I’ve never intentionally harmed women.
At least, not the innocent ones. It’s always been my job to protect them, and I’ve done a shit job of that as of late.
Staring out the door, into the green brush around the cabin, barn, or whatever the hell this place is, Ava rubs her hands up and down her thighs.
The weight of her thoughts presses in on me, making it hard to breathe. Anticipation tingles in my throat as I wait for her to speak. To act. To declare something. Anything.
Penelope’s voice carries as she repeatedly yells for me, demanding I respond.
But I don’t.
I stare at the sunlight on a beautiful woman’s face.
At her mismatched eyes and the creeping sadness I sense from her.
She shifts on the stool, and every now and again, when she thinks I might not be looking, she steals a peek at me.
Her eyes drop to my lap to find the annoying part of me very much alive. But I don’t touch him. I sit and wait.
When Penelope quits whining and we can finally hear the birds chirping nearby, Ava turns to me, her gaze earnest, her expression open.
My palms are sweaty. I squeeze them into fists on my thighs.
“My name isn’t Ava,” she says, offering a small slice of realness.
When I incline my head for her to continue, she does. “It’s Iris.”
Iris.
Beautiful.
“And you’re telling me this, why?” I ask, desperate to understand her motives.
“You’re going to die tomorrow,” she whispers. “Maybe the next day. But sometime this week… and I… I dunno.” She shrugs. “I wanted you to know.”
This is when I could tell her I’m Dark. Not just Maxim. Not just Penelope’s husband. But a father. A brother. A friend. But that changes nothing. It doesn’t fix what I did to my wife, Kali, for decades. The lies. The cheating… and everything else.
Just as I open my mouth to share something personal, I clamp my teeth shut at the last second and do what I’ve always done—pretend everything’s fine.
What you see is what you get, even if that is far from the truth.
Nobody gets me. Least of all Iris. We’re two people who happened to cross paths, nothing more, nothing less.
It doesn’t matter if I’m curious.
Or want to know more.
We sit in companionable silence for ages. It’s a lot less lonely having her here. The way she moves is graceful. At least when she’s not tripping into me.
I stave off a smile at the memory. Having her body against mine. Her little yip of surprise. Her scent of vanilla and soap mingled with sweat.
Iris’s blood-coated sister, who looks nothing like her, eventually appears in the doorway and waves for her to come along, but not before she glares at me. Her sister, not Iris.
My heart aches as Iris gets off her stool and gives me an almost solemn glance back as she grabs her backpack, picks up our trash and chopsticks, and shuts me in for another night of listening to Penelope, wondering how in the fuck I got myself here and why I don’t seem to give a damn that it’s almost the end.
The selfish, arrogant part of me, that part I play pretty fucking well, is chomping at the bit to put on his mask and act the part. To play this game. To go out with a mouthy bang.
But I’m tired.
And so, I close my eyes, rest my head against the rough cabin wall, and hope to fall asleep. If I’m lucky, I’ll never wake up.