Chapter 39 Victor
VICTOR
It’s late.
Malice went upstairs to go to bed not long after Ransom carried Willow up. I cleaned away the mess in the living room, then headed up to my room as well.
But I can’t sleep.
My body is buzzing, keyed up and on high alert after what happened downstairs. Every time I try to focus on something else, my mind keeps replaying that scene—the sight of Willow, the way she gave herself over to us, the sound of her begging me to touch myself.
She looked so needy. So wrecked.
I’ve never experienced anything like that before, and it was incredible. But at the same time, it took me out of my regulated activities, and that has me feeling strange and off balance.
It’s always hard to sleep when I feel like things are wrong, so instead, I’m sitting in front of my computer, working on pulling anything else useful out of the footage we got from our last drop for X.
I go through it frame by frame, taking note of everything from the shadows in each frame to the blurry images in the distance. Anything that might lead us in the right direction.
At this point, I’ve been through it all countless times, but I keep checking, half because I want to make sure I’m not missing anything, and half because it’s soothing to me.
The work is methodical and routine, and it feels good to fall into those regimented actions after veering so wildly off course earlier.
After a while, I get up and stretch, rolling my neck and letting the tense muscles ease up. Although it’s close to two a.m., I’m still not tired at all, so I head downstairs to get a glass of water—but I stop short in the kitchen doorway when I see Willow sitting at the table.
I didn’t realize she was awake.
“How are you?” I ask, my voice hushed in the quiet of the kitchen.
“I’m okay,” she mumbles back, glancing up from where she’s been staring at the tabletop.
“Did you sleep at all?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “For a little while, but then I just—” She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to wake Ransom up, so I came down here instead.”
There’s a glass of water in front of her, and without even really thinking about it, I start pulling things down from the cabinets to put together a late-night snack for her.
It just feels like the right thing to do right now.
“What are you doing?” she asks, watching me as I pull the peanut butter out of my cabinet.
“Are you hungry?”
Her stomach growls, answering that question for her, and she blushes a little. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“I’m making you something to eat,” I tell her.
She smiles softly, and I can feel her eyes on me as I work, cracking eggs into a bowl, careful not to get any shell in. I add in milk and cinnamon, whisking until it’s smooth. Then I spread peanut butter on slices of bread, putting them together into little sandwiches while I get a pan heating up.
“I remember the first time you cooked for me,” Willow murmurs. “When I was sick and you were mad that I was eating too much ramen. Do you remember that?”
I snort, but nod. It feels like a long time ago now. One of the first times that this bright, strange woman made me do something I wouldn’t have ordinarily done.
“You needed real food,” I say.
“It was good.”
I add butter to the hot pan, and the sound of it sizzling fills the room.
“Misty never really cooked for me,” Willow murmurs, speaking about her adoptive mother for the first time since we left the morgue.
“She didn’t know how, for one thing. She’d burn water if you left her alone in the kitchen.
” She lets out a breath, dragging her fingernail over a small mark on the table.
“I keep… going back and forth. Feeling so conflicted. She was my mom, you know? I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.
I don’t know where I’d be. I feel so sad that she’s gone, but at the same time, I just feel numb. ”
“I think that’s normal,” I tell her, then glance over my shoulder. “Although you can take that with a grain of salt coming from me.”
She chews on her lips, her gaze going unfocused.
“I had just told Misty I was done with her. That I didn’t want her in my life anymore.
And I meant it. After all the shit she pulled, after everything she put me through, I was really done.
She was barely a mom to me, so what am I even mourning? I don’t know.”
Her voice is soft in the kitchen, and I can hear the confusion in her voice, how lost she feels. I wish I had answers for her, or at least knew how to make her feel better.
But comforting people has never been my strong suit.
I make the peanut butter sandwiches into French toast, frying them up in the pan before loading them onto a plate with butter and syrup, then bringing it over to Willow at the table.
“It’s okay to mourn for someone who doesn’t deserve it,” I tell her, settling at the table beside her. “To feel the hole they left in your life. Your mother was a constant, in a way. And now that constant is gone.”
Willow seems to consider that, cutting into the French toast and taking a bite. “You sound like you know how that feels,” she says.
“I do. I hated my father. We all did, but he took a special interest in me.”
“Malice told me once that he wanted you to be his soldier or something like that.”
I nod. “Yes. He abused me from a very young age, claiming it was to make me stronger.”
“That’s so fucked up,” Willow breathes, setting her fork down for a moment.
“It is.” I nudge her plate a little closer and watch her start to eat again, realizing as I do that besides my brothers, I’ve never talked about this with anyone else.
“Some days, he would hold my head underwater, increasing the duration each time. Other days he’d break my fingers one by one, and if I cried out or showed that he had hurt me, it would be worse the next time.
He’d say that if I could master myself, if I could endure all those things, then no one would be able to stop us. ”
Her brows pull together. “‘Us’?”
“Me and him. He thought that someday, after everything he’d done, we would work together as a team. That we’d take over Detroit together.”
“God.” She grimaces.
“But despite everything he did to me,” I continue, “the thing that truly made me hate him was the fact that he was cruel to our mother and my brothers. Arguably, none of what he did to them was as bad as what he did to me, since I was his special project. But the fact that he hurt them was a step too far.”
Willow meets my eyes, and for a second, it seems like she wants to reach for me, but she doesn’t. “He sounds horrible. Every time you guys talk about him, I’m glad he’s dead.”
“We are too. So I don’t mourn his death—I was a part of it, after all.
The three of us killed him to protect our mother, to make sure he could never lay a hand on her again.
But even still, when he was dead, there was an absence there that I felt.
I didn’t miss the man himself, but it was like I was mourning what never was.
All the things father never was to me and what he never would be now.
His death made it so I would never have a father who loved and took care of me, only one who abused me and broke me. One who turned me into a freak.”
I only say it to make her see that I understand how she feels, and that there’s no shame in mourning someone who hurt you.
It comes out like a statement of fact more than anything.
I know what my father did to me, and I know that how I am now is different than I would’ve been if he hadn’t treated me so badly.
Still, Willow looks up sharply at my words, pausing in cutting the last of her food.
“I don’t think you’re a freak,” she says, her voice firm in the dimly lit kitchen.
“I think you’re so strong. I think you’re amazing, Vic.
Your father was horrible to you, and you’re still here.
You’re smart and resilient, and it always seems like there’s nothing you can’t do.
You shouldn’t have had to go through all that, but you’re not a freak and you’re not broken. ”
My chest goes tight, my lungs seeming to stop working halfway through an inhale. Her eyes are soft, but there’s fire there, the proof of her conviction in what she’s saying.
She really believes that.
She doesn’t think I’m damaged beyond repair.
As our gazes lock, I feel so drawn to her. Like we’re two magnets that have been spinning around each other, and now a force bigger than either of us is pushing us together.
I couldn’t stop it if I tried, and I lean in closer, breathing in the scent of her hair and skin. Willow leans in too, her breathing shallow and her lips slightly parted.
There’s not much space between us at all now, and my fingers itch with the need to touch her.
I’ve never really allowed myself to do that.
There have been a few small brushes here and there, and the time when I held her down on the couch while Malice tattooed her.
I wiped a tear off her cheek earlier tonight, but I’ve never just touched her for the pleasure of it.
I want to now. So fucking badly.
For once, I give in to the urge, letting my hand reach out, my fingers sliding over her waist where she sits and down the side of one hip.
Willow shivers, but she doesn’t move away. She swallows, the muscles of her throat shifting with the action, and her eyes are large and luminous as she looks at me.
The tip of one finger slips under the hem of the shirt she’s wearing, and I can feel the heat of her bare skin.
She sucks in a breath, dragging her bottom lip through her teeth.
“Victor,” she whispers, and just the sound of my name in her mouth makes me shudder.
All of my carefully held control, already weakened by everything that’s happened tonight, snaps for a moment. Everything narrows down to a point of pure want, and I lean forward, closing the last of that distance between us.
Her mouth is right there, and I can’t resist, pressing my lips to hers softly.
The reaction is instantaneous.
Sensations explode inside me, overwhelming and powerful.
I can feel Willow’s breath against my lips as she kisses me back, and when she makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, I tug her roughly closer.
I surge to my feet, standing up so suddenly that my chair nearly topples over as I pull her up with me.
My fingers dig into her skin, as if now that I’ve touched her, I’ll never be able to let her go. I kiss her harder, nearly bowing her backward with the force of it, slipping my tongue into her mouth and tasting syrup and peanut butter and the intoxicating flavor of Willow herself.
I can’t get enough. It all goes to my head… and straight down to my cock. It’s a hard, throbbing line in my pants, and I groan against her lips, only pulling away long enough to suck in small snatches of air.
Her arms wrap around me, her delicate fingers sliding over my shoulders, the muscles of my back, my neck...
And it’s too much.
The surge of arousal coursing through me peaks in a sudden, uncontrollable rush.
My hips jerk, my cock swelling and pulsing as I come in my pants, wetness soaking the front of my boxer briefs.
I rip myself away from her, breathing hard as I stagger backward a step.
For a second, Willow and I just stare at each other. My emotions are a riot, out of control. It’s so much. More than I can handle. I can’t take it.
Without a word, I turn and stride out of the kitchen, shame and frustration and confusion and desire raging inside me like a hurricane. I don’t look back, and I don’t stop moving until I’ve returned to the sanctuary of my room.
Shutting the door, I sag against it and rest my head in my hands, trying to wrestle my demons back under control.