Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Heart Attack
Becky
I’m blind.
No light. No movement.
For one stretched second, I don’t know if he’s already close enough to touch me. Then I hear it. A step somewhere in front of me, impossible to place. My pulse stops, then spikes, my muscles straining to track him, but the dark consumes everything.
I can’t see him. Can only sense him moving closer, the shift of air, the whisper of movement.
“You’re shaking,” Carrson says, his voice low and closer than I expected. “Afraid of the dark?” he asks, his tone mildly curious.
“No,” I bluff. “Are you?”
A husky chuckle. “Oh no. I was born for the darkness. Bred for it.”
He’s in front of me now.
“Honed,” he adds, and then I feel it.
The tip of the knife grazing my cheek.
“For generations.”
He doesn’t pull it away. Lets it rest there.
I jerk my head back, putting distance between us. “You know, you’re always pointing knives at me.” I lean into the boredom, letting it bleed into my tone. “It’s getting kind of old.”
It’s a lie. Nothing about this is old.
In fact, I’ve never felt more alive.
He lets out a quiet sound of amusement. “Is it?” he murmurs, the blade drifting lower in a languid glide along my jaw. “I thought you liked dangerous things.”
“I like knowing I’m not about to be stabbed,” I shoot back, even as the knife dips to trace the hollow of my throat, not cutting. Touching.
I swallow carefully, forcing my voice to stay loud and clear. “You’re not actually going to hurt me.”
“Confident,” he says.
“Observant,” I correct.
“You’re wrong.” His voice drops to a rasp. “Every time I’ve held a knife to you…” He trails off, and the blade drags faintly across my skin, light enough not to break it, too sharp to be ignored. “…I’ve thought about it.”
My mind recoils from that image, wanting to reject it but there’s no uncertainty in his tone. He means it.
“Do it then,” I say, lifting my chin even though he can’t see it. Strength meets strength, that’s the only way to get through to him. “I’m not scared of pain.”
“No,” he murmurs, the blade moving again, dipping and swirling. “I don’t think you’d enjoy it.” The tip goes bumping over my collarbone. “You see, I don’t just want to hurt you. I want to mark you.”
I tense, every instinct snapping awake. I search the darkness, desperate for escape even as the chains at my wrists remind me there isn’t one.
“Carve my name into your body. Make it so you carry me with you. Always.”
The knife traces letters across my chest, too quick for me to decipher, but I don’t need to. I know what they spell.
Carrson sighs. “I think about it almost as much as I think about fucking you.”
The words sink into my skin deeper than the blade ever could.
My mouth goes dry. “You—you think about that? With me?”
“All the fucking time, and it pisses me off.” He spits out the words, fast like he needs them gone.
“All the other brothers are obsessed with it. Sex.” He says that word, sex, as if it’s vile, beneath him.
“Never saw the appeal, until you.” An irritated burst of air.
“I hate it. How I can’t stop picturing it.
What you’d feel like. Taste like. How far I’d go—”
His words stop short, jaw snapping shut.
For a second, two, nothing happens.
I hold still, tuned into what I can sense with my body, my ears, my nose. The heat of him. How he barely breathes. The scent of him, warm and earthy, like the clearing.
“Carrson?” I prompt, careful not to push, just to reach out.
Nothing happens.
Then he exhales slowly, like he’s putting himself back together piece by piece.
“You’re right.” His voice has smoothed out again. Calm. Detached. “This is getting boring. All this talk.” A low chuckle. “Let’s make it more exciting.”
I don’t like the way he says that.
The knife lingers at my throat long enough for me to wonder if this is it, if this is where it ends, before it moves down to my shirt, where he sweeps it downward with one smooth, clean cut.
My shirt and bra split apart.
Freezing air rushes in to steal the warmth from my skin. I gasp, goosebumps rising as I brace for pain, for the trickle of blood. There’s no way he cut that close in the dark and didn’t nick me, but…nothing.
I’m not bleeding.
Not yet, anyway.
I expect Carrson to follow that up with more threats, more mockery, but I think he might’ve surprised even himself because all I hear is the sound of him, quick inhalations as if he’s affected too.
Taking advantage of his silence, I lean forward. The chains that bind me give a soft clink.
“Did they burn your shoulder down here?” I ask. “Is that how you got that mark?”
“I’ve been burned here. Bled here. We all have,” he answers.
“We?” I press. “Who?” I picture it, someone else dragged down here like him. Like this. What other victims have been tortured?
“All the brothers. Sometimes the sisters too,” he says, almost sing-song.
“But you don’t have siblings.” I frown into the dark. “Your fraternity brothers? And the sisters too? From Rosewood Hall?”
I worry my lip, trying to piece it together, the idea of something bigger starting to form. “Is that who makes up The Order? Is this some kind of deranged frat hazing?”
“Oh no,” he scoffs. “The adults were down here with us. It’s a whole thing.”
“Who?” I ask, turning my head, trying to pinpoint how close he is. “Your dad? Was he here?”
The laugh is real but full of bitterness.
“My father was the king of this room,” he says. “The ringleader.”
I go quiet at that, stunned. It’s hard to reconcile the man I’ve read about, the polished, respected Senator, with this place.
Then, more to himself than to me, Carrson murmurs, “Like I’ll be someday.”
I barely catch it. I’m too busy trying to make sense of him. Every time his father comes up, Carrson’s emotions go darker. More volatile. Resentment. Anger.
“Were you sad when he died from the heart attack?” I ask. “Your dad?”
“Heart attack?” That laugh again. The one so full of rage and pain and bitter irony that it makes me want to stick my fingers in my ears. “You’d need a heart for that, and my father, I assure you, had none.”
“Then how did he die?”
He’s at my ear again, so close his lip brushes my lobe when he speaks. “Have you not broken into that locked room yet, Becky? The one upstairs?” The knife presses deeper into my skin. “I tried to get the bloodstains out.” A soft, mocking sigh. “You know how stubborn they can be.”
The air goes cold, like the room itself is closing in around me.
“But…why?” The words barely make it out. “He was your father.”
“He was no father to me. He was only pain.” His voice breaks, raw emotion finally coming through. “Humiliation.”
“Did he hurt you?” I fill in the blanks, picturing it. The brand in the corner of this room. The cross-shaped mark on Carrson’s back. Other marks come to me, the strange scars on his thighs. “Your legs? The circles?”
“He liked cigars,” Carrson answers. He doesn’t need to say the rest. It’s already in my mind.
The image of a cigar with its tip glowing red, pressed into a child’s skin.
The smell of burnt flesh. The betrayal of the one person supposed to keep you safe.
I grind my teeth. To think that his own father did that and no one stopped it.
“There were worse things,” Carrson adds. “Ones that don’t show but scar anyway.”
Does he mean…did his dad…?
“Is that why you don’t want to be touched?”
A dip of movement, like he nodded.
Maybe it’s the darkness that makes me bold. The way it strips everything away, his face, my expression, the space between us, until all that’s left is voice and breath and the things we’re not supposed to say out loud.
“Then I’m glad you killed him,” I whisper fiercely. “He deserved it.”
Carrson retreats a step, enough to let me know he didn’t expect that.
He probably thought his revelation would shock me, make me hate him, but it does the opposite.
I’ve seen too much to believe in waiting for someone else to make things right.
Sitting in hospital rooms. Listening to people say we’re doing everything we can when it never felt like enough.
I know better than most that, sometimes, the only way to fix something is to do it yourself.
“I won’t make the same mistake,” Carrson says. “When I have a son, I won’t go easy on him. I’ll make him strong, but I’ll also take him with me. Teach him to talk, negotiate.” His voice rises. “He’ll be ready for what’s coming.”
He’s quiet for a minute after that, as if replaying his own words.
Then the knife is back, leveled at my chest.
“You’ve been leading me,” Carrson says. “Got me talking too much.” There’s no anger in it. If anything, it’s closer to respect. “Doesn’t seem fair when I’ve got some questions of my own.”
He must move, although I don’t hear it. One second he’s in front of me, the next he’s at my ear, so close the heat of him brushes my neck.
I yelp, flinching away.
“Who the fuck is Remi,” he asks, the words grinding out, “and why does he matter to you?”
“Remi?” My head snaps up. “Remi’s not a guy. She’s Remington. My twin sister, you asshole.” I hiss, fury sparking hot at the sound of her name in his mouth. “The one I told you about.”
Before I can think better of it, I drive my foot forward. My heel connects with his shin. The impact jars up my leg, but I don’t pull back. Instead, I kick him again.
“Ow, fuck!” The knife disappears from my neck as Carrson stumbles backward. I hear it in the dark, the uneven scrape of his foot, a growl of pain, the quick shift of weight that doesn’t move cleanly. Muttering curses, he comes back to me.
One step lands solid. The other drags. He’s favoring the leg I didn’t kick.
Good. I hope it hurt. Jerk.
“Remi died,” I say, the words spilling out before I can stop them.
“She had cystic fibrosis. She was sick her whole life.” I swallow, but I can’t clear the lump from my throat.
“To help clear the gunk out of her lungs, I had to hit her back three times a day. Percussion therapy.” My voice cracks.
“I’d hit her so hard, the next day I’d see bruises in the shape of my hands. ”
I pull in a shuddering breath, fighting back tears.
“Do you know how that felt?” I ask. “Knowing the only way to help her was to hurt her?” Barreling on, I don’t give him a chance to answer. “Like I was the worst sister in the world.” My throat tightens painfully. “Which is exactly what I am.”
The tears I’ve been holding at bay break free, wetting my cheeks. Sliding down my neck to my chest where my shirt is ripped open.
“Remi was kind. Patient. Thoughtful.” I shake my head. “And I was…angry. Resentful. A brat.”
The words don’t leave. They sit there, impossible to take back. My truth, in all its ugliness.
“It took three of them to pull me off her when she died,” I confess, crying so hard I’m not sure he can even understand me. The memory crashes back into me, her body already going cold, how she didn’t move when I shook her, how I screamed.
“I couldn’t let her go,” I whisper, eyes wide in the dark, staring at nothing. “I still can’t.”
I shatter, sobbing so hard I can’t catch my breath. My thoughts spiral, dark and endless. I want to drown. To die. To go back into the earth so I can be with her again.
The only person I’ve ever loved.
The only one who ever loved me.
It isn’t the knife that touches me then.
It’s his hand.
Carrson reaches for me in the dark. His fingers hover near me for the briefest instant, as if he’s giving himself time to stop.
Then they’re on my face.
Wiping away my tears. Cupping my cheek.
His kindness ruins me in a way cruelty never could.
Another sob breaks free. I turn my head and nuzzle into his palm, taking comfort from the roughness of his skin, the calluses earned from thrown knives, battered punching bags, and all the hard things he’s survived.
“Why would the universe take her?” I ask into the space between us, not even sure if I’m talking to him or myself. “Why her instead of me?”
The words burn on the way out.
With his hand on my face, Carrson steps into me, his chest brushing against mine. The fabric of his shirt is rough against my bare skin, and I shiver at the contact.
“I don’t know why that happened to you,” he says quietly. “That your sister was taken. I don’t know why I had to grow up the way I did or why the world is so hard and full of pain.”
His thumb drags once across my cheek.
“I just know there are moments…” He hesitates, like the words don’t come easily. “Where it’s quieter. In the clearing. When my head finally shuts up.” His breath ghosts over my mouth. “And sometimes,” he adds, softer, “when I’m with you. Like this.”
The knife is still there, the tip resting lightly at my throat, his other hand warm against my cheek like he’s deciding.
Violence.
Or something else.
The weapon slips from his hand and hits the ground with a loud clang.
And for the first time since I’ve known Carrson Ashford, he’s unarmed.