Chapter 18
Royal
Becki couldn’t have made that up. She’s not manipulating me. At least not about the missing girls. That is my first thought when we leave Pearly Gates.
The night air tastes burnt, as if something in that basement never stopped smoldering and I carried the smoke home with me in my lungs.
The girls’ names. The carved dates. The glitter from the glittery scrap of Marlena’s shirt still stuck to my palm like it wants to stain my skin forever.
It clings like guilt. Fresh. Wrong. Unshakeable.
Legend keeps telling me we move fast. We don’t go loud. We don’t panic. The problem is that I’m already panicking. Not on the outside. Never on the outside. On the outside, I’m stone. On the inside, something cracked open, and the light went out.
I should tell someone. Sophie, maybe, although she already has enough weight on her back. Or Legend, standing there pretending he is not imagining his own woman’s name carved into that wall. I should look him in the eye and admit the truth. I’m losing control.
Instead, my body turns toward the clubhouse hallway. Toward my room. Toward her.
The closer I get, the worse the shaking becomes in my hands. The key digs into my palm, sharp, cruel, steadying. I don’t drop it. I don’t let myself. Her scent hits the air before her voice does. Peaches. Sweat. A heat I don’t deserve, a heat I crave like punishment.
When I unlock the door, she is sitting on the cot like she has been waiting all night, waiting for the monster she knows is coming back.
Her legs are bare, knees drawn up. My top hangs off one shoulder as if she has not even tried to keep it on.
Her eyes track me with a sharpness that could bleed a man out.
“Rough night” she asks, her voice slow and amused, like she already knows the answer.
I say nothing. Entering, I close the door quietly, because if I slam it, something inside me will break beyond repair.
She tilts her head. “Something happen at Daddy’s house of horrors,”
I freeze mid-step. My blood roars.
She smiles, slow and dangerous, like she can smell the sin on me. Smell the fear. Smell the part of me that stayed down in that basement listening to chains clatter and imagining girls screaming.
“You should not say his name right now,” I tell her, and it comes out as a warning.
“Oh” she murmurs. She uncurls from the bed in a slow stretch, the chain sliding across the mattress. She unfolds her legs like a creature made of dark corners and stubborn fire. “Touchy subject?”
I want to walk away.
Instead, I walk toward her.
She sees everything instantly. The rage. The grief. The bruised guilt smeared across the inside of my skull.
“Tell me what you found,” she whispers, and she already knows it was something unbearable.
I seize her wrist and pin it to the wall before she finishes the sentence.
She gasps, but not from fear. No. Becki Crowley gasps as if she's been anticipating this exact moment.
“You took it out on the wrong girl earlier,” she says, smiling like a curse. “That club bunny was not the one you wanted.”
My teeth grind. “Stop talking.”
She never stops. Her voice slides in under skin and bone.
“Did she moan for you?” she asks. “Or did you close your eyes and pretend she was me?”
My breath leaves in one deadly slow pulse.
She laughs. “You are so easy to unravel, Royal.”
I slam my palm against the wall beside her head. Dust falls like snow.
Her smile widens. “There he is.”
Something inside me snaps its leash.
“You don’t get to mock what happened tonight,” I say. My voice is rough and shaking for all the wrong reasons. “The Reverend is holding girls. Moving them like cattle. Maybe murdering them under that church.”
Her face drains of humor. She whispers, “I knew it.”
A tear slides down her cheek.
I reach before I can think.
She jerks her chin up. “Do not touch me unless you mean it.”
I stop cold. She is right to say it. She is wrong to think I’m strong enough to obey. I should leave. I should lock her away. I should forget her.
Instead, I breathe her in like she is the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
She steps closer. The chain pulls tight behind her. She offers herself like a dare. “You want to feel something real after what you saw?” she asks. “Here I am.”
I take hold of her. Hard. She lets out a sharp breath, her eyes glittering like she expected nothing less.
Then she says it. The words that rip me open. “You didn’t do anything to save them. You came home to me.”
My forehead drops to hers, too fast, too rough. I breathe her in like penance.
“You are gonna destroy me,” I whisper.
She answers, cracked and wicked, “Good.”
My hand rises to her neck. Her pulse slams against my thumb as I apply pressure. She leans in until her lips graze mine.
“Tell me what you found,” she murmurs. “Make me hurt with you.”
I almost tell her. About the names. The blood. The way the basement smelled like pain that had never been washed away. The way my stomach turned when I saw the shackles bolted to the floor. The way it reminded me of her locked in my room.
And made me sick.
Made me feel like a monster.
The way I thought about Cider, my sister who ran away from Pearly Gates, from Hell, so long ago, after I patched into the Kings.
How we never heard from her again. How until now I never connected it to the girls who went missing in the last couple of years.
How my eyes scanned every name on that wall, searching for hers.
How I was overcome with relief, joy even, when I didn’t see her name there. Or Becki’s.
I almost confess everything.
“How did you know about the basement, Becki?” I ask instead.
“Why do you think?” She moves her mouth a little closer, parted for me. “Those monsters made me watch.”
My sanity snaps. I shove myself backward so hard I nearly stumble. She hits the wall, breath knocked out of her.
Confusion flashes. Hurt follows.
“Do not,” I say. “Do not make me forget who you are.”
She laughs, broken and sharp. “But you want to.”
I turn away. I can’t look at her. Not when she is this beautiful, this cruel, this willing to burn for me.
She steps after me, chain scraping. “Royal. Come back.”
I reach the door. My hand shakes on the frame.
If I turn around, I will not leave.
“You stay alive,” I say. “No more secrets. No more locked doors. No more basements.”
She laughs softly. “And no more club bunnies.”
I close my eyes. “No more anything. Not until I know exactly what the Reverend is burying.”
“You already belong to me.”
And the worst part is that she is right.