12. Lennox
CHAPTER 12
LENNOX
MONSTER – FIGHT THE FADE
Arms folded across my chest, I lean against the corridor wall. My room is being thoroughly ripped apart by two guards, leaving no item of clothing or possession untouched. I don’t know what they’re hoping to find.
Down the entire hall, similar scenes of destruction are replicated. Why bother asserting their control when they know full well who supplies contraband in this place? Well, for exactly that reason.
It’s all about control. Scare the herd enough, and they’ll stay contained in their self-enclosed pen. The clinicians may be feeding this experiment to elicit the juicy results they desire, but the chaos must be strictly governed.
They want us to suffer. Self-destruct. Barter and bicker our way to dominance over each other. Those are the fascinating situations they want to see play out. But when the guinea pigs start to bite their masters? The chaos isn’t so measurable then.
“Nox.”
Tapping his way towards me with his stick outstretched, Raine whisper-shouts my name. I take a final glance at the guards ripping apart my mattress to check for stashed weapons and approach him.
“You alright?”
“I heard my room’s next,” he says in a panic. “I’ve got shit they can’t find.”
“Fuck, Raine!”
“I know. Help me, man.”
Shaking my head, I snag his long shirt sleeve and frogmarch him towards his room. Raine hands me his keycard so I can unlock the door quickly. We step inside, hoping no one has spotted us.
“Where is it?” I sigh tiredly.
“Bottom drawer in the nightstand has a false bottom.” He anxiously chews his lip. “And there’s a loose floorboard behind the desk.”
“Go stand near the door. If you hear them coming, shout.”
Quickly nodding, he taps a path back towards the door then presses his ear against it. I set to work investigating the nightstand and quickly find a notch in the smooth, dark wood that I prise open.
He’s been better since the night we begrudgingly enlisted Ripley’s help. Regardless of my feelings about that soulless bitch, I know we couldn’t let him stay like that. It was far too risky to let him detox there and then.
But the idea of her supplying him on the regular is making me want to demolish this whole damn room to ensure he has none of her pills to snort. I don’t know how he convinced her to sell to him, but there’s nowhere else he’s getting this stuff from.
“Got it?” Raine asks.
I scoop up two baggies of pills in a variety of colours. “What is this shit, Raine?”
“Just get the rest. They’re coming.”
Slotting the false bottom back into place, I duck beneath the nearby desk next. It takes several seconds to locate the loose floorboard underneath. I have to dig my nails into the edges to wriggle it free.
More pills.
These ones are that weird, off-white shade and clearly the same as the ones in the baggie Ripley previously supplied. I gather his stash in a pile then shove it into the waistband of my sweatpants, tightening the drawstring to hold it all in place.
“We good?” Raine’s voice is strained.
I slot the floorboard back. “All clear.”
His shoulders sag with relief just as the lock on the door buzzes. It’s flung open, narrowly missing him. The two assholes who were tearing apart my room order us outside before they begin obliterating Raine’s neatly organised space.
“Fucking hell.” He winces at the sounds of destruction. “There goes my system.”
“We’ll put it all back,” I try to reassure him.
“The bastards aren’t even pretending to be gentle.” The sound of crashing punctuates his words. “Do they really think this tactic works?”
As I peer up and down the corridor full of terrified patients, seeing what Raine cannot, I hate to admit that it does work. Everyone knows where to get their illegal shit from in here, but few know the sinister secret behind the program’s existence.
Most assume that Ripley has some pretty impressive connections to get her hands on anything that’s requested. If the entire institute knew the clinicians are feeding this toxic machine of mental illness in the name of experimentation, they’d kill themselves or try to escape.
Few are doomed to know the truth.
Including us.
Those who remain clueless are petrified of raids like this. They scuttle around, obeying the rules and hoping their sentence will pass without incident. Forever ignorant to the fact that management wants the exact opposite.
Clasping Raine’s elbow, I slowly guide him down the staircase and out into the windswept quad. Winter is rolling on, dousing the Victorian institute in frost and ice.
I have a maths class to get to before some anger management crap later on with my assigned therapist, but the surprise search threw everyone off. Even Harrowdean’s precise routine seems to be breaking down.
“Pass me the stuff.” Raine shrugs his elbow free.
“Not a chance. I’m holding this for you.”
“Wait, what?” he splutters.
“You’ve got at least two weeks’ worth here. I don’t trust you not to take the whole lot at once.”
“Nox!” Raine exclaims. “I don’t want to kill myself.”
“Yet you seem determined to try. Who needs to sit on this many pills at once?”
“I don’t wanna run out again. That’s all.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff.
He tries to make a grab for me, but I easily duck out of the way, escaping his off-target hands. Raine growls in annoyance, unable to sense where I’ve moved out of reach with his stash.
“Lennox! This isn’t funny!”
“Do you hear me laughing?” I fire back.
Giving up, he huffs, his lips pressed into a harsh line. “I think I preferred it when you didn’t give a shit about me.”
Jaw clenching, I battle the urge to grab him by the scruff of his t-shirt and punch the stupid out of him. I’m not a fucking idiot. I know I have some serious issues. But they’ve never included a lack of caring. Quite the opposite.
“If you think that’s true, you don’t know me at all.”
“Stop pretending like I’m your problem to fix then!” Raine stomps his foot like a toddler. “I survived long enough on my own before I rocked up at Priory Lane.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“Maybe I don’t want your help!”
Staring at my stubborn as fuck friend, all I can see is the dark-green eyes of another staring back at me. My sister. She looked more like our mother, though. Daintier. Light-footed. Always dancing and practising her ballet.
Our coarse, often messy brown hair and big toothy grins were the same, despite the several years between us. She was always smiling too. I remember that detail.
Until… she stopped.
Breath seizing, I have to fight back the onslaught of memories that usually only visit me at night. I can’t hold on to the cloak of my protective anger then. That’s when she sneaks in to torment me about all the red flags I failed to see.
Even at her tiny height, she had the presence of a motherfucking giant when she yelled. It breaks my goddamn heart to hear these words from Raine now as much as it did hearing it from my sister then.
Just stop fussing over me, Nox!
I don’t want your help.
Yet she needed it. Far more than I ever realised. I only knew just how much she needed her big brother to protect her when it was too fucking late.
By then, all I had left were ashes to scatter and belongings to pack. He wanted any memories of her existence scrubbed away. I’ll never know if it was his guilty conscience or covering his tracks.
“Lennox?” Raine’s voice drags me back. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah,” I say flatly. “Whatever.”
Pulling the bags full of pills from my waistband, I don’t care who sees us. Raine squeaks in shock as I grab his hands and deposit the stash there.
“Do what you want with these,” I snarl. “Better than me trying to help, right?”
“Nox—”
“Just don’t call me next time you’re stuck.”
For once, I don’t have the desire to shout and rave. I’ve punched my way through life since Daisy died and fought off any threats against those I care about with fists and blood. But what has that left me with?
No living family.
Two messed-up friends.
And a whole lot of dysfunction.
I couldn’t protect Xander from the fucked up shit they did to us in the Z wing. The deep freeze bathtubs that made him lose a toe. Electrocutions. Sensory overload. Sleep deprivation.
Every last medieval torture tactic designed to strip a person’s soul away was tried at least once. After all that, they thought we were unbreakable. That we were in fact the perfect stooges to run their operation because we refused to crack.
But little did those sadistic doctors know, we did break. Just in ways we allowed our pain to escape undetected. Those moments happened when the machines were turned off and cell doors locked.
Breaking isn’t always a loud, cataclysmic implosion of a person. Sometimes it’s silent. Imperceptible. I took my hatred and stoked those righteous flames to keep myself warm at night. Xander wrapped his ice-cold detachment around himself for comfort instead.
“Later.”
“Nox!” Raine shouts after me.
I’m already storming away, unable to look at him for a second longer. Seeing Daisy’s sweet, teenage face superimposed over his is harrowing. I let her down. I couldn’t save her from evil or even herself. Stopping Raine from slowly poisoning himself isn’t going to bring her back.
The heavens open, sending silvery bullets of rain hammering to the ground. It doesn’t stop me from storming into the thick tree line, needing an escape. I’m soaked through in seconds, but I keep walking into the underbrush.
I soon find the perimeter fence. Harrowdean is small and self-enclosed, a clandestine bubble of pure evil, tucked into the fringes of society. Grasping the slick chain-links that hold us all captive, I stare into the forest beyond.
If Daisy hadn’t died, I never would’ve ended up here. That monster didn’t just kill my sister, he killed us both in one fell swoop. I ruined my own life in a torrent of rage and grief, hoping that revenge would somehow ease the agony of finding my baby sister’s corpse.
It didn’t ease the guilt. The grief.
Instead, my anger only grew.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a familiar voice calls out.
Startled, I glance to the side. Ripley is blurry through the thick rainfall, but her mass of sopping wet curls is unmistakable. She sits at the base of a tall juniper tree, her knees pulled tight to her chest.
Even in the rain, I can see the purple bruising on her face where I slammed it into the table. Knowing I inflicted those bruises should be satisfying, but the usual fury that fills me at the sight of this bitch doesn’t come.
All I can muster is sadness. If things had been different, perhaps I wouldn’t have ruined her life. And she wouldn’t have ruined mine. We’re both caught in this ceaseless cycle of violence.
“Are you following me?” Ripley asks in her usual disinterested tone.
I bark out a bitter laugh. “Believe it or not, my life doesn’t revolve around you.”
“Well, shucks. Isn’t that a disappointment.”
I shouldn’t enjoy the heavy sarcasm dripping from her tone. This short, curvy wisp of a woman is responsible for some of the bleakest months of my life. Unimaginable agony and desolation.
All in the name of some bullshit revenge. At least I can understand her motivations. The shit I’ve done all in the name of revenge would be newsworthy too. But what if she’d killed Raine? Or Xander?
Would I have done the same to her?
I don’t know who the villain is anymore.
“It’s raining,” I point out the obvious.
Ripley hugs her knees tighter, keeping her eyes averted. “I’m aware.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Her gaze is stuck on the same impenetrable forest I was just studying. Yearning. Reaching. Perhaps even imagining a life beyond these chain-link fences. I hate how entrancing her big, hazel eyes are, brimming with so much grief right now, it’s making me doubt myself.
I hate her.
I’m supposed to hate her.
But part of me still wonders what she’d be like out there—beyond the roles we’ve constructed for ourselves. Or rather, we’ve forced ourselves into, slicing apart and re-stitching our souls to fit into an unrecognisable caricature of our former selves.
“Having a fucking shower. Leave, Lennox.”
With the rain pouring down on her, she looks lost and broken. I see the same gaping wound in her that I feel tugging at my insides. A black hole sucking in all light and hope. Neither can survive this place.
I despise the fact that the only one who could ever understand how I feel is the one person I hate more than anything. Ripley knows better than anyone the price we must pay to rule in this world.
She’s sacrificed her own soul along the way too.
Are we so different?
“Go!” Her voice cracks a little.
I lick my dry lips, an alien sensation swarming in my gut. “She didn’t deserve what we did to her, you know.”
Swiping dripping hair from her face, Ripley peers up at me. Chapped lips parted, those devilish eyes are blown wider than usual. She gapes at me like Bigfoot has just stomped through the woods to greet her.
“I know that,” she cuts back.
“But we did it anyway.”
“Yeah,” Ripley deadpans. “You did.”
“I’d be lying if I said I was sorry.” My eyes bore into hers. “Holly had something I wanted. So I took it from her. That was a price I was willing to pay.”
Her stare shimmering with unshed tears, she doesn’t even flinch at my confession. I’m sure she already knows that I feel no remorse for our actions. Not anymore. It’s a luxury I cannot afford.
“Why are you telling me this, Lennox?”
“It’s just that we have good reason to hate each other.”
“Too right. I’ve never hated anyone or anything as much as I hate you.”
“Not even Xander?” I can’t help but ask.
Ripley scoffs. “Xander is an animal wrapped in human skin. But only one of you walked out of that bedroom and left my best friend swinging from a noose.”
Yeah. Me.
I’d never admit it to her, but I still think about that night. The cruel words of encouragement I whispered to Holly. Threats I made. Hell, even the sound of her choked, gurgling sounds. She didn’t achieve a clean neck break.
The makeshift rope cinched around her throat instead. All while I stood there, chanting to myself that it had to be done. Only the powerful survive these institutes. She had the key to our survival.
I refused to lose the family I’d found in Xander—the second chance that caring for him, another victim just like Daisy, gave me. It didn’t take much to see the same brokenness in him that I never spotted in Daisy. Not until it was too late.
“I did what I had to do to survive.”
“Killing an innocent did that?” Ripley’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “You make me sick.”
“Tell me. Have the innocents you’ve hurt allowed you to survive?”
This time, my words find their mark and she recoils. Her mouth opens and shuts several times, but nothing comes out. Not a single line of defence.
“Are you sorry, Ripley?”
“Why do you care?”
“Answer the damn question.”
Shuffling my feet, I have no clue why I’m doing this. I have the perfect opportunity to choke the stubborn bitch to death without a single person witnessing it.
But seeing the broken, pissed-off, beautiful fucking disaster I’ve created, I need to know the truth. Does she feel the same bottomless pit of despair where her heart used to be that I do? Does it drive her to the brink of insanity, knowing she’s irredeemable?
Her face contorts, riddled with so much pain, I don’t know whether to relish in it or take the question back. The latter option shocks the shit out of me. Since when do I give a fuck about her pain?
“Yes,” she admits. “Every day.”
“Then you’re a better person than me.”
“I know exactly what kind of person you are.” Ripley slowly clambers to her feet, her sweats soaked and mud stained. “Holly was my friend. My family. You took that from me, and all for what? Power?”
“Power. Protection. Control.” I shrug dismissively. “All the things you’re looking for too.”
Her small, paint-flecked hands scrunch into fists. “Then when I tie the noose around your neck and make it look like a suicide, you’ll understand why I will never, ever be sorry either.”
Stopping in front of me, she’s a small but fearsome dot beneath my towering height. Raindrops cling to her eyelashes, framing tear-filled, mottled eyes that brim with such fury, it’s formidable. I’ve never seen anger like it beyond my own.
I want her to hate me.
I want to feel every drop of her wrath.
The rage that found its home within me the day I lost Daisy has never found a fair competitor. Anger is a lonely road to madness, and staring at Ripley now, I know she’s trodden that same path. We both have.
“What do you really want?” she deadpans. “Because if you think I’m going to break like Holly did, you’re in for a long wait.”
Head cocked, I consider her. Every steely, unterrified inch. She saw the very worst in us, the depths that we will sink to in order to achieve our goals, yet she’s still standing. If Holly’s death didn’t kill her, nothing will.
“I know you won’t break.”
She rears her head back in surprise. “Why?”
“Because you’re stronger than she ever was.” I scan over her features, loathing the way I want to trace each dimple. “That’s why I fucking hate you.”
“I really don’t understand you.”
“Why aren’t you broken like the rest of us? Why did you walk away unscathed when we didn’t?”
“Unscathed?” Ripley repeats incredulously. “Do I look bloody unscathed to you?”
“I just had to confiscate a kilo of drugs from one of my best friends!” I explode. “I don’t even recognise the other one these days, he’s so far gone. Yet here you are, enjoying your luxurious life.”
The more I speak, the more her outrage grows. Her face is practically shadowed with it—twisting, contorting, brows scrunched and gaze seething. I love it. So goddamn much. I want her to be as angry as I am.
“Nothing about Harrowdean is a luxury!” she shouts.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“You son of a…”
I see her clenched fist coming from a mile off and easily duck to avoid being punched. Ripley curses as I move to grip her balled hand, blocking another attempted blow.
Tugging on her arm, I drag her close enough for our wet chests to crash together. She slips through the grass and collides with me. I strangle the rush of appreciation that feeling her tight curves pressing into me provokes.
“Perfect Ripley, huh?” I taunt. “Can’t even punch right.”
“You’re fucking dead!”
Relishing the acidic lash of her voice, I lean close. “Wrong again, little Miss Perfect. I already died a very long time ago.”
Grabbing her other wrist, I hold them both, pinned against her chest. I know just how scrappy she can be, but I still have a couple hundred pounds of muscle on her.
“Struggle all you want. I may enjoy it.”
“Sick bastard!” she screams.
“I never claimed to be anything else.”
Twisting and writhing, she’s a panting blur of rage. I narrowly dodge a swift knee in the balls, whirling us around so I can shove her into a nearby tree trunk. Ripley gasps in pain at the hard collision.
Sliding a knee between her thighs, I spread her legs wide. Our hips are glued together, and with her wrists still pinned to her chest, she doesn’t have a single inch of space to move.
“Much better.” I appraise her prone form.
Still, the fear I’m searching for refuses to enter her eyes. Nothing penetrates her hatred. It burns hotter than any other emotion I hoped to elicit, and as her lips poise, I can guess what’s coming.
“Fuck you.” She hawks a mouthful of saliva right in my face.
I let her spit trickle down my cheek, unflinching. “Is that all you’ve got?”
“You don’t want to see the best I’ve got.”
“Enlighten me, then.”
Grimacing, she tries to twist her wrists to escape my bondage. It’s futile. I’ve got her pinned too tightly. With a growl, Ripley slumps, giving the impression that she’s given up.
“You’re so weak an?—”
Crack.
Her head suddenly snaps forward, slamming so hard into my nose, I see stars. My grip on her wrists slackens. I stumble back, cupping my nose as it pulses in time with the pain thrumming through me.
“Call me weak again,” she seethes. “I’ll skin you alive.”
Spitting out the blood that’s filled my throat, I cast her a glower. “Nice shot. Now we’ll match.”
“It’s the least you deserve.”
When she moves to strike again, I abandon my aching face and grab her. She grapples with me as we wrestle, both vying to gain control of the other until our knees give out, and we hit the forest floor.
Rolling and bucking, we’re a rain-soaked tangle in the mud. Ripley snarls beneath me, semi-crushed by my weight. I grab a handful of her hair then yank hard, causing her to hiss in pain.
“Can’t escape, Rip?”
“Don’t call me that! You piece of shit!”
“Well, damn. Now you’re hurting my precious feelings.”
“You don’t fucking have any.”
Each shift of her writhing limbs beneath me sends blood pumping to my crotch. Apparently, my dick didn’t get the memo that we’re supposed to hate this whore. Not enjoy the feel of her battling to escape.
Antagonising her shouldn’t be so goddamn hot. I have the perfect opportunity to choke the life from her lungs right here in the mud. There are no guards. And I don’t give a fuck about the CCTV cameras positioned on the perimeter fence.
What can they do to me now?
I’ve already lost everything.
“Just stop,” she cries angrily. “If you’re going to kill me, do it. Fucking do it, Nox!”
“Why? Because you think that you deserve it?”
“Yes!”
With that confession, she stills. Her anger is fizzling out. I can see the despair I found her drowning in returning. Spreading with each second she spends trapped in the dirt.
No. I don’t want her defeated.
Not anymore.
I want her so enraged, she can’t breathe without thinking of her hatred for me. She wants to fade away? I won’t fucking let her. She doesn’t get to escape so easily. Her punishment is living with her own self-loathing.
Every bit of rational thought flies from my mind. With my pelvis pinning her to the slick ground, I shove her wrists above her head then trap them there. Utterly exposed, she can’t stop my approach.
“Death would be too easy for you,” I croon. “Torturing you will be far sweeter.”
She blinks rapidly, a brief, fleeting whisper of delicious fear finally entering her gaze. Fanning those flames, I decide to hell with it. My lips slam against hers, swallowing her sounds of protest.
If this is the only way to truly hurt her, I’ll cross the invisible line between us. But at the first touch, any thought of revenge flies out of my mind.
Fuck. Me.
I never expected her lips to be velvet soft and laced with such tantalising sweetness that I lose all sight of my plan. My need to destroy her by any means necessary is overtaken by the heat suddenly pumping through my veins.
She’s rigid against my touch. That escaping fury comes roaring back as her teeth clamp down on my bottom lip, sinking in deep enough to break the skin. I rear back with a sharp hiss.
“Y-You…” Ripley splutters. “How dare you?—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Crashing my mouth back on hers, I don’t know if I’m punishing her or myself. This is just about hurting her, right? I know she hates me. I know my touch has to be damn repulsive to her. This is the only way to make her break.
So why the ever-loving fuck does her tiny, perfectly curved body feel so good against mine? Why do I want her to scream, shout, bite and kick? Why do I want her hatred and not her defeat?
Her sounds of protest die out. I’m not sure if I imagine the moan emanating from her throat. I’m not sure if I imagine the way it makes my heart pound, cock twitch, and skin prickle with arousal either.
Is the fucking bitch is enjoying this?
Am I enjoying this?
I’m not sure when her mouth begins to move against mine. Hard. Wet. Undeniably passionate. Lips sliding in a spiteful rhythm, she kisses me like she hopes to torture the truth out of me.
Hips grinding, I thrust into her core, seeking any amount of friction against the painful pressure gathering in my cock. Fuck, the way I want to fill her up and hear every last vindictive word spew from her lips as I do. I want her to despise how much she loves the feel of my cock inside her.
Shoving my tongue into her mouth, I relish in the way she responds. Enraged and thrashing. Invading my mouth with the same wrath that’s fuelled the furious dance we’ve spent the last year locked in.
She’s fighting it with every second our mouths are locked, but that doesn’t stop her hips from lifting to press into mine. The woman is grinding against me. Pressing her core into my cock, silently pleading for more. That realisation shatters my lusty haze.
I abruptly break the kiss. “What are you doing?”
Her mouth is swollen and red. “What are you doing? Why are you kissing me?”
“Why are you kissing me back?”
Pupils dilated, she licks her inflamed lips. “You… This… What the fuck, Nox?”
I’m practically dizzy with the adrenaline and desire pumping through my system. Confusion only adds to the blur of emotions causing my control to falter. I wanted to provoke her. I didn’t expect to want to fuck her too.
Scrambling for an excuse, I plaster on the smirk I know she detests. “I just wanted to see if you’re as much of a whore as everyone says.”
Before I can react, her knee collides with my still-hard cock. She knees me dead centre in the bollocks, easily shoving me off her body as I choke out a wheeze. I crumple onto the ground, panting through tightly gritted teeth.
“I will never be your whore, Lennox Nash.” Ripley sits up and brushes herself off. “This changes absolutely nothing between us.”
All I can do is lay here in the dirt while she stands up, casting me a final derisive look. Watching her stalk off, those devilish hips swaying and tight ass shaking with each step, I wonder when the fuck this parasite invaded my brain.
We’re sworn enemies. She’ll destroy me, my family, the life I’ve tried to create since taking that plea deal to avoid prosecution. I thought I’d be safe in Priory Lane. Even in Harrowdean. Better than prison, right?
But nowhere is safe.
Not with Ripley Bennet around.