Chapter 25
Sullen
Something clatters to the floor as Cosmo’s shrill cry bursts through my ears. I feel him wriggling beneath me a moment before light cascades around the room.
My room.
My throat is tight, thinking of the mess I left behind.
Stein employed housekeepers to clean Haunt Muren, but never here.
Any disgrace I made—never from my own doing, but usually because Stein had trouble thinking up more deplorable ways to shame me than watching me piss in a corner when I could not hold it anymore and the door to my bathroom was padlocked shut with a key only he possessed—I was forced to live with.
I did what I could with household cleaners but if I was ever caught with them in hand, well, to say I know the taste of bleach just as well as formalin is an understatement.
Every possible warped hardwood of my floor from my own urine, each stain of blood along the white walls, my crumpled bedsheets—never touched with detergent—it all blares bright inside my mind as I close my eyes tight, my bare fingers digging into Cosmo’s neck as he grips my shoulders, attempting to push me off.
She will see it all.
Worse, she will see me.
In my desperation, I jerk Cosmo forward only to slam him back against the wall, the resounding thud not enough to satisfy me.
I will break his skull.
I will ensure he does not speak or walk or crawl ever again.
He did this to me, a gun to my head, all as Sanford Rule watched.
The irony of it is I would usually not mind dying. A gun was never a good deterrent for me before. But thinking of Cosmo alone in this house with Karia… Some people, I am slowly finding, are worth staying alive for.
My entire body feels as if it is made of flames. The resounding ache along my shoulder blade from stabbing Stein’s guard has burnt to embers, too.
She is watching me.
She will loathe me.
She will regret ever letting herself touch me the way she did in Dreary.
No one has ever looked upon my naked body with anything but repulsion. Not Stein, nor his personal doctor. Not his guards, gathered around to laugh at his latest extractment of skin from the inside of my thigh. There is no one who has cast a kind eye on me since my mother died.
“Sullen.” Karia’s voice is like a knife dragging across an open laceration. She does not mean to, but she is making this so much worse.
I lick my lips, keeping my eyes shut tight, as firmly as my fingers digging into the tendons of Cosmo’s throat. I realize his erratic breaths have long gone, and when I hear the floorboards creak at my back, I know it is him Karia is coming closer for, and not me.
No one has ever chosen me, save in the name of a religion created by a serial killer. Not a prophet, a generous man, a teacher, no one with wisdom. My very own father decided to wreck my entire life, to kill my mother, for the sake of a fucking murderer.
I was never worth more than that.
“Please.” Karia’s word scrapes against my ears in the silence of my room.
Please? She’s pleading for him?
His hands slide up my shoulders, coming to my throat.
I have my hips pressed to his so he can’t knee me like I did the guard who hurt Karia, and we are far too close.
Every line of me is pressed to each muscle of his.
My temple is against his own. I cannot feel his breath, because he isn’t breathing, but I’m sure he can feel mine.
The urge to bite him nearly strangles me like he tries to do, his fingers weak, scrabbling ineffectively at my neck.
I am not used to being so close to anyone, and it does not matter it’s in violence.
My skin crawls and the desire to release him, to run, it is so overwhelming, I think I might faint from the urge of it.
A hand comes to my back.
A light touch, fingertips grazing the top of my spine. I have more words carved into my flesh, and she can see them now.
She can see them.
Idiot. Filth. Maggot.
She can see me.
I loosen my hold on Cosmo, even though I don’t want to. It’s as if I am compelled. I need my hands to shield myself. My arms to cover what I can.
Cosmo’s ragged, desperate breath is hot on my lips. He sounds like a dying man coming back to life. A vacuum the moment it is turned on.
I splay my fingers over his throat, circling tightly but not choking him.
I don’t open my eyes.
I don’t move.
Karia’s fingers are still against my spine.
We are all three so very close, but I am the only one humiliated. I think of Stein staring down at me. His doctor. The guards. Their laughter. The light in their eyes as I suffered the worst days of my life.
But wasn’t that everyday?
What were the good ones? When I could see her, on Ritual Drive? When I watched her walk hand-in-hand with Von, or this man in front of me? How pathetic I was.
How pathetic I am.
The urge to hide grows stronger.
I do not want to be seen again.
I do not want to be again.
I can’t.
“Look at me,” she says, so softly, never moving, her hand frozen along my spine, probably from repulsion, shock, disgust.
I grab Cosmo’s face, his cheekbones sharp against my fingers.
He doesn’t loosen his hold on my throat, but it isn’t harsh as he catches his breath. It’s almost as if he is steadying himself.
I press my thumbs to the corners of his mouth. I want to carve his smile into his skin. I want to feel his flesh against the nails I have left.
“Who would you choose?” I ask quietly, my voice hoarse. It sounds as if it is a floating thing, disembodied from myself. Drifting upward to the ceiling, where I would very much like to be. “If you had to, you said it was always me. Is it me now?”
Her fingers curve against my spine. Not painfully so, but I wish it was. It would feel more grounding than this tentative touch.
“Leave her out of it.” Cosmo’s words are raw from where I almost fucking killed him.
I feel his bones move as he speaks, my hands still touching his face.
His own are around my neck and he squeezes, but in a way that isn’t meant to be fatal.
It feels like a reassurance, like a nurse has done to me once before.
I open my eyes.
His are like neon, eerie in the cold lighting.
He is staring right at me from beneath dark lashes.
“How?” I demand. “She is all of it.” I swallow hard, never looking away from him. His smooth skin and covered body. He has been inside her, and it eats me alive. “Who?” I call out to her. “Pick one of us, Karia. Or I’m not letting him go.”
“It’s not a choice between you two,” she says in a hushed tone. “I don’t know what you’re asking. There are different things. You are different people to me, this isn’t… I’m not in love with both of you. I…”
Cosmo’s lips press together and I wonder if this is news to him.
It enrages me more.
I glance at the floor, where I heard the clatter.
There is a kitchen knife. Black handle. Silver blade.
“Karia.” I lift my gaze back to Cosmo’s even as I say her name.
The stitches along my abs feel tight, itchy, hot.
I am sweating despite my nakedness. I try not to think of it.
To forget how much she can see of me. I try to be anywhere but here, and yet I meant what I said to Cosmo.
She is all of it. “Would you choose me now?”
Her palm comes to my spine, not just her fingertips.
I shake a little, at the contact.
The desire to spin around and press her to my chest is bright.
“I am here. Isn’t that proof enough?” So innocent, her voice. So placid.
I smile at Cosmo.
He is not smiling at me.
I take a breath.
Then I swipe the knife from the floor.
But the second between releasing him and gripping the weapon to gut him, Karia places herself between us. Her palms are held up to me, her eyes lined with red and shadow, the brilliant blue of her irises stark against it all.
Cosmo is at her back, his hand on her upper arm where I know she is hurt, even though she acts as if she isn’t.
“Karia, move—”
“It’s you,” she says to me, interrupting Cosmo. She glances at the knife in my hand, my palm slick with sweat around it. “It’s always you. I’m here. I haven’t left your side, since…”
“Since he drugged us both,” Cosmo supplies, his eyes narrowed, face a mask of quiet, controlled anger.
I smile, staring at Karia. “It’s true,” I tell her. “I did. And I will do much worse.”
“You make such great promises,” she retorts, a brow arched as she tilts her head, blonde hair lengthening over one shoulder. Another glance at the knife she walked in with. What did she plan to do with it? Is she truly afraid of me? “You never keep them.” There is a challenge in her words.
I can’t stop my smile from widening. “You want me to hurt you?”
“Don’t,” Cosmo says harshly, his fingers tightening on her upper arm.
She winces and something pulls in my gut. But she says, “I’ve been begging for it for nearly a week now.”
She admits it, in front of him, and warmth spreads through my chest.
But before I can speak, or decide what to do, Cosmo snorts. When I look at him, he is staring at my naked body, eyes roaming over every inch of me, reminding me exactly how exposed I am.
“Is this the first time anyone aside from your daddy has seen you naked, Sullen?” He lifts a dark brow, eyes piercing.
“You’re more muscular than I thought you’d be, covering up in those hoodies, you know.
But some parts of your skin look a little…
” He wrinkles his nose, staring below the stitches on my abs.
He leans in toward Karia, his mouth by her ear, but his eyes stay on mine.
“Imagine how that would feel on your perfect body. You are so smooth, gorgeous, soft, and he…” He shakes his head, as if dismissing me.
Karia’s cheeks turn pink as her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak.
“He’s fucking disgusting,” Cosmo finishes, his tone serpent-like as he whispers the words.
I am trembling, but I can’t stop it. The way I lunge forward, knife in hand, intending to make him just like me.
But he grabs her throat at the same moment, jerking her body back into him.
Her breath comes out hitched, her arms still lifted, like in surrender. “Cosmo, let me go, don’t—”
He slaps his hand over her mouth, silencing her as he stares at me.
“Shut the fuck up, Karia.” He presses his face to hers, cheek-to-cheek as he watches me.
“Now, you’re going to put the knife down, and you’re going to hide yourself, or I will make you watch how she likes to be touched.
Here’s a hint. You’ve been doing it wrong. ”
I think of Dreary.
She seemed to be satisfied. She felt so warm and wet and the sounds in her throat and how she clung to me, it was pleasure, wasn’t it? I don’t think she faked it like I’ve sometimes seen in porn, when the actor’s eyes were empty but their moans were bright.
But she could have.
She must have.
What we did was nothing compared to what I’ve seen her do with the man holding her by the throat now.
I glance down at her thighs, the way her sleep shorts expose so much of her pretty, tanned legs.
She’s probably growing wet right now, in his arms, and his cock is probably pressing against her spine.
She wants him.
I am only in the way.
I am only nothing.
I don’t know what I’m doing with women. With her. I don’t know anything.
And they are both staring at me now. I don’t remember doing it, but I am crossing my arms, knife in hand, covering myself, turning away.
“Good boy,” Cosmo says quietly, enunciating the words in a snarl. “Hide.”
“No, Sullen, don’t.”
But it doesn’t matter what she says.
I am already retreating. Shrinking back, and back, toward the shadowy corner of my room that I have pissed in so many times.
It is like second nature to return there now, to crawl in my own filth as I sink to my knees, bowing my head, curving around myself to hide my skin, bloated wood beneath me from years of liquid.
Even when Stein was not here, his guards faithfully kept his humiliation techniques.
She is not mine. She will never be.
This has been for nothing.
I have touched perfection and that is all I could have ever wished for anyway. What does it matter, what happens next?
Something warm curves over my thigh.
I am gasping, but I’m not sure what for.
I am shaking, and I don’t know why.
My head touches the hardwood floor.
I find relief here, eyes closed, the world blotted out, just like I should be.
Nothing matters.
It never has.
What I feel for her is swallowed in self-loathing, and she cannot fix it, me, this.
I bring the blade up to the hollow of my throat.
I wonder if I could dare.
I press against my skin.
It does not hurt.
Not yet.
I grip the handle with both hands, still crouched over. I don’t know if they can see. The scent of my own urine floods my nose, my mouth. I can taste it in the back of my throat, as close as I am to my filth.
A ragged laugh claws through the room and I think it is coming from me.
I never want to hear myself again.
I press the blade deeper.
My skin doesn’t split. It is not enough. Even in this, I am a coward.
I need a gun, the one Cosmo had. I am not sure what he did with it. I will find it, if this doesn’t work. If I am not brave enough to slice myself to the other side.
But there are footsteps.
There is a girl.
An angel, shielding my body with hers, covering my back with her arms, her head pressed to mine.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” she says, over and over, a song of sorts. Her breath touches my ear. She is down here in the filth with me.
She is here with me.
“Nothing he said is true. Not about you, not about what you do to me, not about how you made me feel. You are gorgeous, you are so handsome, you are good at everything. I have chosen you and I will again, and again. You are not nothing. You are mine, Sullen Bram Rule.”
My hands are shaking.
The blade falls a short distance to the floor.
A sob leaves me, forcing its way from my body, my mouth, causing me to tremble violently as I press my fingers to my eyes, attempting to keep the tears hidden. They have never done me much good, before.
She holds me tighter, thrown over me, her head to mine, her arms around my back.
“I am not leaving. You are not either.” She presses her lips to my cheekbone. The scent of her, violets, cedar, it envelops me like her hug.
It breaks through, if only for a moment, each shard of hatred embedded into my brain.
And for a second, despite where we are, who is watching… I believe her. Every word she spoke.