Chapter 23 Willow
WILLOW
I lie in bed, completely naked as my lower body hangs off the edge of the mattress. My pussy is still clenching, my clit still throbbing.
The front door slams shut as Malice leaves, and I scoot back up on the mattress, burrow under the blankets, and curl onto my side, my emotions in an uproar. My head is starting to pound a little, and I feel exhausted all the way down to my bones.
I don’t know what he’s going to do, and part of me feels like I should stop him from doing whatever he’s thinking of. But I can’t seem to make myself move, all the exhaustion from the night finally catching up to me.
He’s impossible to understand. His mood swings are powerful enough to give me whiplash, like being in a shower that switches from hot to cold water on a dime. Malice always seems to hate me. He’s threatened to kill me more than once, but he and his brothers have protected me so many times now.
Why does he do that?
And why do I let him past my walls? Why does my body seem to crave him so much? Crave them all?
Maybe… maybe I’m as twisted and fucked up as I always wanted to avoid being. Maybe I’m not normal, not a person who’s attracted to normal guys.
Instead, I crave monsters.
Colin was a monster too, a voice in the back of my head whispers. He just tried to hide it. At least these three men are monsters who don’t bother disguising who they are.
It takes me forever to fall asleep after Malice leaves, and since the party was on a Thursday night, I have classes the next morning. My alarm goes off at its usual time, and I drag myself out of bed, feeling hungover not just from the booze but from everything.
My face is puffy from the lack of rest, and I have the beginnings of a black eye and a bump on the back of my head, but I’m not staying home. I refuse to let what Colin did put me behind in classes.
After spending a good amount of time in front of the mirror applying coverup to the bruises and some concealer under my puffy eyes, I tug my hair into a messy ponytail and scramble to catch the bus on time.
All I have to do is keep my head down and try to get through the day, and hopefully I won’t even see him.
As I head to my first class, I pass by a group of students standing in a tight cluster, talking in hushed voices. I don’t think anything of it until I hear Colin’s name, and my heart lurches as I slow my footsteps so that I can listen.
“Yeah, it’s fucked up,” one of them says, shaking his head. “He got jumped last night. He’s in the hospital.”
“What happened?” a girl asks, sounding horrified.
“Somebody mugged him, I guess?” the first guy replies. “Kicked his ass real good. I heard every finger on both hands was broken.”
My stomach twists when he says that… because I know what happened to him. I know who did that, and it wasn’t just some random mugger.
I’ve basically slowed to a complete stop as I eavesdrop, and one of the girls in the group turns and sees me standing nearby. I recognize her as one of April’s cronies, and she gives me an unfriendly look.
“Hey, Willow. Didn’t you leave the party last night with Colin?” she asks.
My heart pounds at the implication. I don’t think anyone saw us on the golf course together, so no one knows what went down—either then or afterward—but all the students around her turn to look at me with interest as they wait for an answer.
“Um, yeah,” I reply, nodding. “But we separated before too long. I have no idea where he went after that.”
The girl seems suspicious, and the whole group of them look at me like I’m something foul. If possible, it seems like they dislike me even more now, as if they suspect I had something to do with Colin getting jumped.
I try to ignore them, turning away and continuing on toward my first class, but I feel sick inside. Especially when I think back to last night, when Malice left and I didn’t even try to stop him.
Is this what some part of me hoped would happen? Is this who I am? Someone who wants violent retribution to fall on anyone who hurts me?
But at the same time, just like the guy who almost raped me when he followed me from the bus stop, Colin is a man who would have taken whatever he could from me if he got the chance. Should I really feel sorry for either of them?
The pounding in my head starts to fade by the end of my second class, and by the time I leave my third class, I feel mostly human again. As I’m walking across campus, someone falls into step with me.
Just like before when Malice came to my classroom, I know who it is before he even speaks, just from the way he feels.
I turn to look, and sure enough, it’s Ransom.
He slides his hands into his pockets and glances over at me, taking in the bruising on my face.
“How’re you holding up?” he asks. “After last night.”
So he knows, then.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “My head hurt a little this morning, but it’s better now.” I glance around to make sure no one is close enough to overhear. They aren’t, but I lower my voice anyway. “Malice shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
Ransom shakes his head, the bronze highlights in his hair glinting in the sunlight. “Of course he should have.”
“Why?”
He looks at me, and something passes over his face that I can’t quite decipher. “Because you’re our responsibility. And we don’t let people hurt what’s ours.”
It reminds me of what Malice said last night as he touched the bruises and cuts on my skin.
Our business.
Our responsibility.
Ours.
As much as being threatened and blackmailed sucked, I at least understood that.
I understood people trying to use me for their own ends, seeing me as a tool to be manipulated or discarded as needed.
But I don’t understand any of this. And that makes it almost more frightening than when Malice put a gun to my head.
Before I can get my mouth to work, Ransom brushes his fingers over my bruised cheek, presses a kiss there, and then takes a step back.
“Take care of yourself, alright, angel?”
He gives me a little nod before turning and striding away.
I stare after him, my brows pinched together so hard that the space between them aches. He rounds a corner in the pathway that cuts across campus, probably heading toward where he left his bike, and as he disappears from sight, I open my mouth as if I’m going to call after him.
But I don’t.
Instead, I sneeze.