twenty
1.5 Years Ago
Gloria Walton
“Well, this has been fun,” Cotton Montgomery drawled, stepping into the room with us. “You put on quite a show for me.”
“What do you want?” Colt asked, pulling my skirt down over my ass. He was still inside me, and there was no way for him to pull out without Cotton seeing everything. I hugged the tangle of blankets to my chest, trying to hide the top half of me.
“You offering me a turn?” Cotton asked, quirking a brow. He wasn’t even asking me, the asshole. He was addressing Colt.
“No,” Colt snapped. “I’m asking what you want from us.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” Cotton said, pulling a chair over by the door and sitting down. He crossed his ankle over his other knee and set a pistol on his thigh. He was wearing old man pajamas, a long-sleeved button top with matching pants, and boat shoes. I stared at them as I waited, frozen, for whatever terrible thing came next.
I was used to my body being used. Yeah, usually it was just the Dolces, but there were three of them, and Cotton was just one. And yeah, he was a total creep who liked to slip a little something into girls’ drinks at parties for whatever reason guys did that shit, but did it really matter who he was? I didn’t think he’d hurt me. He’d probably just want me to play dead or whatever fucked up things he was into. It couldn’t be worse than what the twins did to me, and it couldn’t hurt worse than taking Royal’s monster cock.
I couldn’t freak out. That was not going to help. What I needed to do was figure out how to use whatever happened to my advantage, how to get something out of it. For every man that used me, I used him back. Yeah, the Dolces got to fuck me whenever and however they wanted. But after a year of enduring them, their father gave me a scholarship this year. And not just me—he gave one to both my sisters and my brother too. That was going to get us into good colleges, far away from Faulkner, Arkansas.
I just had to stay on top. I was runner-up for Prom Queen last year, and I’d win for sure this year if I played my cards right in this moment. If I agreed to whatever Cotton wanted and he didn’t rat us out, colleges would see those things on my application. Cheer scholarships would be given, and they cared about those things. It wasn’t about a high school crown. It was about Yale, my future. It was always about the future.
How could I have risked it all for some dick, even good dick?
Cotton made a lazy gesture with his hand. “Oh, you can go ahead and pull out. I already saw everything from out there. I’ve been sitting in a chair by the pool watching for a while. I saw the light on from the house and came out to see who broke in. Didn’t expect a live sex show starring the head of the cheerleading squad and the school outcast, but hey, I’m not complaining. I came before either of you.” He chuckled and linked his hands behind his head, his gaze slithering to me like a snake.
“As far as wanting a turn, fuck no with an extra hell no on the side. I wouldn’t touch Royal’s girl if you held me at gunpoint. Not that I blame you, cuz. When she reached behind and spread her pussy open with both hands… I almost blew my load before you even got started. Though I thought you were going to fuck her ass. That would have been hotter.”
“Shut up,” Colt growled.
“No, really, pull out,” Cotton said. “Then I want you to do that again, Gloria, so I can see the creampie he left.”
“Fuck you,” Colt said, trying to pull the blanket out from under me so he could cover us.
“Wait,” I said, grabbing onto the blankets and shaking the hair off my face. “If you get to see that… Will you keep your mouth shut about this?”
“Mm,” Cotton said. “If you give me that… And your car.”
I gaped at him in shock. I would never give up June Bug to a reckless douchebag like Cotton Montgomery. He wouldn’t care about her, wouldn’t see how special she was.
“I can’t,” I said. “That’s my uncle’s car.”
He smirked at us and fished his phone out of his pocket. “It was your great uncle’s car,” he said. “And he left it to you when he passed away—god rest his soul—which means it’s yours. Or more accurately, it’s mine… Unless you don’t want me to take a picture and send it to our fine neighbors down the street.”
“Okay,” I said quickly, thinking of how fast the D-boys would be here to murder both me and Colt. “Put the phone on the floor. Colt, pull out and let him see what he wants. And you can have my car. But you have to promise you will take this to your grave.”
Cotton set his phone down and sat back, smiling as he pretended to zip his lips.
I glared my hatred at him as Colt pulled out slowly, dropping my skirt to cover as much as it could.
“Ah, come on now, don’t be shy,” Cotton said. “Lift your skirt and spread it open for me like you did for him.”
Grinding my teeth together, I pulled up the skirt, then reach back with both hands and obeyed his command. Both men gaped at me like a couple of hungry dogs salivating over a single steak.
“Fuck yeah,” Cotton groaned. “Keep it just like that until I finish.”
He reached into his pants, pulled his dick out, and started jerking it. Colt was still staring, watching his cum trickle out of me and drip down my pussy lips and onto the bed. After a minute, though, he must’ve registered the sound of Cotton beating off behind him, because he whirled around.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he thundered, lunging across the room at Cotton. There was a loud crack as the chair hit the floor, and both men went tumbling across the hardwood. But my mind narrowed in on something else—the quieter clack I heard just before the chair crashed down. I was off the bed and across the floor in seconds, my cheer shoes silent on the smooth surface. I bent and snatched up the gun while the boys were busy throwing punches like a couple hotheaded assholes.
They were about to see how much more effective cold calculation could be.
I checked the gun, clicked off the safety, and stepped over them. “Stop fighting,” I ordered. “I’d obey if I were you. You both have your dicks out, and I’ve got a gun.”
“What the fuck,” Colt said, staring up at me from where he was hammering Cotton’s ribs with a fist.
“You’re not going to shoot,” Cotton said, giving me a look that took either a whole lot of balls or a whole lot of stupidity, considering I was holding a loaded gun.
I raised it and shot out one of the panes of glass on the front of the pool house. Glass rained down on us and the tiles outside. “I’m not?” I asked, quirking a brow and lowering the muzzle towards them.
“What the fuck?” Cotton yelled, jumping to his feet. “Dad’s going to have to replace that. Do you know how much shit we’re in now?”
“Put your dicks away,” I said. “We’re going to talk about how this is going to go.”
Cotton rushed to shove himself back in his pants, but when Colt started toward his clothes, I aimed at him. “On second thought, don’t move,” I said. “Both of you, on your knees with your hands behind your head.”
“What are you doing?” Colt asked, slowly climbing to his knees.
“Oh, you thought your dick was the only weapon that could make someone crawl on their knees?”
“My dick isn’t a weapon,” he said, giving me a funny look.
I laughed at that. “Just because no one’s ever used one on you doesn’t mean it’s not a weapon. No one’s ever shot me, but this gun seems pretty damn effective right now, doesn’t it?”
“What are you saying?”
“You think the minute I was alone with you, I didn’t know you could hurt me? You think I wasn’t calculating my chances every step of the way, weighing how much my words mattered to you, whether you’d honor a refusal? You think every girl who’s ever been alone with you hasn’t done the same thing? Must be fucking nice.”
“I told you to just say no if you wanted to stop.”
“And you laughed at my safe word and turned it into a joke. You think that made me feel safe?”
“It wasn’t a joke,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think you needed one because I would never make you do something you weren’t into.”
“And I knew you so well that I was supposed to know that?” I asked, my throat tightening. I didn’t want to do this, but I also wanted to survive high school. I didn’t want to spend the next two years at Willow Heights like I’d spent the first month. I was barely holding on as it was. Every day was a fucking tightrope walk on a barbed wire fence over a pit of lava with alligators swimming in it. Now I’d fucked up, and either I took control now and made sure no one ever found out, or I was done. My sanity wouldn’t last through two years of the Dolce boys’ hatred. It was barely surviving their approval.
“I’m sorry,” Colt said quietly.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You’re fine. I’m fine. We’re all fucking fine. I’m the queen, and you’re the leper, and Cotton’s the prince. Now you’re going to kneel and obey your queen. Got it?”
“I thought I was the creep,” Cotton said.
I gripped the gun in both hands, my palms sweating. “Here’s what’s not going to happen. I’m not going to give you my car, and you’re not going to tell the Dolces. What you’re doing to do is crawl over here and clean me up.”
“What?” he asked, his eyes widening in surprise.
“That’s right,” I said. “You wanted to see a cream pie so bad? Well, now you can see your cake and eat it too. So start eating.”
“What the fuck?” Colt muttered, glancing sideways at Cotton.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you think I was just fucked up in some cute way? You think I’ll just cry a few pretty tears for you when I don’t want to do something in bed, and otherwise I’m totally normal? You should know it doesn’t work that way, Colt. You should know what happens to a girl when the Dolces get hold of her.”
“My sister was nothing like you,” he gritted out.
“Yeah? I wouldn’t be so fucking sure. The only difference is, I couldn’t leave. So I took matters into my own hands and decided to call myself their queen. That’s the only difference between me and Mabel. A title. I’m not a victim, but I lied to you, Colt. I’m not a victor. I’m the villain, just like them.”
Cotton shuffled forward when I pointed the gun at him. I flipped the edge of my skirt at him, and he glared back. “Look, I don’t mind eating pussy, but he just came in you.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I snapped. “Now clean it up. You’re the Dolces’ bitch. I know this isn’t your first time on cleanup duty.”
He clenched his jaw, his nostrils flaring. “Why?” he demanded. “You don’t even like me.”
I snorted out a harsh laugh. “You think it has anything to do with liking you? Is that why you drug girls and have sex with them—because you like them? Come on. We all know sex is currency. You steal from them, and I’m stealing from you. I’m the fucking bully bitch. Now hand over your lunch money.”
I nodded my chin down, and he glared at me with such hatred I thought he’d slap me. I raised a brow, keeping my cool, though. I had a gun. He could hurt me, but I could kill him. Slowly, he lifted my skirt and ducked under. I stared at Colt across the space, still on his knees on the hardwood, glass littering the floor like shattered diamonds. We’d had our little bubble, a fairytale suspended in time, and now it had burst. I could let that destroy me, or I could turn it into a win.
Victors always won, and sometimes, villains did too.
No matter how many times I was destroyed, stomped into the ground, I always crawled back to the top. Mom wouldn’t let me admit defeat, even when I wanted to curl into a ball and die, to give up and sink into the ground.
“You’re insane,” Colt said quietly.
“Shocking,” I said, staring back at him. I didn’t even feel what Cotton was doing. My body was slowly freezing back over, the way it had been before Colt touched me and thawed me and reminded me what pleasure felt like. It was better this way, when no one could poke the bleeding heart, crack me open and dig out my insides like crab meat. “And now I have ammunition on the asshole who could destroy me. If he tries, I’ll tell Royal he went down on me.”
Cotton sat back and spit on the floor. “Yeah, because you held a fucking gun to my head.”
I smirked down at him and used the line he’d probably delivered more than once but never expected to receive. “No one will believe you.”
“Colt’s right there,” he said, gesturing across the room.
“And you think Royal’s going to believe Colt?” I asked, quirking a brow. “You really are dumb. Let me explain it simply. You fucked with the wrong psycho. You should never have asked for my car, or asked to look at me, or flaunted your gun. You have no right to see anything, you slimy little weasel. And Royal may let you sit at his table, but he doesn’t have any more loyalty to you than he does to me. He cares about two people, and two people only—his brothers. So if you do make the stupid decision to tell him, he’ll look at this rationally. What would be more likely? That the oversexed creep who can’t get a girl when she’s awake blackmailed me into giving it up, or that the queen bitch who only endures sex when it’s required of her wanted his creepy little friend so bad she held a gun to your head?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Ah, back to that,” I said. “Why do you both seem so shocked by that? You’ve seen what they do to me. You’ve watched them do it for a year now. You really must think I’m a queen if you think I could get through that unscathed. Now, just in case you’re still contemplating telling him, you’re going to go clean up Colt. Then you can go.”
“What the fuck?” Colt said, starting to stand.
I swung the gun his way. “Did I fucking stutter?”
“Gloria…”
“Oh, now you know my name?”
“I always knew your name,” he said quietly.
“Then you know I’m a heartless bitch,” I said. “You were right all along. I’m the queen of hell, like you said. Taking me out of my cage for a week didn’t change who I am.”
“We’re related,” Cotton points out.
“Yeah? So are me and my sisters. Did that ever stop the Dolces from making us do sick shit?”
He glared at me.
“Answer when your queen speaks to you,” I snapped.
He flinched. “No?”
“You sound unsure,” I said. “Is it that hard to remember? Because I remember. I remember you cheering it on when they made my sisters kiss, when they made them do cleanup duty. I guess it’s sexy when girls do it. That’s not incest, right? They’re hot blonde twins so it doesn’t count.”
“I’m not doing this,” Colt said.
“I think you are,” I gritted out, slipping my finger onto the trigger. “I’ve seen you do worse for the Dolce boys, don’t forget. All you have to do is sit there until he’s done. That’s how you keep from losing more fingers.”
“No.”
“You’re not even blood. You’re third cousins once removed or some shit.”
“How do you know that?”
“Royal told me,” I said. “They were talking about whether to lump Cotton in with your family when they destroyed you. Now go on, Cotton. Be a good little slut and clean him up too. I’m going to get a shot of this on my phone, just in case you ever get any ideas about fucking with me again.”
Cotton went to work while Colt knelt there, his hands still behind his head, his eyes fixed on me with hateful belligerence, like he was proving a point—I couldn’t break him. No matter what I did, he would no more break for me than he had for the Dolces.
When Cotton finished, he sat back on his heels. “There, your highness,” he ground out. “Satisfied?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now leave. And remember this before you cross me again.”
“Fucking psycho,” he said, but he wasn’t stupid enough to stick around and test me again.
“Can I get up, your highness?” Colt asked, glaring at me with a dark, sullen expression I hadn’t seen on his face for a long time.
“Yes,” I said. “Get dressed. We should go, in case he tells his parents I shot out the window.”
Colt just shook his head and stood, grabbing his clothes off the floor and turning his back to yank on his boxers. “What now?”
“Now we go back to how things were before,” I said. “I’m the queen. You’re the leper. Nothing’s changed.”
“Glad you think so.”
“What did you want me to do?” I asked, my lip starting to tremble.
“Not that.”
I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood, staring at the ceiling and blinking until the tears sank back into my eyes and my throat didn’t hurt so bad I wanted to tear it out just so it would stop. By the time I’d composed myself, Colt was dressed. He handed me my shirt.
“I think it’s safe to say I won’t have any trouble moving on now.”
I nodded. “Good.”
He nodded back. “Good.”
“Go,” I said, gesturing with the gun.
He hesitated, then stepped toward the door. After pulling it open, he stopped and turned back. “I’m sorry you couldn’t leave.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t.”
He gave a slight nod, then ducked out the door. I wanted to crumple to the floor, to shatter the way I used to, let myself be incapacitated by the force of my sorrow. But those big ugly sobs were foreign to me now. I didn’t cry like that anymore. It would’ve taken a dozen shots of tequila to make me lose control that way. So I didn’t cry. I walked out of the pool house into the cold November night. I stood at the edge of the pool. My skin prickled with goosebumps, but I dove in anyway. The water was icy, and it nearly took my breath. But I wouldn’t give in. I was stronger. I was the strongest person in all of Willow Heights, and I hadn’t gotten there by accident.
I just needed a reminder. A reminder than I was stronger than my body, than any instinctual drive or animal urges. I was Gloria Fucking Walton, the Queen Bitch of Willow Heights. My skin was a shell of diamond. My heart was stone. My body was not me. It did not control me. It was a commodity, one that was traded between men because they considered it beautiful, valuable. I had to remember that. It was not my job to feel, to experience bliss or freedom. It was my job to be beautiful.
I turned over onto my back, forcing myself not to shake in the water. I did the butterfly all the way to the far end, a leisurely, unhurried stroke. I couldn’t feel my toes, my feet, my legs. I couldn’t feel my fingers or my arms. I couldn’t feel the ache or the burning heat Colt buried between my thighs.
I only felt ugly, and ugly could be fixed.
*
I didn’t go home and cry in the tub like I did last year. That girl was back where she belonged, in her diamond cage. Colt had made me feel like a beautiful butterfly, worthy of admiration and the freedom to fly away from my life, but Cotton had shattered that illusion. I wasn’t a butterfly. I was an ugly caterpillar, and now I’d formed a cocoon from my pain and crawled inside. Suspended inside that cocoon, a cryogenic chamber where bodies were stored with the hope that someday, in the far future, they would discover how to live again, was the girl Colt had freed for a week, a moment, a single breath of rarest air.
I bathed, put on my anti-wrinkle cream, took a pill, and went to sleep. I couldn’t look tired in the morning. When Mom told me at breakfast that I looked grey and slapped both my cheeks, I didn’t respond. She was right. My color was off. At school, I added more blush and then went into a stall and checked that the foundation I used to conceal the bruises from Colt’s fingers hadn’t rubbed off.
I was glad he wasn’t at school.
By that afternoon, reality began to creep back in. What had I done? My one taste of freedom, the one choice I’d ever made for myself, my once glimpse of happiness—I’d thrown it all away to maintain a status quo that was my version of hell on earth. I texted all day trying to apologize, but he never answered.
The next day when I found out he’d been attacked, my heart stopped beating. Without thought, with rising panic, I jumped in June Bug and raced to the hospital. What had I done? What if I never got the chance to make it right? To tell him he was worth the risk, worth more than all the elites combined?
I raced inside and up to the counter in the waiting room. I almost ran over Preston before I noticed who he was, this tall figure with a white mask over half his face.
“Where’s Colt?” I demanded, grabbing onto his arm.
He recoiled as if I were a snake. “Why would I tell you?” he asked. “So you can put a pillow over his face and finish him off?”
I took a breath to answer, and then reality caught up to me. I looked around the waiting room, where several people were waiting, one of them a mom with a crying baby.
The Dolce twins were sitting in chairs, side by side. Duke had his head in his hands, his fingers fisting in his hair, but Baron was watching.
Baron was always watching.
I couldn’t forget that.
On shaking legs, I left Preston and joined them, and they told me Royal was in the hospital, and I pretended that’s why I was there. Baron asked why I had talked to Preston, and I said I wanted to make sure he hadn’t done anything to Royal. It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t have it in me to think up a lie. I silently thanked the crying baby, which had kept Baron from overhearing what I said to Preston. But I felt him watching, and I knew I had to stop with the ridiculous idea that I deserved freedom, or love, or anything of my own.
Villains didn’t get happy endings.
Sometimes, if they were lucky, they got to survive. That was all I could hope for, and I wasn’t even going to do that if I wasn’t more careful. I couldn’t save Colt. It was too late. All I could do now was try to save myself, and maybe, when he got out of the hospital, I could find a way to repair the damaged I’d done.