Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
GEMMA
I dabbed antiseptic onto Lock’s shoulder.
Grim had arrived ten minutes after everything went down, helping to clean up.
Now they all joked as bodies dissolved in acid.
There was a tension in Grim even as he laughed with them.
He’d dragged a chair next to me, one hand wrapped around my upper thigh, as if making sure I was still here.
I looked through the kitchen door, brow furrowing at the gallon-size drums in the hallway.
Like five men didn’t just try to kill them.
Like they weren’t covered in blood.
I pressed more of the cotton into Lock’s gash. I felt a strange combination of numb and wired, like an electric wire shoved into cotton.
“Where did Gemma Crowne learn how to clean a wound?” Raze asked.
Raze had a cut under his eye that I’d managed to clean. His knuckles were bloody, and I’d had to take out the individual pieces of gravel. I looked at the abrasion on his knuckles, remembering him shove a guy to the asphalt. The head breaking open on the gravel. His grip white-knuckled.
“Yeah, I’m curious about that.” Lock tilted his head to find my face.
I remembered my mother on the bathroom floor, shattered glass surrounding her. It was hard to tell if she’d dropped the vase because she was high, or if getting hurt was the point.
“Camp,” I lied.
“Camp?” They laughed, like that was the most insane thing in the world.
While they laughed, Grim stared at me. His head slightly tilted, a softness in his eyes.
Like he could somehow see my mother bleeding.
“Sabrina is on her way,” Wraith said, coming back into the kitchen. “Should get there in three hours.”
Wraith was the least injured, but his lip was still bleeding, and he’d probably have a black eye, even if the ink hid it.
“She must be stoked,” Lock said. “She hates winter.”
“Zabby is leaving?” I asked.
Maybe I didn’t speak out loud, or maybe I was too quiet, because they continued as if I hadn’t. They were sending Zabby away, to some friend of Lock’s in the South. A place that was safer.
Because of what was happening.
Because of me.
It was all because of me. The chaos was because of me. And if Zabby wasn’t lying, then their debt was because of me too.
“I can leave,” I said.
The laughter stopped abruptly. Grim’s grip turned hard, bruising. The other three shared a look.
“This is too much, this is too dangerous,” I said. “You got hurt.”
Lock laughed. “Princess, this is not hurt.”
“You might need stitches.”
Another laugh.
I felt something shift. It wasn’t like a few weeks ago when they held me captive in my room. There wasn’t anger or resentment in their eyes. This was something different entirely.
It was too close to affection.
Which made it so much harder. Anger made sense. This? I didn’t deserve it. Any of it.
“Everything is falling apart—”
“Let it,” Wraith said. “You’re ours, Gemma. The time for second-guessing passed a long time ago.”
My throat felt thick. Wraith didn’t say it with sweetness, just matter-of-fact, but still. A declaration like that coming from Wraith?
“I am curious. You got some kind of fetish for making bad guys angry?” Lock asked, turning to me. “What number is this now? Eleven? Twelve?”
“Thirteen,” Wraith answered.
“Like I said, fetish.”
I dropped the bottle. Burnt-orange liquid poured onto the marble. They were joking. I know they were joking.
I watched as the sticky liquid seeped from white tile, to black.
In my out-of-control life, monsters were the one thing I could control. I made them come when I wanted, where I wanted.
And I knew Grim would handle it.
It was all in my control.
I once read control was an illusion. I never really got it. Until now. It wasn’t…fun anymore.
“S-sorry,” I said, bending down. Absently, I noticed my hands were shaking. I saw the tremors but didn’t feel them.
The room went quiet. Gemma didn’t shake. She didn’t apologize.
“Gemma,” Grim said. I kept trying to get the bottle. “Gemma, look at me.”
It was the authority in his voice that had me lifting my eyes. Some deep, primeval part of me wired to obey him. I didn’t hear them go, but the rest of the Horsemen had left. Grim leaned forward on his chair, knees on his elbows.
That Grim thing happened. Where I couldn’t breathe. Where all I saw and felt was the lethal fire in his eyes. Gleaming. Intense.
His lips tilted.
“Come, Rich Girl.”
No.
Don’t do it.
But I stood up, my legs moving involuntarily, until I was between his legs. His gaze never strayed from mine. I was too open right now. Too vulnerable.
But I couldn’t look away.
Our breaths were one.
He tilted his head, peering into me. Goose bumps shivered along my arms and legs and spine.
“I should go,” I said. “I need to leave. If I leave things will get better.”
“You don’t want to belong to me, mi locura?”
I do. I so do.
“No.”
One side of his lips tilted up, like he’d read my lie. But he said nothing, running his open palm up the back of my thigh, curving over my ass to the small of my back.
Again I felt like a thing. A very precious thing. That belonged to Grim. And I was weak with it.
I can’t be the reason your life falls apart.
“You were never supposed to kill them.” I shoved him, and he gripped my wrists with both hands, keeping me close.
“So I should have let you die?” he growled.
“Yes!” I struggled in his grip, but it was iron. “Let me go. I’m not good for you. I’ll ruin you. I’ll ruin your life. I’ll destroy everything.”
“And?” he demanded. “Since when do you care about that, Rich Girl? Why do you care what happens to me?”
I tried to turn away, but he gripped my chin, dragging me back.
“Do you love me or something?” His eyes searched mine.
Love?
Love was too shallow a word for what I felt. Grim consumed me. My blood. My marrow. He was rooted so deep inside my soul I could feel the tangled roots.
His palms slid into place on either side of my face, caging me. His eyes sharpened, like he was reading my mind.
Then he crushed his mouth against mine. His thumbs dug into my cheekbones, pulling me closer to him. The kiss was rough and commanding—I couldn’t move under his grip—and over too soon.
“I will never let you go,” he said, pulling back to snarl against my lips. “Never.”
He didn’t let me go, grip still bruising my face. Under a lock of black hair, his eyes were black, fathomless pools. The words Wraith had said to me weeks ago reflected back in the hungry, visceral emotions shimmering in their depths.
If Grim is your reaper, then you’re his fucking reckoning. He knows you’re going to kill him, and he refuses to let go.