23. Lola #2
“Fuck off, I don’t know you. You’re not my Brody, you’re not him,” I say. Wrecked and ruined.
Tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. He yanks my jaw, making me look at him. His eyes have gone dark, no softness, no light. Not my Brody. Not anymore.
“You miss the way it used to be?” He tilts his head. “You miss the boy who loved you? Or do you like this better?”
I press my lips together. Don’t scream. Don’t give him that. But he sees it. The way my body trembles. The way my breath comes in quick, tiny little sobs. He breathes it in. He loves it.
He grabs my wrists, pins them over my head, his hand covering both. His fingers dig deep. He can hold me with just that. The other hand goes to my jaw, squeezing until it aches. Forcing me to look at him. His face. My Brody. Dark eyes, wild, cracked with pain and craziness.
“You want to hate me? Fine. Hate me. But you will never forget me. Nobody will ever own you like I do, Lola. Not Marcus. Not your clients. Not those men you let paw all over you. Just me.”
I shake my head. I can’t speak.
He moves his hips. His cock grinds against my crotch, hot through the thin pajama pants, the ruined panties. My body remembers him. It leaks. It throbs and aches for him. I wish it would stop.
He lifts my chin, thumb bruising the side of my face. “Tell me what happened to my mother,” he growls. “Now.”
My body jolts. I almost spit the words at him.
“I don’t know!” The truth rips up from my chest. I don’t even know if it’s true.
I’ve lied so long I can’t taste the difference.
“Marcus deals with his enemies. Girls like me, we don’t get told anything.
I swear to fucking god, Brody, I didn’t even know she was gone until weeks later.
Marcus kept me locked up. He always kept me away from that shit. ”
His eyes bore through me. No mercy. “You’re lying,” he snaps. “You were there. You were in his house the night she died.”
I’m shaking. “He never let me leave my room. He told me if I was good, nothing bad would ever happen to me.”
Brody’s fingers are digging into my jaw, bruising me all over again. My words hang in the air, desperate and helpless. I can feel him registering them, the way a wild animal registers the tremble of prey. Some part of him enjoys my fear, some part of him frantic to hear something else.
He shakes his head, lips curling cruelly. “You want me to believe that? You want me to think Marcus locked you away out of kindness? You were always his favorite. His little project. His little fucking spy—”
“I wasn’t,” I gasp, voice trembling, salt stinging my lips. “I wasn’t, Brody. I swear. He never let me out. I was just…a thing he kept. I never knew. I never knew—”
He rears back, breathing hard, eyes glassy and haunted.
Rage flickers there, but beneath it something falters.
Doubt. Only for a second. Then he slams the mask of anger back in place.
“Liar,” he bites out, but it breaks as he says it.
His grip loosens imperceptibly. “You’re always lying, Lola.
You lied the night you left me, you lied when you let him ruin us—”
A sob claws up my throat. Tears spill, silent and hot. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he did to her. I didn’t know she was gone until weeks later. I would have told you, Brody. I loved you. Even when you left, I never stopped—”
He flinches, the word love hitting him like a blow. For a moment we just stare, both trembling, the air between us thick with all the rot and ruin of what we used to be.
He softens, barely. “You’re saying you didn’t help him?”
I shake my head, dizzy, broken. “I didn’t. I hated him. I hated what he did. I wanted out, but he owned me. He owns everything.”
Brody’s jaw works, his hands still holding me as if letting go would send us both crashing through the floor.
Outside the wind screams. Inside it’s just us, ruined, stripped, exhausted.
He lets go of my wrists, and sits back on his heels, breathing like he’s run a marathon. For a moment he doesn’t say anything. He just watches me, searching my face for a crack, a tell, a sign of guilt.
I wipe at my cheeks, too tired to hide the tears. “You can believe what you want. You always did.”
He stands abruptly, something fractured in his movements. He paces to the far wall, shoulders squared, back heaving. He looks like he wants to punch through the concrete or collapse to the floor, or both.
I curl up, bruised and humiliated, cold to the core. The ache inside me is bigger than fear. It’s grief, for him, for myself, for the girl I used to be.
He turns, agony twisting his face. “I want the truth, Lola. I want to kill him for what he did. For what he took from me. From you. My father seems to believe you’re guilty. My father wouldn’t lie. My father fucking saved me. He has to be right. Otherwise, this is all for nothing.”
I jump up, voice ragged. “Let go of your pride and ego for once! I’m still your Lola, your Bambi. You’re forever.”
The words hang in the air. Bloody, desperate, true. Something in Brody’s eyes changes. For the first time since he ripped off the mask, I see the boy I loved flicker through all the violence.
It’s gone again, just as quick.
He grabs the mask, jaw set. “Get some sleep. We’re not done.”
He leaves me there, ruined and wrung out, the mattress cold, the storm pressing against the walls like the future itself. And I know, in the hollow of my gut, that nothing between us will ever be the same again. Not after tonight.
My Brody is my tormentor. I think about everything he has done to me since he took me here and I suddenly feel the urge to vomit. I never thought Brody would touch me like that, or talk to me like that.
But I never thought my mom would die and leave me alone with a monster.
I close my eyes and take deep breaths. Brody isn’t Marcus. I remind myself. Brody is my first love. Brody is not a monster.
Even as I tell myself that, though, I think about his recent actions, and I wonder: Have I ever been safe with him? Or was I too young to see that darkness in him? Is the mask new? Or am I the blind one?
It would be ironic if I’ve been terrified of Marcus for years, wondering if he will kill me, when Brody is the one who might finish me.
My first love. My first heartbreak. My monster.