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You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end, she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls. —J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“Don’t you know that you can have anything you want?” His eyes searched mine. “I’ll hurt anyone for you.”
“Abuse can feel like love.” I blinked, the voice so close that my ears tingled. Slowly, I raised my eyes to look at the side of Damon Torrance’s face, his shirt wrinkled, and his tie draped around his neck. The whole class fell silent, and I glanced at Will next to me, seeing his eyebrows pinched together as he looked at the back of his friend’s head. Mr. Townsend approached. “‘Abuse can feel like love . . .’” he repeated. “Why?” Damon remained so still it didn’t look like he was breathing. He looked at the teacher, unwavering. “Starving people will eat anything.”
“Real monsters don’t wear masks, William Grayson III,” I retorted. “They look like everyone else.”
When the bus stops, get in my fucking truck. I breathed out a bitter laugh. Aw, someone’s lost his temper. Why? I asked. The next thing I know, the bus stopped, he yanked the earbuds out of my ears, and I sucked in a breath as he leaned into my face. “Because you’re mine,” he growled in a whisper.
“I think that’s why I’ve always liked this time of day best. People hide in the dark. They quench their thirsts in the dark. They build their secrets in the dark. We’re more ourselves here than anywhere else. I get to be me”—he swallowed, staring at me—“when nightfall is coming.”
“You know,” he said. “Funny thing. When you didn’t make it home by ten, I tracked your phone.” I faltered, feeling the hair on my arms rise. He could track my phone? How long had he been doing that? “It told me that you were at the Cove.” He walked away and leaned against the counter, his eyes on me. “Funny thing is, the Cove closed at eight tonight, and when I drove out there, all I saw was Will Grayson’s truck in the parking lot.”
“Because screaming doesn’t help,”
“Because you get tired of being the victim,” he said, like he was thinking out loud, “and it’s easier to just let it happen.”
“To just pretend we’re in control of everything happening to us,”
“Until you can’t remember who you were before you started lying even to yourself,” he added. “Until you can’t remember ever smiling when it didn’t fucking hurt.”
Abuse can feel like love.
Starving people will eat anything.
She laid her forearms on the table, leaning in. “Did you ever find what I had buried under the gazebo when you burned it down?” she asked. “Or is it still there under the dirt?” I balled my fists. “All the shit you don’t know,” she said. “So clueless. It’s almost comforting how you don’t change.”
“But you’re going to be fucking mine someday,” he growled. “Come hell or high water, Emory Scott. You’re my woman, and you’re going to come home to me every day and sit at my table and warm my fucking bed.” He kissed me. “And you’re going to give me a Will Grayson IV. Mark my words.”
“You’re Lilith,” he whispered against my skin. “You can’t be burned if you’re the flame.”
“You’re going to remember this, Will Grayson,” she said, sounding all tough. “I blew your mind tonight. Even if for just a minute.”
away, but then I dropped my eyes to her back, seeing the bruises and scrapes. How did she paint her back? Did her brother help her? I doubted it. Squatting down, I leaned in closer, studying the marks on her arm and back with the little moonlight streaming in through the sheer curtains. Licking my thumb, I rubbed at the dark purple one with red around it, but . . . The makeup didn’t rub off.
Morning! Smile. Or don’t. It’s completely your choice. Don’t let a guy tell you you’re prettier when you do. You don’t need to be pretty for anyone. Your value does not rely on my opinion. Damn the patriarchy.
I’d loved Emory since the moment I laid eyes on her when I was fourteen.
“Unless you’re telling me to fasten my seat belt,” she fired back, “shut up, Will.”
“I want to fuck her,” I panted, nibbling his mouth. “I want to drive her wild, rubbing our pussies together like animals, and screwing her until I sweat, because he needs to remember all that he’ll be missing when he’s sitting like a king at his dining room table someday. Alone and dreaming about his naked little Viking straddling him in his chair and fucking her man, because while he controls all, she controls him.”
Peering between their shoulders, I met her eyes once more. “I reached for you,” I told her. “In my head, all these years. Even after you dumped me like trash and I couldn’t fall out of love with you no matter how much I drank and snorted, my brain reached for you always.”
“When nothing gave me a reason to get out of bed, my friends were falling in love, making babies, and I felt so alone . . .” I choked on the tears in my throat I wouldn’t let loose. “What do you think was the only thing that made me keep breathing?” My tone hardened as I clenched my jaw. “In my brain, I reached for you. I never stopped reaching for you.”
“The role of the villain is only determined by who’s telling the story.”
“Was it that I might’ve chosen Will or that I might have chosen Aydin that bothers you the most?”
“Not everyone is born knowing their path is from point A to point B, Alex,” I bit out. “You and Will are the same. You sit up there on your high horse, all ‘love conquers all’ and shit, and refuse to understand that there are impossible choices others have to make, but it doesn’t mean we don’t love.” My voice grew harder, and I glanced around the room and then back to Alex. “Does it suck? Yes!” I yelled, feeling Will’s eyes on me. “But do you understand it? I know you do. Sometimes the uncertainty seems like more of a risk than just staying with what’s familiar. It takes time to grow that
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He twisted his lips to the side, giving me that eyes-falling-down-my-body-to-inspect-the-competition-with-a-side-of-judgment look, but he shut his damn mouth.
“Hell yeah, you love me,” he said, sucking my lips into his mouth. “You’re crazy about me, and you may not be blond or eighteen or named Heidi, but you’re fucking mine, Little Trouble.” He pushed up my shirt, yanked down my bra, and covered my nipple with his mouth, sucking hard. “And you can still walk my dogs someday if you want, but I’ll for damn sure be peeling down your panties on my desk and letting you pretend like you don’t love every second of it right before I write you that little check.” He gripped my neck, his other hand trying to rip down my pants as he kissed me. “You’re never
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“Um . . .” someone said, and I blinked, noticing the car had stopped. “Okay, wow. I . . . um . . . I’d love to watch this, actually,” Damon called out, “but Winter will consider it cheating if she’s not here, too. I’ll go ahead and walk home, and you fucking owe me, Will.”
“Memories that aren’t tainted with all the years apart right afterward,” he explained. Everyone watching us from a distance faded away, and I looked down at his hair matted to his scalp and temples, droplets cascading down his cheeks and over his lashes, and all I wanted in the world was to stare at him forever. “I build with you now,” he whispered to me, the heat of his mouth on my lips. “We make Thunder Bay together, Em. I love you.”
He stood up, standing over me. “I love you,” he said again. “But I’ll let you go.” He started to walk away, my heart ripping in two, and I shook my head. No. He couldn’t let me go. He couldn’t move on without me. Everything we’d been through—everything—meant something. It all meant something. Didn’t it? This wasn’t where we ended. Nothing was over. “Will you marry me?” I asked, breathing hard and my heart hammering.
“I love you,” I said, and I could see people filming us with their phones out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t care. “I’m wild crazy for you, and I’m sure I’ll kill you at some point, but . . . God, I love you so much, and I want you to marry me.”
More tears streamed down my face as I choked out the words. “Marry me, Will Grayson.” I rushed up and hugged his back, wrapping my arms around him. “Can you marry me? Can I marry you?”
He pulled it out, pinching a vintage Victorian ring with a teardrop diamond and a platinum band encrusted with more jewels, encased by an ornate setting above and below. It was almost like three rings in one, and nearly an inch in width. “It’s very old,” Will said, slipping it onto my finger, his hand shaking. “It’s your family’s?” “It’s yours now.” He met my eyes. “It’s been yours for nearly ten years.”
“I’m marrying you,” I whispered. He nodded. “’Bout time you caught up.” I started to laugh, diving in and kissing him, cheers going off at the tavern.
I mean, what the fuck? I just got her back, and fear was nipping at the corner of my brain, worried that she’d change her mind about marrying me if I couldn’t periodically remind her how hot I was.
Damon suffocated her with chloroform, threw her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, and took her to sea!” “We were bonding,” Damon retorted. “You’re just jealous.”
“I’m just glad your ‘bonding’ didn’t go under the clothes before you knew she was your sister,” I fired back. “Can you imagine?”
“You sure you know where you’re going?” Michael asked. “I own this town,” she fired back. He chuckled despite the rush we were in, but I had no time to wonder where the hell this kid came from, or if she was really leading us to safety. Right now, we had no choice. Stopping, she rose up and popped up a floorboard, all of us crawling up into the warehouse, and right into the Mad Scientist’s wing again. As soon as we were all inside and we knew where we were at, Michael picked up the kid, threw her over his shoulder, and ran, all of us following him. “Oh, my God, I can walk.” She raised up and
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“Athos,” she finally answered. “My name is Athos.” Like the musketeer? “And your last name?” Michael demanded. “I don’t have one.” He frowned. “You have one. You weren’t born here, kid.” “Maybe I was beamed down to study your species.” Alex snorted, and we watched as the little girl took Rika’s hand and backed up, hovering close to the woman and away from Michael with a scowl on her face.
Christiane stepped forward, not taking her eyes off Evans as she walked straight for him, her blond hair—like Rika’s—pulled back in a low ponytail and her frail, quiet form looking too skinny to pick up a peanut. She stopped in front of him, both of them locking eyes, and then . . . she whipped her hand across his face, sending him stumbling to the side.
Damon put his finger under her chin and pushed, forcing her to lift her eyes up. “Chin up,” he bit out. “And stop being a mouse. You’re my mother, for Christ’s sake.”
Mr. Grayson peered at Will, his eyes thinning in skepticism. “Never,” he answered. I exhaled. “Then why did you put him in Blackchurch?” For the fucking money? For the resort? To trip up Graymor Cristane? Why? Senator Grayson smiled, looking lovingly at his grandson. “Because he asked me to,” he said. Will broke into a chuckle, both of them with the same bright green eyes as they dove in and embraced each other, laughing and smiling as they hugged. My stomach dropped. What? “What the hell?” Damon snapped. Evans’s face fell, watching the two men. Will asked him to send him to Blackchurch? What?
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He met her eyes, a moment of something I couldn’t place passing in his eyes. “Are you scared, Emory?” he asked her. Her voice remained as still and calm as her body. “I’m the eye of the storm. You?”
I looked to Em. “Hide.” “Are you kidding?” she yelled. And then she ran, shooting out her foot right into Martin’s chest, the gun knocking out of his hand as he fell back onto the ground.
“I’d rather just concentrate on your face,” she whispered, reaching up and touching his cheek. He slowed, unable to look at her as a tear dripped off his chin. “Except your hair,” she teased. “You look like you’re in a K-Pop band, Aydin.”
But she stopped me. “I had to fight back,” she told me. “Now he knows. Now he knows it will never go unanswered again.” And I pulled her into me, squeezing her so tight. She was like us. I would say the exact same thing, and even though I hated to risk losing her, she wasn’t a flower. And now I understood why Michael let Rika be at his side in everything they did. She wanted to feel this, too.
“I think Aydin wants to be naked in this bed with you right now,” I told her. “He’s sooooo adorable.” She blinked, looking sleepy. “Did you see his muscles in that T-shirt? Shiverrrrrs.” “Jesus Christ,” Damon grumbled, turning away.
