Worth It

by Linda Kage

  My breathing picked up and my chest heaved. Shuddering, I backed away from her until I bumped into something. When I glanced back and saw it was her couch, I gratefully sank down and clutched my knees. My skin felt cold. My hands numb. And my heart. Well, that just felt shredded.

  “Give me the video,” I said in a low, steady voice.

  “Felicity,” Reese started, her eyes full of torment, but Mason snapped, “No! He asked us to destroy it, and we’re going to respect his wishes.”

  Storming to a laptop on the table in the kitchen, he ripped a flash drive from the side and snapped it in half.

  Just like that.

  I gasped, feeling as if he’d snapped me in half. Pressing my hand to my heart, I hissed, “How could you?”

  He glanced at me, his jaw clenched. But when he saw my face, he growled and gripped his hair. “Fine. You want to know what happened that day, I will tell you what happened. But there was no way I was actually going to let you watch it. It was...horrendous.”

  “Really, really horrendous,” Reese said, sitting next to me and taking my hand.

  Mason slumped into a chair across the room from us and sighed into his hands, looking as if he’d aged a decade. “I should’ve snapped the damn thing in half as soon as Reese and I stopped watching it the first time. That video will haunt me for the rest of my life. I had to work with him two days after watching it, and I couldn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t... I just kept seeing what they did to him.” He shuddered and glanced at Reese, then me.

  I gripped Reese’s hand harder. “Will you please tell me,” I said in a soft, calm voice, even though inside I was a complete mess.

  He met his girlfriend’s gaze and nodded. “Okay.” But he kept eye contact with Reese as he spoke, as if he needed her moral support to get him through. “It started like she described. Three other inmates jumped him. He was by himself in what looked like some huge, industrial laundry room, pushing one of those cloth laundry cart things. It was obvious the guy in the middle was the ringleader. Jeremy and the other one were just followers, doing his bidding.”

  I nodded when he paused to collect his breath. He glanced at me once then returned his attention to Reese. “The leader guy…he was the one who’d attacked Knox before. He told Knox it’d been too long since he’d had a piece of his...”

  “Sweet ass,” Reese provided helpfully. “It’d been too long since he’d had a piece of Knox’s sweet ass.”

  “Thank you,” Mason murmured at her, his lips twitching in amusement. But then he checked on me, and his grin died flat. “Anyway, Knox told him they’d have to kill him if he ever let that asshole touch him again. So the asshole said he accepted his offer, and just like that, the other two jumped him. Knox was able to shove his laundry cart in one guy’s path, but Jeremy...he had this knife—”

  “Shiv,” Reese offered helpfully.

  “Right.” Mason nodded. “So Jeremy swung his shiv at Knox and caught him right here, in the ribcage.” When he cradled his own side, I sucked in a breath, cradling mine as well and remembering how I’d seen that scar on Knox.

  Reese wrapped her arm around my shoulders, and I leaned into her, needing all the support I could get.

  “Knox was fighting him off barehanded, until the other guy caught him from behind and stuck him in the thigh with his own shiv.”

  I covered my mouth with both hands, and Reese began to rock me back and forth.

  “After they pulled the blade out, they kicked him right where they’d stabbed him, until he went down on one knee. He kept swinging at them, though. But they caught him by the hair and dragged him across the floor until they had him sprawled on his stomach.”

  “He still had hair then?” No idea why I focused on that. I guess it was just safer than thinking about the worst of what I was hearing.

  Mason nodded. “It was quite a bit longer. I don’t blame him for shaving it off after that. I would’ve too.” With a shudder, he kept talking. “While two of them struggled to hold him down, punching on his arms and head and the bloody gash on his leg, the third guy—the leader—ripped down his pants.”

  “And then he...he...he just raped him,” Reese said. “I mean, just like that. Not that I expected foreplay or anything, but one second Knox was struggling on the floor with that monster kneeling behind him, and we were cheering for him, almost expecting him to break free, fight back, and kick all their asses. Then the next second, that asshole yanked down the back of Knox’s pants, pulled himself from his own, spit in his palm to lube himself, and just...rammed it in.”

  I flinched and slapped my knees together as I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “Sorry.” Reese winced and rubbed my arms. “But that’s where I stopped watching.”

  “The other two just keep beating the shit out of him,” Mason murmured. “When Knox started to scream for help, the one—not Jeremy—kicked him in the throat. Man...” He closed his eyes and touched his own neck. “I thought it crushed his windpipe, because he started struggling less and choking more. For a minute, I thought he died, while that asshole leader just kept...going to town.”

  I wiped at my wet cheeks. But they only got wetter. Soon I couldn’t even see through the tears. Reese cried with me as she swayed us back and forth.

  “I don’t know if he just passed out for a minute or what, but suddenly he had this burst of energy. It had to have been pure adrenaline, because I don’t know how he could still function after the way they wailed on him. But he turned his head to the side, launched his face at the guy who wasn’t Jeremy and freaking bit him, right in the calf. It must’ve been hard too, because the dude screamed like a girl.”

  “Good.” I fisted my hands and clenched my teeth, everything in me cheering Knox on.

  “So the guy jammed his shank right into the back of Knox’s shoulder blade. And I mean deep, like it probably stuck out the other side.”

  Nausea rose as my stomach churned. Mason was right, the blade had gone all the way through, because I’d seen the scar from the front. “Oh God,” I moaned, squeezing my eyes shut.

  I didn’t think I could hear any more, and I almost told Mason to stop, but next he said, “And then he did the most badass thing I have ever seen. It was like something straight from a Chuck Norris movie. He reached behind him and freaking pulled the blade out...of his own body.”

  My mouth fell open as Reese whispered, “Holy shit. But...how...how is that even possible? How could he reach back there, much less—”

  “I have no idea, but I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Damn.”

  I couldn’t speak. My own throat had closed over as I listened to how Knox swung the blade around and caught the unknown minion in the gut. It shocked the other two enough that the leader pulled out of him and Jeremy skipped away, leaving Knox free. But he’d left his only form of defense in the other man’s belly. So Jeremy slashed at his face, which had created the scar he now had there.

  Knox managed to wrestle the blade from Jeremy and stabbed him with a kill shot in the chest. Then he stabbed the leader in the throat when the idiot charged at him. Knox’s rapist and Jeremy both died almost immediately, but the third guy started to crawl away, so Knox let him go. Realizing he didn’t have to fight anyone else, he dropped the bloody shiv and fell to his knees, then he collapsed face-first on the concrete floor.

  “When two guards finally arrived and found the mess, they thought Knox was dead too. They nearly pissed their pants when he moved and gasped, reaching for them.”

  I outright wept, nestled in Reese’s arms.

  “They weren’t going to call for an ambulance at first. He was so messed up they didn’t think he’d survive long enough to make it to a hospital. They argued back and forth until one of them heard Knox trying to say something. I’m pretty sure his voice box was mangled because the guard had to get on his hands and knees, lean down and put his ear right by Knox’s bloody mouth to hear him.”


  Mason looked sad as he met my gaze. “I think he might’ve tried to say your name because all the guard could make out was the word City.”

  A low, keening wail left me. I didn’t know it could hurt this much just to listen to a story, but my skin felt as if a million fire ants were attacking me, stinging and burning away my flesh. My chest constricted too tight for me to breathe, and a pulse of pain echoed between my temples. All I could picture was a bloody, beaten, half-naked Knox on the floor, whispering my name on what he assumed was his last breath.

  And to think, I’d given up on him after that, believing thirty years was more than I could wait.

  I was going to be sick.

  “Bathroom,” I gasped, lurching to my feet and grabbing my stomach.

  “That way,” Reese pointed toward a hallway. “First door on the right.”

  I barely made it to Reese and Mason’s bathroom in time before I heaved up the contents of my stomach. I’m not sure how long I was in there, but Asher, and Ten and his wife Caroline, were in Reese and Mason’s living room when I stumbled out, my eyes so swollen from crying I could barely see out of them.

  “Holy shit. Felicity? What’s wrong?” Asher’s voice in my ear as warm arms wrapped around me made me start crying all over again. I checked out for a bit after that, burying my face in his chest, unable to think about anything but how much this hurt.

  “What the hell did you two do to her?” I think I heard Ten demand.

  And then Aspen was there, murmuring my name. “Felicity? Sweetie, are you okay?”

  “No.” I peeled myself away from Asher’s chest and blinked at her, but she still looked blurry. “I want to go home.”

  I wanted to see Knox. I wanted to hold him and never let go.

  “I’ll take you.” When Pick stepped forward, I frowned, wondering where he’d come from. Then I glanced around to discover everyone had showed up while I was having my breakdown.

  He took me gently from Asher and led me toward the door. I have no idea why, but I felt sore, as if I’d worked out all week. Every muscle in me screamed for relief.

  “I am so sorry,” Reese pleaded, grasping my arm as she met us at the door.

  But I shook my head. “Don’t be. I wanted to know. I asked to know.” Turning back to the solemn crowd watching me from worried eyes, I found Mason and nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Pick led me from the apartment. I don’t remember much of the ride home. He didn’t make me talk, so I closed my eyes and let the vibration of his car’s engine lull me into a deeper state. Not outright asleep, but not fully conscious either, I opened my eyes and winced at all the sunlight when he stopped the car.

  “Can you walk?” he asked. I nodded, more confident than I should’ve been because when I opened the door and slid out, I almost fell flat on my face. “Whoa there, darling.” Pick had been coming around to meet me; he had to race the last few steps to catch my arm and keep me from a painful face plant.

  He didn’t outright carry me, but he did make me lean heavily against him as he walked me to my door, found my keys in my purse, and then helped me inside.

  “Knox?” I murmured, glancing around, but Pick shook his head.

  “I don’t think he’s home.”

  So, I started crying again because I wanted to hold him so bad.

  “Shit,” Pick muttered as he rubbed his face and paced in front of the couch where he’d set me down. Finally, he paused to ask, “Can I get you some water?”

  I shook my head and tried to breathe through a couple hyperventilating breaths that caught me unaware. Oxygen fled my brain for a moment and I thought I might pass out. I actually welcomed the idea, but Pick returned with a glass, even though I’d told him I hadn’t wanted it. He forced me to breathe through my mouth. Then he made me drink half the water.

  After that, I curled onto my side, tucked my knees up to my chin and passed out.

  I woke to Knox’s angry snarl. “What the hell, Pick? Why is she crying in her sleep? What the fuck did you do to her?”

  I didn’t realize I was still crying until I felt a tear slip down my nose.

  “Just calm down, man. I don’t know quite what happened, but from what I gather, Reese and Mason told her what was on that video.”

  Silence.

  I sniffed and opened my eyes, but I didn’t have the strength to sit up just yet. I watched Knox shake his head and back away before murmuring, “I thought they said they hadn’t watched the whole thing.”

  “Well, apparently they saw enough to affect Felicity this way.”

  “Motherfucker.” Knox reared back his arm and slammed a fist into the wall.

  “There goes our deposit,” I mumbled as I struggled to push myself upright.

  Knox whirled to me and took in my face before his expression crumpled and he clutched his head in his hands.

  Pick came to me, his hand outstretched to assist me. “Hey, kiddo. How’re you feeling?”

  “Like I got run over by a truck.” I glanced at a turbulent Knox and turned back to Pick. “Thanks for getting me home, but do you think you could...?”

  When I shifted my gaze toward the door, he nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “Yeah, just take care of yourself.”

  As he turned away to leave, neither Knox nor I spoke. Even after the door closed and we were left alone, we still didn’t say a damn thing.

  Finally, Knox surged from the statue-like position he’d been stuck in and paced the floor from one end of the room to the other. He blew out breath after breath, trying to regulate his breathing, and failing. Then he sent me a sharp glance and rumbled, “How much did they tell you?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Enough.”

  “How much?” he ground out.

  Closing my eyes, I shook my head. I didn’t want to repeat any of it. But then I realized I’d be just like Knox if I bottled in it. So I said, “They told me three men jumped you in the laundry room of the prison. They caught you, dragged you across the floor, and while two of them held you down and beat on you and stabbed you, the third one raped you.”

  A choked sob came from Knox’s throat. He began to pace faster, but he said nothing and refused to look at me.

  I hugged myself and sniffed as more tears fell. “When you finally broke free, you stabbed all three of them in return to get them off you, killing two in the process. And then, after the threat was over, you collapsed. The guards found you some time later, but you were so bad off they thought you were already dead. And the only thing you said to them was...my name.”

  “Son of a bitch.” He swung out and punched the wall again. “I thought they said they didn’t watch everything.”

  “Mason did, I guess.”

  He glanced at me, his eyes swirling with anger. “Fucking bastard. I’m going to—”

  “No.” I said, my voice quiet. “I asked them to tell me. Demanded to know what they’d seen. This isn’t on them.”

  “Jesus, City. Why the hell did you have to know so bad? Why?”

  I shook my head. “I just...had to know.”

  “No, you fucking didn’t. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to ever have to deal with shit like this. It’s too ugly and—”

  “I don’t care. Good or bad, it’s a part of you. And you’re a part of me. I had to know.”

  His shoulders slumped as defeat crossed his features. Falling to his knees on the floor across the room from me, he withered. I thought he was going to cry, too, but he only gritted his teeth until his face went purplish red.

  “Don’t you get it?” he rasped. “This is exactly why I’ve been pushing you away since I got out. Because you’re not a part of me any longer. Hell, I’m not even a part of me. I’m just some wasted shell of space who won’t stop breathing. And I can do nothing but hurt you. There’s this stain on me. I’ll never get it out. It takes control and I just get...I get so fucking mad. I want to destroy everything around me. I thought maybe I could tame it, but no. Christ, ju
st look what I’ve done.” He motioned to the dent in the wall. “I’ll never be the Knox either of us knew. And we both have to deal with the fact that he’s gone. For good.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t have to be the case. You might have grown and changed, but, Knox—” When I started to stand and reach for him, he lifted his hand and shouted, “He’s dead, goddamn it. That Knox is dead!”

  Alarmed by the outburst, I slapped my rump back on the couch.

  After taking a moment to control my shuddery breaths, I nodded. “Well...at least now I know why you have continued to push me away, and I don’t blame you at all. You never would’ve had to go through any of that if you’d never gotten mixed up with me. I would hate me right now if I were you, too.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you,” he growled from between clenched teeth, “I never hated you. I never blamed you. If anything, it was the memory of you that helped me survive the worst times.”

  My heart sang as I pressed my hands against the swelling hope in my chest. “Well, you don’t need a memory anymore, Knox. I’m here, in the flesh, and I’m more than willing to keep helping you through this.”

  But he shook his head. “No way. My head is too fucked up. I don’t want you to have to—”

  “I don’t care what’s in your head, damn it.” My voice rose with my frustration. “We have the rest of our lives to deal with that. It’s what’s in your heart that concerns me. And I know you still have feelings for me. Why do you keep fighting that?”

  “Because it’s what’s in my fists that concerns me,” he roared, raising his balled hands to show me how his knuckles had cracked open and bled after hitting the wall. “Just one swing of these things, City, and I could kill you.”

  I rose to my feet, and something in my calm, self-assured expression made uncertainty flicker in his eyes. He lurched to his feet as well.