“Okay, sweetie,” Aunt Lottie says. “But please promise you’ll come by soon. I worry about you, all alone in that big house. It’s not right. You know you can come over and stay here whenever you want.”
She drops a kiss on my head before I stand.
“Yeah. Thanks Aunt Lottie.”
I say goodnight to them and head home with the leftovers they loaded on me. It’s empty when I get there, the weight of loneliness crushing down on my shoulders.
Releasing a strained breath, I have nothing to do but wait for Blair to return. After I place a piece of the pie she was eyeing earlier on the counter, I sink to the couch in the lounge, staring at the spot where I fucked her, completely unrestrained, allowing the monster inside free rein.
And she took it.
Begged me.
She didn’t look at me with disgust when she faced my inner monster, she spread her legs wider and gave me her claws, too.
My heart gives an irritating, needy flutter in my chest. I grab at the front of my shirt.
It’s strange how one person can make you feel so much. Blair makes me feel hate, desire, anger, lust, and something even more dangerous—love. The kind of love that’s unknown, like a star collapsing on itself to form a black hole. You can’t help but get dragged in by the gravitational pull. A love that doesn’t need light because it blooms even in the darkest depths.
I don’t know how to tell her. Not when she’s been closing herself off. I won’t bare my need for her when hers doesn’t match it.
She’s slipping away. All I want to do is hold on tighter. But if I do that, I’ll only make demands I shouldn’t.
If she wants to go so bad, fine.
I lean my elbows on my thighs and put my face into my hands, massaging the dull ache in my temples.
When she leaves, she’s got her mom to go home to. I’ll have an empty, overpriced prison cell all to myself once more.
The pang of jealousy gives way to the longing I’ve smothered. It seeps between the fractures in my internal boxes, bubbling to the surface with enough force to make me gasp for air. My stomach knots and my chest hurts.
I dig my fingers into my scalp in an attempt to shove it back down. The longing refuses to be tamed back into its place, eating at me instead as I wait for Blair to come back to me.
The door opens and the light in the hall clicks on. My head snaps up.
“Are you sitting in the dark?” Blair appears from the hall, shrugging out of the charcoal peacoat she borrowed from me. “Emo stereotype, much?
I scrape my fingers through my hair. “I guess.”
Blair’s brow pinches. Her makeup is smudged, the mascara dried underneath her eyes like it ran. Was she crying?
“How’s your mom?” My voice is too hard.
The grip on my composure is slipping thanks to the fear that’s lingered in the back of my head for days.
But the look in her eyes is wary and distant.
“She’s…stable,” Blair says, exhaustion evident in her petite frame. “They’ve got the fever under control, but the inflammation in her heart hasn’t cleared up.”
“Are her doctors not doing everything they can to—”
“They are. Apparently there’s just not enough known about her illness, so it’s not clear to them what caused her heart condition. All they keep saying is that autoimmune myocarditis is rare.” Blair’s eyes flash. “I’m going up to bed. It’s been a long day.”
I don’t want her to leave like everyone else does. No one stays long enough to love me past my issues, but for a while I believed she might.
“Next time I’m going with you.”
Thirty-Eight
Blair
The laugh that escapes me is sharp.
“No, you’re not. I don’t care if you’re paying for the bills, you don’t get to just tell me when and where I get to go, or come with me like you’re my boyfriend.”
Devlin’s jaw clenches, a muscle jumping. “I am. You’re—”
“Mine? Is that what you were going to say?” I scoff, throwing my arms out. “Devlin, you never even asked me! You just started saying I was your girlfriend to your family without discussing it! You didn’t talk to me, didn’t ask me—you don’t just get to decide. That’s not how this works.”
He shoots to his feet, closing the distance between us in two strides, towering over me with a dangerous glint in his eye. I jut my chin, unafraid of him.
“You’re treading a risky path.” He grips my arms. “Don’t make me repeat how things work with us.”
It’s all becoming too much.
“There’s no us!” I struggle free of his firm grasp and turn on my heel.
Devlin follows as I jog up the steps. The hair on the back of my neck stands, my instincts go on alert, expecting him to grab me. I’m faster, keeping out of his reach.
“What do you mean there isn’t an us?” Devlin’s tone is so rough, it’s hard to make out his question.
The arrogant bastard has made a triumphant return. He’s lurked beneath this whole time, waiting to remind me of the one truth I’ve burned into my brain since Dad first left.
Men can’t be trusted. No matter what they say, or how sweetly they care for you, they’ll all do the same thing—hurt you. Survival has to come first.
I stop in the middle of his bedroom, blinking angrily. My feet carried me here automatically, as if I can’t shake how safe I’ve felt in this room. I kick off the short chunky heels I wore to his family’s house and take a breath to filter out some of the agitation that’s built in my chest since finding the contract hidden in Devlin’s closet.
“Did I miss the part where I sold you the girlfriend experience?” The accusation leaves me on a pained shout, scraping my throat raw.
A flash of surprise crosses Devlin’s face before he schools his expression into a controlled calm. It’s fake, manufactured to hide his true feelings. I can see the white-knuckled fists he shoves in his pockets, though.
“I haven’t set a task or paid for you to humiliate yourself in weeks. We’ve clearly been operating under different impressions of our relationship.”
He’s so careful about the way he words it, skipping over the way he’s been manipulating me, treating me like he cares when he still has the contract. The blistering fury overflows, spurred on by the long fucking night I’ve had sitting with Mom, her body drained like she’s going to be taken from me at any second.
“Goddamn it, Devlin! You can’t buy love, it’s not real! This has all been a fucking game to you!”
“The money doesn’t matter.” Devlin’s mouth pinches, working like he’s trapping his unfiltered responses, considering what to say before he opens those lying lips. “The arrangement doesn’t matter, or anything else.”
I jab my finger at him. “Doesn’t it? You’re so desperate for company, you paid me to play house with you.”
Devlin’s jaw clenches. Misery fills his eyes for a second before it disappears. Words keep coming, spilling from me without control. I throw everything in his face.
“You’re a monster,” I hiss. “You hated a girl so much you had to take your torment even further by diminishing me and manipulating my desperation to suit your sick game? You made me believe you actually—” I cut myself off with a harsh gasp before I continue in a low voice. “What a way to live up to your reputation as the devil. No wonder your parents are never around, because they probably can’t stand to be near their demon spawn.”
The only reaction Devlin gives me is a faint tightness around his eyes and the precise tilt of his head.
My throat burns with regret. The second the words are out, I wish I could take them back. It’s a low, cutting blow, even for me. After seeing the way his parents treat him, I shouldn’t have said it. That anger is born of the hurt Dad instilled in me, my rage is for him above anyone else, for leaving and destroying Mom’s happiness.
I open my mouth to apologize, taking a step toward him.
“I see.
” Those two words are clipped and austere, freezing me in place.
It echoes in the silence, starkly outlining how little I mean to him. Nothing more than his paid toy. A game to play and no more.
Everything we had was fake.
I was so stupid to believe this cynical asshole could love a broken, beat down girl from the wrong side of town. Naive to forget how little I can trust men—in the end, they’re all alike.
Releasing a watery breath, I go to the closet panels along the wall, opening the one where I found our contract when I was stealing one of Devlin’s shirts to wear. I take out the magazine page with our deal written on it and spin to face Devlin. I knew when I discovered he still had it, in his bedroom no less, that things hadn’t changed.
Devlin’s eyes widen a fraction. He must have thought I wouldn’t find the contract. It was bound to happen—I’m always stealing his clothes.
“This is over.”
The sound of the tearing page grates on my ears as I shred it in front of him. My chest heaves with my agitated breathing, hoarse sounds slipping past my lips as I try to hold my emotions back. I’m in survival mode, there’s no time for tears. Not yet. I can’t crack until I’m in a safe space, where I can let go and bleed myself dry of this bleak feeling swallowing me whole.
Devlin watches with a detached disinterest, eyes hooded. The torn scraps of the magazine page fall to the floor in a flutter.
Part of me wants to storm out, but I’m not leaving my books behind. I have more clothes I left at the trailer, the ones here can stay. I gather the paperbacks from the nightstand into my arms and go into my room. Devlin follows, hands buried in his pockets. He doesn’t say anything to stop me as I grab my duffel bag and stack my books inside.
It stabs like needles into my nerve endings. He says nothing.
Doesn’t that drive the truth home? If he cared, he’d say something to stop me from self-destructing.
The tears I’m holding back leak free, but I can’t break down yet. I finish gathering the books from the bedrooms, pull on shoes, and pause at the top of the stairs with the heavy bag weighing me down.
There are more books I’ve left all over the house. The one unaccounted for that hurts worst of all is my favorite book, the one I read with Mom. I can’t find Stardust anywhere and I’m out of time. Devlin is breathing down the back of my neck.
I need to get out of here, far away from him, before I give into the weak rattle in my chest begging me to stay.
Shoving it down, I start for the steps.
A hand on my arm stops me. I glance down at Devlin’s iron grip squeezing my bicep too hard. There’s a tremor in his hand.
“You can’t force me to stay here against my will like I’m your captive.” My voice is cold. It’s the only way I know to stay strong so I can leave. “Let me go.”
Devlin releases a derisive scoff, dropping my arm. It throbs, the echo of his fingers lingering. My pale skin will probably carry his bruises.
“This arrangement is over then.”
I hesitate at the top of the stairs, looking back. He could call the cops. It was the threat that kept me under his thumb at first, before I thought it changed.
It’s a consequence I’ll have to face later.
Devlin’s stare is piercing, giving away nothing. Even when I hated him, I could read between the lines of his carefully constructed mask.
Gripping the strap of my patched up duffel bag, I make my escape. Every step makes my heart snap, the shattered pieces falling away. I don’t reach my car before the tears bash through the thin wall keeping them at bay.
Thirty-Nine
Devlin
Everyone leaves. That’s my universal truth. I was an idiot to forget it or think this time would be different.
My body moved without my permission, holding her arm in a last-ditch effort, the instinct to stop her an innate thing I couldn’t control.
No matter how much I prepared myself for it, Blair leaving hurts worse than anyone who’s abandoned me before.
And I’ve never deserved it more.
Forty
Blair
Mom was discharged from the hospital two days after I returned to the trailer. It’s been a week, but we’re getting by with her at home. The real problem is how we’ll afford the medication the doctors prescribed for her autoimmune disease. It will be tough on us.
At least rent is paid on the trailer through the end of the year. I found out when I moved back. Devlin’s parting gift, I guess.
It gives us a little over a month to figure something out.
More than anything in the last week, I hate the sickening ache in my chest, the one that stuck to my ribs like a burr after the fight with Devlin. It didn’t sink in until I was standing outside the blue trailer how things had come to a screeching halt.
Regret slithers in my gut every day for the horrible things I said to him. He hid his reaction, but I must have cut him to use his awful parents against him. I’m no less of a monster than the one I accused him of being.
Seeing Devlin at school is torture on the days he decides to show up. He hasn’t gone back to tormenting me, at least. The cops haven’t shown up to cart me away, either. I’m beginning to let my hackles drop, no longer fearing my arrest at any second.
Through English and lunch I feel Devlin’s unwavering gaze boring into me. Part of me wishes—hopes—he’ll storm across the cafeteria and fight for me, rather than just letting me go.
Am I really so easy to toss away?
I must be, because my own father did it.
But Devlin and I haven’t returned to hating each other. Instead, we’re stuck in a weird, gut-wrenching limbo that hurts so much I can hardly breathe.
I have to, though. The thing I’m good at is being a survivor, and I need to be one now more than ever. For my future…for Mom.
When I make instant ramen for dinner, my stomach turns. It never bothered me before when it was the staple thing I ate for dinner on nights Mom worked late at the diner. Now, the salty chicken-scented broth tingles my nostrils and sends a wave of nausea through me.
I grip the sides of the cheap pink formica counter, breathing steadily to quell my roiling stomach.
The chicken flavor instant ramen is my favorite.
So why?
Maybe my dose of the high life has teased my taste buds too much. Bitter anguish wells up. So what if Devlin had good food to eat?
I chide the weakness, hardening myself back into the person I’ve honed myself into ever since Dad ditched us. Scrunching up my face, I take a big bite of steaming noodles, waving my hand in front of my mouth when it’s too hot.
“Ow, ow,” I whimper.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?” Mom comes out of the hall.
“Nothing,” I tell her in a garbled voice. Grimacing, I swallow the mouthful. “You should be in bed, resting. The doctor stressed how important it is to keep yourself relaxed so you don’t have a flare up.”
The terrifying beep of her heart rate monitor in the hospital haunts the back of my mind with a dissonant echo when the inflammation around her heart threw warning alarms to alert the nurse on call when I visited last week on Thanksgiving.
She touches my hair. “It’s okay. I feel fine.”
I take my ramen to the couch and prop my feet on the coffee table. “In that case, want to read with me?”
“Of course.” Mom sits next to me, tucking her feet beneath her. She gives me an affectionate smile that soothes some of the pain hollowing my chest.
* * *
It’s only two days later when Mom gives me another scare. Blood drains from my face as I enter the trailer and find her slumped on the couch, holding her head.
“Mom? Mom! What is it—what’s wrong?” I rush to her side, taking one of her hands.
She winces. “Headache. It still won’t go away.”
Shit. She’s had this headache for over a day, after she went out to find a job while I was at school. Mom gestures to the
open pill bottles on the table, three different kinds to help headaches.
“Come on.” I help her up and sit her at the kitchen table, crouching beside her chair. “We’re going tonight.”
“Blair—”
“No! We thought we could get by, but you don’t qualify for the assistance program, not since I turned eighteen and you lost your extra boost from having a dependent. Fuck Dad’s debt right now, we can’t let that keep us from the help you need, no matter what it costs.” I take a ragged breath. My voice turns small and hoarse. “I can’t lose you.”
“Oh, Blair. I’m not going anywhere.” Mom brushes my hair aside. “I’m right here with you. If it makes you feel better, we can go to the clinic.”
We’ve talked about this a little. I have money saved up, everything I ever received from Devlin. It’s going toward a clinic in town that has several specialists. I’ve been in touch with them and they recommended her for their center when I explained I was trying to care for her at home, but it wasn’t going well.
“Okay, so I’ll just pack you a bag, grab the copy of your records from the hospital…” I tick off what we’ll need, the mental tally continuing in my head.
Mom stops me from walking off, fingers curling around my wrist.
“What is it?”
A weary sadness is clear in her eyes and the age lines in her face. She strokes the inside of my wrist. “Nothing. I was just wondering when my baby girl got so strong. Most days I feel like you’re the mom and I’m—”
I cup her face and kiss her forehead before hugging her. “I love you, Mom. I’ll take care of you, and everything else.”
“I love you, too, Blair. I’m proud of the woman you’ve grown into. So, so proud.” Mom’s voice cracks and I squeeze her tighter, a telltale sting in my nose and eyes warning of my own impending tears.
As I pack her a bag, I don’t feel strong. I don’t know how Mom can be proud of me. I’m weak, because the only thought running alongside my mental task list is how much I want Devlin to come help me so I don’t have to face this alone. A broken exhale tears from my lungs. I lean against the wall in Mom’s bedroom for a second, feeling the depth of my fears and mistakes.
Tempting Devil: Sinners and Saints Book 2 Page 26
