Torn

by Natasha Knight

  “Where’s your bodyguard?” he asks, barely casting a glance around as he goes to the sink and runs water over the butt of his cigarette before tossing it into the trash can.

  “Why do you smoke?”

  “Why not?”

  He turns to face me, leans his back against the counter.

  “Are you worried about my health?” he asks.

  He eyes my whiskey, brings the bottle over to sit down across from me. He pours into one of the two glasses there and swallows it all before pouring another.

  “You drink too much, too,” I say.

  “Judgmental much?”

  “You and your brother both do.”

  Plastering a false smile on his face, he takes another healthy sip.

  “Think you should be here? Alone with me?” he asks.

  I study him and again, I see it, that broken boy behind the angry, hard façade.

  “Why are you here, Gregory? At Lucinda’s house?”

  “I didn’t exactly feel welcome on the island.”

  “Are you welcome here?”

  He shrugs a shoulder.

  I look down at the amber liquid, swish it around, then take a sip.

  “Does it help?” I ask.

  “Does what help?”

  “If I drink enough, will it all go away? Will I forget?” I ask. I look at his strange eyes, so dark with those specks of bright turquoise.

  “Just for a while,” he says.

  He swallows the contents of his glass and gestures for me to do the same.

  I pick it up and do it, even though it burns like hell, and he pours me another.

  “That’s a good Willow Girl.”

  “Stop with that. Just stop.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not you. You’re not a jerk even though you go out of your way to act like one.”

  He snorts. “That’s where you’re wrong, Helena. I’m a jerk and an asshole, but no more so than my brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  He shrugs a shoulder. “I’m not Sebastian’s keeper.”

  We sit in silence for a long minute.

  “You’re wrong,” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “You’re neither of those things. I see you, Gregory. I see past the asshole image you like to put on. It’s just a front and I see through it.”

  “Really?” He drinks.

  I take another sip, even though I’m feeling the alcohol.

  “Yeah, really. What you said when we were on that beach, I get you wanting it. Wanting that stupid kiss. What Sebastian does, I know it’s not fair, not to you.”

  “Fair,” he snorts. “Life’s not fucking fair, Helena.”

  “It’s not.” I’m quiet, considering my words.

  “You know if he finds you in here with me, he’ll be pissed,” Gregory says.

  “You don’t care about that,” I say.

  “Do you?”

  “I think sometimes, it’s easier for me because he makes me. With you. When he tells me to, it’s easier.”

  I balance the glass on its edge on the table, focusing on it rather than looking at him.

  “Even when he punishes me after.”

  When I finally look up, I find him watching me.

  “What do you want, Helena?”

  I drink from my glass. I don’t answer.

  “What are you doing here?” he continues. “With me?”

  “I care about you, Gregory.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit. I do.”

  His eyes search mine. “But you love him.”

  I nod.

  He pushes his chair back, scraping the tiles.

  I get up too, catch his arm when he turns to go. “Wait.”

  He looks down at my hand wrapped around his wrist, then turns his gaze up to mine.

  “Wait for what?” he asks.

  The way he looks at me, it’s like he’s looking for something. Like he’s searching like you would a buoy when you’re out too far at sea and don’t have the strength to swim another minute. Another second.

  “Wait for what, Helena?” he asks again, shifting his hands so they wrap around both of my wrists and walking me backward toward the wall.

  “Gregory—”

  “No.” He steps closer so he’s looming over me. “Answer me. Wait for what?”

  My heart races.

  “I don’t know what,” I finally say.

  He exhales, brings his mouth to my ear and I feel the scruff of his jaw on my cheek and hear his warm breath on my ear.

  “If you were mine I wouldn’t share you,” he whispers, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He kisses the side of my cheek and I squeeze my eyes closed.

  “Gregory, stop.”

  When I try to free myself, he tightens his grip on my wrists. He draws back just far enough so I can see his eyes.

  “Did he do it?” he asks, touching his forehead to mine.

  I lick my dry lips. “Do what?”

  He gives the smallest, one-sided grin and transfers my wrists into one of his hands at my back. With the other, he reaches under my hair, behind my neck, feeling there, looking for something.

  I know what.

  “The mark. Did he do it?”

  “You want him to brand me?”

  He shifts his hold so he cups the back of my head, then squeezes his fingers in my hair.

  “You’re hurting me, Gregory.”

  “You like being hurt, Helena.”

  “What do you want? What do you want with me? Do you want me because you feel something for me or do you want me because I’m his?”

  He tugs my head backward just a little, just enough. “What do I want?”

  I grit my teeth, feel my eyes harden as I try to nod.

  He holds me so tightly that I can’t move and brings his mouth to mine.

  When his lips touch mine, I make a sound, sealing them until he tugs my head backward, forcing them to open.

  “Stop.”

  He sucks my lower lip into his mouth and he’s soft and I like the taste of him, that of whiskey and the hint of cigarette smoke and him, and I think about how beautiful he is when he comes. How his eyes glisten when he comes.

  He lets out a small, satisfied moan, then takes my lower lip between his teeth and all the while, he’s watching me. Watching as he bites, just a little, just enough to break skin, to draw a taste of blood before pulling back and looking at me. Grinning.

  “I like kissing you, Helena. I like it very much.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “This is what I wanted,” he says, ignoring my comment. “It was all I wanted. But you couldn’t give it to me.”

  “Gregory—”

  “You couldn’t give me this one thing.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “I don’t ask much.” He kisses me again and this time, I manage to turn my face away.

  “I love him!”

  Anger flits across his features and he releases me like I’ve just burned him. Like I’ve just scalded his skin.

  “Then prove it,” he says. He steps backward as he wipes the corner of his mouth. “Do it.”

  I feel my eyes widen.

  He smiles, but it looks wrong.

  “Let him brand you and I’ll know you mean it and I’ll let you go. Or don’t, and I’ll take everything from him. The Scafoni inheritance. You. Everything.”

  “I’ll hate you.”

  “I don’t care. I did. But I don’t anymore.”

  “You can’t do it.”

  “I can. With Ethan out of the way, it can all be mine.”

  The kitchen door swings open and we both turn to find Sebastian standing there.

  It takes him exactly one millisecond to look at us like this before he pounces.

  Gregory’s ready for him.

  I press my back into the wall as the brothers go after each other, two giants battling, glasses shattering, chairs top
pling over as they fight ruthlessly.

  I scream.

  Watching them, it’s terrifying.

  They’re going to kill each other.

  “Stop!” I cry out, wanting to physically stop them, afraid to go near them. They’re too big and too strong.

  “You always want what’s not yours,” Sebastian says, his voice steel.

  “No. Not always. Just now.”

  “Fuck you, brother.”

  Sebastian’s fist almost sends Gregory to the floor, but a moment later, it’s Sebastian who’s taking a blow from Gregory, toppling backward into the kitchen table.

  “Stop it! You’re going to kill each other!”

  But it’s like I’m not here at all. Neither of them are listening to me. So I pick up the bottle of whiskey and hurl it against the far wall.

  I don’t know if it’s the shattering of crystal or my scream that finally makes them stop. Finally makes them look at me.

  “I’ll do it. He’ll do it,” I say, my voice higher, panicked. I’m looking from one to the other.

  “Quiet, Helena. This is between me and my brother,” Sebastian says.

  The way Gregory looks at him as he wipes blood from his temple, I think Sebastian is right. That all of this, it’s always been between them.

  None of this has ever been about me.

  “I’ll do it,” I say again, more quietly this time. I sag back against the counter.

  “I said quiet, Helena.” Sebastian’s voice, too, is quieter.

  “No. Don’t quiet her,” Gregory says.

  He steps away, lets out a small, strange laugh. His gaze burns into mine.

  Sebastian steps toward me, wraps an arm around my waist. I lean into him, my knees buckling at what I’m agreeing to.

  Gregory’s voice is level when he speaks again. “Let her prove herself. If you do this, I’ll relinquish my claim. She’ll be yours.”

  He’s talking to Sebastian, but his unblinking eyes are locked on mine.

  “You can’t ask that—” Sebastian starts, then stops. “Ask something of me. Not her.”

  Gregory finally turns to him. “That’s not how this works, and you know it. There are rules. There’s no other way.” He takes a long breath in. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re all locked in. And this contract ensures our hate.”

  He shakes his head, takes two steps away.

  “I wonder if it’s always been like this,” he says. “If our hate has always devoured us from the inside. Hell, we don’t need a Willow Girl to destroy us. We manage just fine on our own.”

  “Brother—”

  “No. No more brother.” Gregory walks to the door. I’ve never seen him like this. “You claim her. Put your mark on her. And it ends. It ends for her, at least.”

  “Until the next crop,” I say, my voice breaking.

  I’m tired.

  I’m out of fight.

  “Tell me,” I start, looking at Gregory. “Will it be your sons to take the next Willow Girl? Will it be you who teaches them to hate us?”

  At that, Gregory almost flinches.

  “There are rules,” he says, shifting his gaze momentarily, running a hand through his hair again, and for one single, fleeting moment, letting me glimpse that loneliness, that alone part of him that makes my heart hurt.

  I don’t try to hold back the tears that are building as I watch him. As he watches me. As I lean closer into Sebastian, into his strength. Because I need it right now. I need him. And he’ll need his strength to hurt me because it’s the only way.

  The only way to save me.

  To save us.

  24

  Sebastian

  Helena and I have been back on the island for one full week. After that episode in the kitchen, Gregory disappeared. He left Lucinda’s house and I haven’t seen him since. And I haven’t tried to contact him.

  Lucinda did as she was told. She talked to Ethan, told him she needed to take a trip, a vacation on her own. Told him she’d send him postcards.

  Ethan was more okay with it than I thought he would be. Hell, maybe he was relieved she left.

  When I talked to him about it, told him that he’d stay at the house in Philadelphia, that it was his, a part of his inheritance as a Scafoni, and that I’d be back to visit him, he seemed excited, even. I didn’t want to leave him until I was sure, but with the medical staff and help I hired, I know he’ll be looked after even if it’s not a long-term solution for him.

  For the entire time we’ve been back, I’ve been poring over the Willow Girl Covenant, trying to find some way out of this. There isn’t one, though. I already know it. I’ve always known it.

  I have to hurt her if I want to keep her.

  Helena is sitting at the table cradling a whiskey. She’s been drinking it nightly since we got back.

  I look at her, and she’s looking tired.

  “You want me to ask cook to prepare something else for you?” She’s so anxious that she hasn’t been able to keep anything down.

  “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll call a doctor. See if he can do anything.”

  “What’s a doctor going to do?” she snaps, then lowers her gaze, realizes. Her tone is softer when she next speaks. “We just have to finish this. It’s just going to get harder the longer we wait.”

  “We’re not doing it his way, Helena. We have a year. We’ll find another way.”

  She shakes her head. “We have to. What choice do we have?” She drinks her whiskey. “And really, don’t we deserve this, you and me? What we did to him…” She runs her fingers through her hair. Her forehead is creased with worry. “What we did to him,” she repeats, looking at me, “I never intended to hurt him. I know you didn’t either. But we did hurt him. Together, we did. Being with him…what we did…he’s human, Sebastian. And we hurt him.”

  “You talk like you have feelings for him.”

  “I do. I care about him. I don’t want him to hurt. But that’s all that means.”

  I struggle to understand this. It’s selfish, I know, but rivalry and jealousy, they’re tearing me apart. They’ve torn my family apart.

  And I know she’s right.

  We have to do this. For everyone’s sake. This branding, this ceremonial marking, the pain she will suffer, it will seal my claim to her, which will free her. And it will free my brother and me.

  But I’ll never forgive him for demanding it.

  And I’ll never forgive myself for doing it.

  The sound of a boat engine has us both turn toward the dock.

  “Mother fucker.”

  I stand up as I watch Gregory dock his boat, killing the engine. He steps off and stops. From the distance, I can see he’s looking at me.

  Helena stands too, and we watch as my brother approaches.

  “Go up to your room, Helena.”

  “No.”

  I feel my hand squeeze around her arm, tightening as Greg nears, as I see the smile widening on his face.

  “I said go to your room.”

  “You’ll kill each other,” she says.

  I turn to her. “That’s one way to end this, isn’t it?”

  But Helena doesn’t have a chance to reply because we’re no longer alone.

  “Hello, brother.”

  I drag my gaze to his. “Helena.” I don’t look at her. “Go upstairs. Now.”

  “She responds better if you call her Willow Girl. Teaches her her place,” Gregory says.

  She’s right. I’m going to fucking kill him.

  “Helena,” I say one last time.

  “I’ll go.” I release her, and my brother and I don’t take our eyes off each other as she disappears into the house.

  Gregory walks around me to pick up a glass, fills it with whiskey. He sits down in his chair at the table. I didn’t bother lighting a fire tonight. I wasn’t in the mood.

  I sit down, drink the last of my whiskey.

  He pours more for me.

  “Do y
ou care about her?” I ask.

  His eyes narrow.

  “Or do you just want to hurt her? Because if you make her go through this, she will hate you.”

  “She already hates me, brother.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing. She doesn’t.” I shake my head, pick up the glass, then set it down again. “You’re a fucking sadist, you know that?”

  “And you’re a saint?”

  “What will you get out of this?”

  “You should be thanking me. I’m saving you from yourself. You do this, and you get to keep it all, including the girl.”

  “I don’t fucking want it. I don’t want anything but her.”

  He stops at this, then shakes his head and drains his glass.

  “Think of this as karma coming to collect. For the first time in your life, you have to pay. Well, she pays for you, I guess. Story of your life. But I wonder if you’ll ever be able to get the sound of her screams out of your head when you put the branding iron to her skin.”

  “We’re finished after this. You’re not my brother.”

  “That’s fine,” he bites through gritted teeth. “You and me, Sebastian, we were finished the day you laid eyes on her. You threw everything away for her, even me. So that’s fine.” He shoves the chair back and gets to his feet. “Tomorrow night. We do this then. Then I’m gone. And neither of you will ever have to see me again.”

  25

  Helena

  I haven’t been able to keep food down for days.

  I’m terrified. I’m so afraid of the pain.

  Tonight’s the night.

  In under an hour, in fact.

  I haven’t left my bed all day. When Sebastian came up to see me, I sent him away.

  I’m lying here reading my Aunt Helena’s journal again for the hundredth time, trying to syphon strength from it, trying to muster the courage to get through this.

  The sheath I wore on the night the Scafoni brothers came to the Willow house and Sebastian Scafoni made me the Willow Girl hangs from a hook on the door.

  We’re back at the beginning. We’ve come full circle.

  I never thought this was where I’d be when he took me. I hated him. And I wanted to keep hating him. Hating them. Yet, even now, even knowing Gregory is forcing this, I don’t. I don’t hate either of them.