by KV Rose
I clench my fists at the stupid question. Does it fucking look like my dad is around? But I don’t say anything, and I won’t until I get my hands on that egg and cheese. I yank open the fridge, spot it sitting beside the can of beer because there’s nothing else but an empty jar of pickles in here. It’s a biscuit wrapped in tin foil and I close the fridge with my hip, unwrap the biscuit and shove a bite into my mouth before I answer him.
It’s kind of hard and dry, after being tucked away in the fridge probably overnight, but it’s good enough.
I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth and turn to face the guy.
“Didn’t Kim tell you?”
The guy looks at me curiously, beer in between his jean clad legs, hands on his thighs. “She told me a couple things about you, but nothing about your father.”
My stomach flips. A couple of things? I tear off another bite of the biscuit and in between chewing ask, “Oh yeah? What’d she say?”
He smirks at me and my skin crawls. I’m very aware that to get to the front door, I’d have to run past him, and to get to the back door, I’d have to move the kitchen table over because Mom blocked access to it. Claimed it was a safety precaution.
“Said you broke up her last serious relationship.”
My eyes widen as I stare at him. I’m gripping the biscuit so hard I feel my finger go through the foil. “Did she?” I manage to ask, trying to keep my tone even.
He nods, runs his finger over the can of the beer as he watches me. He’s got thinning brown hair, wrinkles under his eyes. Maybe he looked better before he started doing the shit my mom does, or maybe he was ugly out the gate. I don’t know, nor care, but I want to get the fuck out of here.
I’ll take Mom’s car and the fifty cents I still have for a drop of gas to leave them to their bullshit.
“Said you couldn’t keep your hands off of him.”
I stiffen, the food turning to ash in my mouth. I set it down on the counter, next to the sink full of dishes. I grip the counter with one hand, try to unfurl my fist with the other.
“That’s not exactly what—”
He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture as he rolls his eyes. “I told her you needed a father figure.” He eyes me up and down and I pull down my sleeve, balling it in my hand. “You probably wanted the attention, right, Ella?”
I feel tears sting the back of my eyes, and I’d like to think it’s because I’m angry. But I know that’s not it. It’s because, as disgusting as he is, what he’s saying is true.
Even still.
“No,” I snap. “I was barely eighteen. Mom left us alone for days at a time. Shane took me to apply for jobs. Fed me. He attended my high school graduation while Mom was strung out in a parking lot somewhere.”
I leave the biscuit on the counter and walk into the living room, headed to the door but keeping my eyes on this guy. “If you think you’re gonna step in and be my father, you should just get the fuck out now, asshole. I don’t let her dump me on men anymore.”
His eyes narrow and he stands to his feet.
I feel my stomach dip, but I turn away from him and stride to the door, yanking it open. I hear his footsteps at my back at the exact same time I look up and see Maverick pulling open the flimsy screen door, a smirk on his face.
The footsteps at my back stop.
Maverick’s gaze darts behind him, and that smirk disappears, his eyes narrowing. He steps into the trailer, pushing past me.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks the guy at my back.
I hide my smile and turn around too, cocking a brow from behind Maverick’s back. I have no idea why he’s here so damn early, but I’m not about to ask in front of this bozo.
I can smell Maverick, this close to his broad back. He’s wearing a white zip-up jacket and black sweats, and he still smells like leather.
“I’m her mother’s boyfriend,” the guy lies, sounding annoyed, but his voice is a little unsteady, too. “And who are you?”
Maverick shakes his head and turns away from the guy, flinging his arm around me. “I’m her boyfriend.”
I feel a flush of pleasure at his words, even though I don’t think they’re actually true. But I let him steer me out of the house and he doesn’t bother closing the door after us.
Walking with Maverick through the aisles of a grocery store is like walking a very large, very aggressive dog through a nursery.
People eye him with equal parts fascination and fear, and he ignores all of them. Unless they get too close. Like the lady who almost runs over my heels with her cart in the pasta aisle.
He turns around, puts his hand out and shoves back on the cart. “Fucking watch where you’re going.”
The woman just stares at him, stunned, white knuckling the handle of her cart.
He doesn’t wait for a response from her before he pulls me in close and keeps pushing our own cart, tipping boxes of mac-n-cheese inside.
“Why were you at my house so early?” I press. I’ve asked half a dozen times. He’s ignored me each time. I’m getting used to him ignoring me when he doesn’t want to answer my questions. I’m not used to how he still expects me to answer him, no matter what.
Like now, when he throws pasta sauce into the cart and it thankfully lands on the cushion of noodle boxes. “How long has your mom been with that guy?”
I roll my eyes. Try his tactic.
A few seconds pass.
His arm tightens around me and he leans down close to me, burying his head in my neck. “Don’t make me hurt you here, Ella.”
I bite back a laugh, the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “Since last night,” I decide to answer him.
He pulls away, brow furrowed. “She do that often? Have men over she doesn’t know?”
This time I can’t stop my laughter.
He doesn’t look amused as we hit the cereal aisle. “I take it that’s a yes?”
I duck out of his grip, grab a box of rainbow-colored puffs, chunk them in the cart. “Why’re we here?”
He puts two more boxes of the same cereal on top of mine. “You’re eating all the food in my damn house.”
I feel myself flushing, but he tips my chin up, noticing.
“I don’t care, Ella,” he says, like he really doesn’t. “As long as I can eat you in my house, too.”
I blush harder, and I know my face is the shade of a tomato, but he pulls me in by the throat and kisses me, hard, right on the lips.
My heart flutters a little, and not for the first time, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing with this dangerous boy.
Chapter Ten
A little over two weeks after I meet Ella, and night comes too fast. I dropped her off at her trailer after spending the day and the previous night together, and this time, like when I showed up at dawn a week ago, there was a beat up Saturn in the driveway, parked at a terrible angle.
“Do you want me to come in?” I’d asked her.
She’d looked as if she might faint, shaking her head and jumping out of the car.
I shouldn’t have asked. I should’ve just walked in.
I don’t know enough about her. I don’t know what her mom does. I don’t know why she’s always hungry—or why she was always hungry. She’s not anymore. She wouldn’t let me carry the groceries inside for her, but she staggered under their weight up to her front porch, just as she’s done every few days I’ve taken her back here. She doesn’t want to miss her time at The Ark. She doesn’t want to tell me much about her mom. Her life.
She’s from West Virginia. Doesn’t know her father. She likes really rough sex and enjoys leaving my house covered in bruises. She has a thing for watching the moon from the bay windows of my bedroom.
That’s about all I know about her, despite all of our time together.
She can keep her secrets.
I guess that’s for the best, because Ria is still in my soundproof basement and they don’t know about each other. Ella is my release; since the las
t time, on New Year’s Day, I haven’t had Father Tomas over. My lacerations are healing.
My mind, however…that’s another story.
When I get home, I drown myself in cannabis oil. Council went terrible last night, and my father is still alive. Lucifer still acts like he hates me.
I kind of hate him, too. We haven’t discussed his antics from New Year’s Eve. He hasn’t said a word about Pammie since then, either. Whatever. Fuck it.
Ez, Atlas and Cain asked me to head to the dragstrip. I didn’t go. It’s no fun anyway, when my car crushes theirs every time.
I don’t know if I trust them either and I don’t know why.
I’m becoming paranoid with Ria in my house. I don’t trust anyone.
And I definitely don’t trust Sid Malikov when I find her outside of my front door close to midnight.
“Where’s Luce?” I ask her by way of greeting, my eyes flicking beyond her as if I’ll see him sauntering up the porch steps. I know there are guards all around our homes; I know that if Sid thinks she snuck out without being noticed, she’s got another thing coming.
She’s got her arms wrapped around her frail body—and it is frail, I realize as I scrutinize her under the lights from the foyer at my back—and she’s shivering. It’s cold outside, but she’s got on a tight hoodie, black pants and her usual combat boots. Her hair is kind of oily, tucked behind her ears, and her face is pale. More than pale, it’s just…colorless. Almost ashen. Whatever spark I’d found in her again after we killed Pammie, it’s gone.
“He’s asleep,” she says in a way that tells me not to ask any more questions about him.
“Why are you here, Sid?” I ask her, blowing out a breath. I still haven’t invited her in. I want to be alone.
Sid glances down at her feet. “I need to talk to you.”
My first instinct is to say no shit, but I bite my tongue as her silver eyes meet mine. She’s got dark shadows beneath them, and her face looks…gaunt. Something is wrong with her.
Something is wrong with Sid.
My heart seems to freeze in my chest. What did Lucifer do?
I step back, relenting. “Okay.”
She walks past me, stepping further into the house, her footsteps echoing on the hardwood.
I close and lock the door and quickly turn around, following after her. There are places in my house she can’t go, and besides that, she’s kind of freaking me out.
“What’s going on?” I ask her casually as she barges into the kitchen, yanking open the fridge. She pulls out cranberry juice—I use it for my pre-workout supplement—and drinks straight from the bottle.
“Uh,” I say, leaning against the kitchen island as I watch her, “that’s probably not what you want.”
She glares at me over the top of the bottle as I grab the vape I’d been loading before she interrupted me. I inhale, then exhale a cloud of smoke, obscuring my view of her for a moment.
And when the smoke clears, I remember.
I haven’t seen her drink since her and Luce got married. She didn’t even drink then, at the little celebration we had afterward. She didn’t drink when I tossed back a shot before we left Liber to go to Pammie’s hideaway.
She screws the cap on the juice, tosses it back into the fridge. I catch sight of the scar on her palm as she shuts the fridge door and folds her arms, then leans back against the counter, eyes on me.
I take another pull on the vape, then set it down on the island. I clasp my hands together, trying to focus on her as I hop on the bar stool. On what she could possibly be here for.
“Um,” I say, when she doesn’t speak, “why didn’t your man notice you snuck out?”
Her eyes narrow into silver slits, and I feel a chill slide down my spine. I’m not scared of her. Not at all. But she’s here at midnight, and Lucifer isn’t. Something isn’t adding up here
“He’s asleep. I told you.”
“And he didn’t wake up when you…left?”
She shakes her head. “I haven’t been sleeping well. He’s used to it.”
I grip the edge of the island, trying to keep myself upright, blinking past my high and my exhaustion. I’d like nothing more than to sink into the couch at my back in the living room, but I tell myself I need to focus.
Is she having regrets, about what we did? I haven’t slept well either since Pammie, but it has nothing to do with the hammer that was covered in her brain matter after we were done. Before we burnt that place to the fucking ground. Even with Ella as a nice distraction, I still can’t get my father’s sins out of my head.
And Malachi has been back in there, too.
Brooklin.
Jeremiah bleeding out in that smoke-filled warehouse.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “But doesn’t he like, track you? GPS?” I mean, it’s not the end of the world if he finds out she’s here. But…he might try to punch me or something, and I don’t want to deal with his bullshit this late.
“I don’t have a microchip,” she counters, but in a way that suggests she wouldn’t be surprised if she did have one. “I left my phone at the house.”
I wink at her. “Smart,” I say, pointing her way.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah,” she mutters, glancing at the floor. “He’s something else.” She whispers those last words mostly to herself.
“Yeah.” I let my own eyes fall closed. I can hear the steady beat of my heart in my ears, soft and slow. “He can be a little much,” I agree, aware that maybe I should shut up and not talk about my brother when he isn’t here, especially not with his wife. But I’m too high to care, and yet sober enough to remember something is wrong with Sid.
Something is wrong with Sid. Does she know about the girl in Lucifer’s room? With Ezra? Before I can say anything about that, though, she starts speaking again, and her words sound angry.
“He’s more than a little much. He’s…overbearing.”
I crack open my eyes, and she’s staring at me. “Is this about Pammie?”
She shakes her head, and I realize we didn’t really talk much, aside from our conversation afterward. Beforehand, we were all adrenaline and nerves. Afterward, we were…I don’t know what we were.
“Explain.”
“I don’t have a car,” she bites out. “He won’t take me to get my license.” What she doesn’t say is that we both know damn well he could afford to buy her an entire fleet of cars. “He won’t let me out of his sight. He hasn’t wanted to go to Council. He’s worried something will happen to me. He has the guards stay inside the house when he’s away. I can’t breathe. I can’t… I can’t do anything without him knowing about it. And because Jeremiah—” Her voice cracks on his name, and my fists clench tighter, but I don’t say anything.
She closes her eyes again, just for a second, taking a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. “Because he’s alive…Lucifer thinks he’s going to come for me at any moment, and he…he can’t stand the thought of it.” She chews her lip, her eyes on the floor as she thinks about what to say next. I don’t interrupt her. “I stopped writing, because…I couldn’t write anything without thinking about him.” I know she isn’t talking about Luce. I know it, and I know maybe I should be angry about it on my brother’s behalf, but I’m not. For some reason—maybe the marijuana or maybe because this is finally the chance for me to be there for my sister in ways I never could be before—I can’t say anything in Luce’s defense.
“I cancelled the publishing contract.” She shrugs, still looking at the floor. “It wasn’t worth much anyway, in terms of money. Just a small indie press, and besides, it’s not like I need the money. What I do need is privacy, and even with a pen name, I didn’t feel safe putting it out there. And Lucifer…he knew what every poem was about. He knew the words about him. The words about you guys. The words about what I saw in the warehouse.” Her shoulders sag. “The words about Jeremiah.” She nearly chokes on his name again.
I think about telling her I write poetry too. I think a
bout telling her I wouldn’t mind exchanging work with her, for no one else to see. Just so she could feel safe writing anything she wanted, knowing someone saw it. Someone saw her. I wouldn’t mind if someone saw me and my work, and until this moment, I didn’t think I’d ever let anyone see it. But I think about making that offer with her.
Before I can though, she keeps talking, as if she’s been dying to tell someone all of this shit for the past month. I feel a little twinge of guilt that I haven’t checked in on her. That I didn’t take the time we had away for our little murder to discuss this. That I haven’t tried to be there for her, because I’ve been running away from what we did. From what I didn’t do to help her when she was a child. From my conflicted feelings toward her.
“He’s a little…unhinged,” she continues in a whisper. “He’s paranoid. And he’s…scaring me.”
I tense, picking my head up, my entire body going rigid. “Has he hurt you?” I try to keep my tone even, and fail miserably.
She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t do anything but stare at her feet, her arms crossed around her frail body, shoulders hunched.
“Sid. Why didn’t you tell me any of this on New Year’s Eve?”
She meets my gaze.
“Has he hurt you?” The cocoon of my high is bursting, cold air seeping in from my fog, waking me up in the path of my rising anger.
She shakes her head. “No.”
I breathe a small sigh of relief, but it still doesn’t really explain what’s going on with them, and why she looks like she wants to say something right now, but she bites her tongue instead. It’s not like Sid to hold her tongue. Ever.
I know what she went through at our hands was a lot. I know she probably thought she was really going to die at Sanctum, at Sacrificium, on Lucifer’s birthday. I know that she was probably scared for her life—or ready to go. And I know what happened afterward, with Jeremiah and the warehouse and Lucifer’s menagerie of dead fucking bodies hanging from the ceiling… I know that shocked her. Not to mention that she has Coagula branded on her palm. I’m not sure if she knows exactly how deep that goes; it means she can never leave Lucifer. Ever. Divorce doesn’t happen in the 6. If your spouse dies, you’re free to remarry. But otherwise…you’re stuck together. For better or for fucking worse. And usually, it’s for worse. My parents are a great example of that.
