The temptation to check on her is strong. I know what I’ll find, her in bed, sleeping away her injuries, giving her body time to rest and heal and knit itself back together. We still don’t know the full extent of what those animals did to her, but I can imagine, based on what we washed off of her skin, the cuts and bruises and injuries they left behind.
And once I know who they are, they’re all going to die.
I don’t go into her room, though. I fight off the temptation because I know that me being in there with her, being anywherenearher really, isn’t good for either of us.
All I could ever do is hurt her. And not the way Dean and Cayde have either, but in a deeper, more permanent way. All I could ever be is bad for her, unless I could somehow figure out how to do the one thing that I couldn’t do for Natalie, and that’s get Athena out of here.
But I can’t.
And I don’t even know if I want to anymore.
Something in me shattered when she fucked Cayde at that party. And I don’t know if it can ever be put back together, even if I wanted to.
So yeah. It’s better for both of us if I don’t go in.
Instead, I go out to where my motorcycle is parked and kick it into gear, breathing in the cold fall scent of the air as I switch on the headlights and pull away from Blackmoor House. As always, I’m constrained by the boundaries of the town, but I can still go for a ride.
I can still pretend, for a couple hours, that I’m not.
Moonlit nights were always my favorite. But tonight, I’m glad the moon is behind the clouds. Glad for the darkness, so I can try to forget that same moonlight shining down on the faces oftwowomen I’ve loved now and two women that I’ve lost.
Because, like it or not, Natalie is gone forever.
And Athena was never really mine at all.
Athena
The pain when I wake up the morning after my kidnapping is enough to make me almost wish I hadn’t woken up at all.
I can’t even really tell where it’s coming from because everything hurts. It’s burning, aching, throbbing pain in every part of my body, radiating out across every nerve until I just want to pass out again, so the pain will stop. My mouth is dry and cottony, and I feel as if I haven’t had water in days—and who knows, maybe I haven’t. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep.
The irony of the fact that I’m glad to at least wake up in this room, a room that was once the most terrifying place in the world to me, isn’t lost on me. I still clearly remember waking up here my first morning in Blackmoor House, my mind even fuzzier than it feels right now, the blank spaces in my memory even wider, and wondering what the fuck had happened to put me in this bed, this room, this house.
Everything that happened after had seemed like some insane fever dream. But what happened to me after I was dragged out of that maze is definitely, horrifyingly real.
I wish I could remember their faces,reallyremember them. The girl I remember, my stalker, I’ve seen her face too many times to forget it. But I can’t remember the faces of the guys. They’re all blurred together, and all I can remember are the sensations.
I wish I could forget.
Tears well up in my eyes as I clench my fists, my hands grabbing at the sheets as my eyes squeeze shut. I try to push back the wave of memory, all of the horrible things they did to me during that night that felt like it went on forever. But I can’t.
I can’t forget.
All I can do is scream.
So I do.
It’s a weird feeling, letting yourself scream somewhere that you’re not supposed to. I know I shouldn’t, not here, not even in my room, not without muffling it somehow so I don’t wake anyone else up or frighten them. But I can’t hold it in. I can’t stop my body from hurting, can’t do anything about the awful pain that makes me wish I could just dissolve here and now, but I can let out the other pain.
The pain that’s even worse, somehow, than the physical.
But once I start screaming, I can’t seem to stop. The first ragged scream turns into sobs, full-body shaking, low moans that sound more like a trapped animal than a human until the door to my bedroom flies open, and both Dean and Cayde rush in at once, their faces pale and drawn.
I clap a hand to my mouth, still shaking. But the expressions on their faces are enough to stop me for just a moment because I’ve never seen either one of them look like this.
Not for me, anyway.
They both look terrified. Dean looks around the room wildly, as if he’s expecting to find someone else here attacking me. Cayde comes straight towards me, his face set in hard lines as if he’s seeing something other than me in the bed, shaking and whimpering.