“You meant for Royal to join us?” she asks with a grin.
“No,” I say, gathering my wet hair and pulling it up into a bun. “That’s not why I came in here.”
“Then why did you?”
“I… don’t remember,” I admit. “It’s possible I lost my head when I saw his dick in your mouth.”
“I’m not mad about it,” she says with a sly little grin, reaching out to grab the front of my wet leather jacket. She pulls me in and kisses me again, but I can tell she’s not into it, that she’s just playing around. After a minute, she pulls away and climbs off the bed. “This was fun, but I should go. Let you sort things out. I’ve got more than enough of my own shit to figure out.”
When she’s gone, I sit on the bed thinking about what Baron said. He’s right. I will never be free, even after forgiving Royal. I keep trying to cut the ties, to cut him away, but he’s still part of me. Not because of Royal himself, but because of me. Some terrible, twisted part of my heart still belongs to him. Our love may be infected with hate, poisoned and toxic, but it’s still there. And even if I could somehow get rid of it, if I could shut myself off the way I did before, when I didn’t feel anything, my mind wouldn’t be free. Even if I never see his face again, I’ll never stop going back to what happened, never stop reliving it and revisiting it the same way he goes to the bridge.
Some part of me never really left the swamp that night. Some part of me died there. Another part of me lives there still, caught in the nightmare of a night that never ended. And I don’t know how to end it without ending everything.
forty-three
Royal Dolce
I’m sitting at the top of the back staircase when I hear footsteps behind me. And because I’m so fucking turned around right now, I actually think for a second that it’s Harper, even though I’m around the corner from the main hall, and she’d have to look to actually find me.
Of course Harper’s not going to fucking seek me out. She’s been running from me since I walked out of that swamp for the first time. Just because she walked in and stuck my dick in her mouth doesn’t mean anything except that she’s determined to finish driving me completely fucking insane, as if sending me videos of her fucking someone else didn’t do the job. Just because she pulled Lo off my dick doesn’t mean she wants to get on it. It means she’s full of shit, and despite her big promises of forgiveness if I move on, she doesn’t want me to move on with anyone else, not even someone comfortable and familiar and meaningless. She doesn’t want me to have anyone. Hell, she’d fuck Lo just to keep me from doing it.
Gloria sinks onto the step beside me, like we’re back at the Hockington and not in the house of a guy who just hit on the girl I once thought I could actually love. How fucking pathetic is that? Gideon’s a good little dude, though. He’d be good for her, a fucking lot better than anyone in my family. If I had loved her, I’d have let her go out with him. But I didn’t, so I don’t. Not that I fucking know what love is.
“That was fast,” I say. “She must be good.”
“I figured you’d be balls deep in some other chick by now, drowning your pain in pussy,” Gloria says. “That’s the D-boy special, isn’t it?”
“Because you know us so well.”
“I think I know you pretty well,” she says.
“Then you’d know that’s not how I operate.”
“True,” she says. “That’s more your brothers’ M.O. But don’t act like we’re strangers just because you hate me. We’ve been friends for two years.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“Hard as you make it,” she mutters. “But yes, I do call us friends. We could have been more, if you weren’t such an asshole.”
“A real tragedy.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Royal. I really am. If I’d known…”
“What?” I ask, twisting around to look at her. “That she’d tell the family that wants to destroy mine? Or that she was one of them, that she wanted to destroy us, too?”
“Both,” she says, her big blue eyes filling with tears. “I never would have told her if she hadn’t already basically figured it out herself.”
“How?” I ask, my voice hard. I should be nice. She just lost her brother, and even if he was human garbage, he was still her brother. But after seeing Harper choose her over me, I’m feeling a little less than generous. It’s way past time to hash this out, anyway.
“She… She came to the Hockington,” Gloria whispers. “She followed you in one day, with one of your… Clients.”
“They aren’t clients,” I snap. “They don’t pay me.”
“Okay,” she says, wiping her hands along the top of her thighs and sitting up straight. “She followed you there and saw you with one of yourbusiness associates.”
“And then she saw you,” I say flatly.
“I wasn’t going to tell her,” Gloria says, swiping away a tear. “She would have figured it out, anyway. I thought I could explain it, make her see that you weren’t cheating on her…”