I swallow hard. He’s probably right.
“Why do you do it?” I ask at last, horrified that some sick part of me still wants to understand this broken boy who broke me so completely I didn’t think I’d ever want to understand anyone again. I didn’t think I’d ever want anything, period.
He closes his eyes, resting his head back on the headrest. “I don’t.”
“The no-questions rule doesn’t really work when the person doesn’t want anything from you. So, if we’re done talking, it’s time for you to go.”
He’s quiet a minute, and then he speaks, his voice so low I have to lean in just to hear him. “It’s Dad’s thing,” he says. “We’re all pawns to him.”
“That’s… Illegal.” I don’t know what to say, and that stupid thing is what comes out.
A tiny, ironic smile twitches at the corner of his lips. “We didn’t take money. It’s part of closing a business deal. It’s not illegal, and even if it were…”
“Right,” I say when he stops speaking. “Your family doesn’t care.”
He doesn’t answer, just stares ahead at a group of guys coming from around the back of the school and climbing in their cars, probably football players leaving practice. Faulkner High’s team doesn’t scare me, though.
“I still don’t understand why,” I say at last. “I mean, Baron told me he used to threaten your sister to get you to do his bidding, but after she was gone…”
“I still have two little brothers.”
I close my eyes and take a shaky breath. I didn’t consider that. The twins don’t seem younger than Royal—less fucked up, maybe, but even more psychotic. I never would have guessed he was protecting them. In truth, they probably should be the ones protecting him. They were adamant that nothing sexual happened when he was kidnapped, and if they’re right, he’s plenty screwed up from his dad using him as some kind of escort service for his business clients.
But I get it. Even though I don’t have an Olive to protect, I understand people who do.
“I’m sorry,” I say after a minute. “I’m sorry your dad does that, and that you feel like you have to do it to protect them from it. And I’m sorry I told Preston, and I’ll talk to him and make sure he’s never going to use it against you. I never wanted to hurt you, even when I wanted to stop you.”
His jaw tenses, and he gives me a scathing look. “Don’t fucking talk to Preston about me. Just knowing he knows that about me, and everything else you told him, makes me want to rip his intestines out and hang him with them.”
“And you think it’s so easy for me to know all those guys know what I look like and feel like? You want to know why I’m here? Because Willow Heights wouldn’t give me back my scholarship, and the thought of fighting that hard just to go to school with your brothers and all their friends…”
“That’s why you’re here?” he asks, staring at me.
I shrug. “Part of it. I don’t want to see them. Not enough to keep fighting for it.”
“It wasn’t all their friends,” he says.
I want to laugh, but my throat is too tight and my eyes ache with the pressure building behind them. “It doesn’t matter who it was,” I say. “The truth is, I don’t want to know who did it and who didn’t. I know what they did. And I know you know. You know the most shameful thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“It’s not shameful,” Royal says, reaching for me.
I lean away from him, not wanting his lying hands on me. Tears force themselves past my eyes, and I blink hard, trying to hold them back, but one slips out, trickling down my cheek. “You watched,” I say, my voice quiet but fierce. “I can’t look at your face without knowing you witnessed the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. You watched them break me, and you could have stopped it, and you didn’t. You ordered it.”
He swallows so hard I hear it, but he doesn’t drop his eyes. “I made a mistake.”
“Yeah,” I say, swiping the tears off my cheeks. “So please make it right, if you ever cared about me even a little, and go away. I don’t want to see you, Royal. I can’t. I can’t be around you. That’s going to be the thing that finally kills me. So unless that’s what you’re still trying to do, just leave.”
He sits there a few seconds, and then he climbs out of the truck and closes the door quietly behind him. I fold over on myself, wrapping my arms around my knees and sobbing so hard I can feel something inside me tearing open like a black hole swallowing everything left of me. And then my door opens, and Royal climbs up in the seat, pulling me into his lap.
“No,” he says, pressing his face into my hair. “I’m not leaving, Harper. Not again. Not ever.”
He wraps his arms tight around me and holds me like he can hold my broken pieces together, like he’s not the reason I’m broken, like he’s not the reason I’m falling to pieces.
I think he means his words as a promise, but they bring no comfort. They’re a curse I can’t escape, no matter how well I hide.He’sa curse. I brought it upon myself. I made him need me, fed his darkness with my own, let him consume me day by day until he couldn’t live without. I loved the way he needed me. I thought it would kill me when he stopped. I should have known. I had it all wrong. It’s his need that will kill me.
Because now I’m empty, but he still needs more. He’s still here, demanding more, and I have nothing to give him but tears. I’m as hollow and soulless as he is. I can’t fight his claim, but I can’t accept it, either. I can only sob out my anguish and fury and regret, knowing I will never be free as long as his venomous heart craves mine, as long as the void of his soul seeks mine, calling for it in the empty cavern inside me where only echoes live now.
twenty-two