“But you did it,” I say. “He made you do it for… How long?”
“He used to make King do it, but when he moved, it fell to me or my brothers. I didn’t want them to have to deal with that. I wanted them to be able to be kids, do their thing. I know they’re fucked up. It’s not that I think they’re innocent. But I didn’t want one more thing fucking them up. I don’t want to find out where the line is, what will make them finally snap.”
“They don’t deserve you,” I say, sliding a hand behind his neck. “You’re too good to them.”
“They’re my brothers,” he says simply. “They’re all I have.”
I wind a small curl behind his ear around my finger. “Royal… Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” he says, his breath warm against my face as we lie there, inches apart.
“Do you forgive them?” I ask. “For what they did to me?”
“I don’t have the right to take offense to what they did,” he says. “Does that make sense?”
“No,” I admit, folding my arm under my head and searching his face in the dim moonlight filtering in from outside.
“I want to fucking kill them when I think about it,” he says. “But all I could do was bring them to you and let you get your revenge. I would have let you do anything, Harper. I hoped you’d do more than what you did. I wouldn’t have stopped you. But that was your revenge because they wronged you.”
“They didn’t wrong you?”
He pauses a long moment before answering. “No,” he says quietly. “I gave them permission to wrong us both. You are mine. They understand that. You belong to me—every part of you. I chose so share that with them. That’s on me. I can regret it, but I can’t punish them because I changed my mind after the fact. I gave you to them, gave them permission to do what they wanted to you. I gave them your consent because it belongs to me.”
“I don’t agree to that,” I say. “I never agreed to that.”
“You don’t have a choice,” he says. “I don’t, either. You’re mine. That’s just the way it is.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Bullshit or not, they took what I gave them. I don’t have the right to punish them for my mistake.”
“And what about Dawson?” I ask, swallowing hard, thinking he has the most fucked up moral code in the world, but he sure as fuck has one.
“Dawson didn’t have my permission.”
We lay there for a minute, my heart beating so hard I can hear it. “You killed him?” I whisper.
“I let you punish him for what he did to you,” Royal says. “And I punished him for what he did to me. I didn’t share you with him. He took what was mine, and he paid the price.”
Some sick part of me is glad Royal did it, so I don’t have to feel the guilt of knowing someone took their life in part because of me. Instead, Royal took Dawson’s life because of me. Maybe it makes me sick, but that’s somehow easier to swallow. I suspected Royal played a part in the death of at least one Darling, but knowing I love an actual murderer sends a chill down my spine.
I swallow past the tremor in my voice. “And the twins?”
“I helped them understand the severity of what they did,” he says. “He was their friend, and now they live with what they caused. And they know what happens to people who wrong me.”
I nod, toying with the top button his shirt. “And what if you get mad at me again, Royal? What happens then? How can I trust you when I know what you do to girls who wrong you?”
“You don’t have to trust me,” he says. “But you’ll see. Now that I understand, now that I know you’re mine whether I want it or not, whetheryouwant it or not… I’ll never let anyone touch you again, Harper. I promise.”
“But if I’m yours, if my consent belongs to you, then you could share me again.”
“I won’t,” he says. “You might not trust me now, but you will. And you’re still mine, whether or not you trust me or I trust you.”
“Do you?” I ask. “Do you trust me?”
“I haven’t hunted down your hero for being with you last night,” he says. “I haven’t torn his dick off with my bare hands and made him eat it while he slowly bleeds out from the hole left where it used to be, have I?”
“Nothing happened,” I say. “I don’t think of him that way.”