Does It Hurt? (30)

“Your foot doesn’t bend that way,” I tell her, since apparently, she needs to be reminded.

“It would if I was a cyborg,” is her rebuttal.

I’m going to kill her.

Even still, she tries to twist it in a different direction, but that fails, too.

“Jesus Christ, let me see it. You’re going to fucking break it.”

Shooting me a glare, she sticks her foot right in my face. I angrily snatch her ankle and push it down to my lap, returning her glare tenfold.

“Lover’s quarrel. Been too long since I’ve had one of them,” Sylvester cuts in.

I turn my glare to him for a brief moment before focusing on her shredded skin.

“He’s not my lover,” Sawyer says. “Just an asshole who got us in this situation in the first place.”

My hand flexes around her ankle until she squeaks. It takes effort to relent on my grip. I’d love nothing more than to crush it and watch her suffer.

“Ah,” the old man says, clearly uncomfortable with our arguing. Couldn’t give a shit less, so I keep quiet and start cleaning her cuts.

As tempted as I was to leave her to her own devices, she was annoying the shit out of me, and I really didn’t need the extra trouble of her injuries.

She hisses when I wipe at a wound unkindly, dried blood crusted over it.

Only then, do I feel a little better. It’s not the worst pain I’ll cause her, but it’ll suffice for now.





Chapter 9


Sawyer





I hate him.

I loathe him.

If I could physically rip out every word that defines him as an asshole from the dictionary and shove it down his throat, I would.

But I’m also scared.

I’m trapped in a creepy lighthouse with a strange caretaker and a man who looks at me as if he'd prefer to see me between a shark’s teeth.

There’s no escaping this place—no escaping him. I’ve always been able to run. It’s what I’ve done my entire life. And now that I can’t, it feels like my body has been invaded by tiny needle-like parasites. I’m tempted to put my nails to my own flesh and start clawing my way out, but it wouldn’t get me any farther away from this place.

It's late at night, and there's as little artificial light as there is natural.

Shadows dance across Enzo’s and Sylvester’s faces, their features only visible beneath the orange glow emanating from the fireplace. There's a lamp on the end table, but Sylvester doesn't seem inclined to flip it on.

I yelp when Enzo suddenly grabs my other foot. He gives me a look, probably because I hurt his precious ears, then continues with cleaning my injuries, reigniting the flares of pain.

I’d rather stick my foot in the ocean and call it a day, but going outside in the dark sounds even more terrifying than the prospect of Enzo taking care of me. Just barely, though.

“When yer done with ’er, I’ll show you two to yer room,” Sylvester announces. My heart drops, the implication in his words sending ants crawling down my spine.

“We’ll have our own rooms, right?” I ask. Enzo stops cleaning, looking up at the old man, also waiting for a response.

“’Fraid not. Only one other room here.”

Oh, no. This day couldn’t have gotten any worse, yet somehow, it did.

“I can sleep on the couch,” Enzo offers.

“That ain’t gonna work for me, son. This is my home, and I don’t like nobody sleepin’ in my living space. Sometimes I like to stay up late and watch some television.” His tone is stern and brokering no room for argument.

“There’s only one bed?” I ask sullenly, already knowing the answer and hating it.

“That’s right,” he affirms. I must've been clinging onto some shred of hope because my heart withers into dust right then and there.

Either I'll have to share a bed with a man who hates me, or one of us will sleep on the floor with the bugs.

I work to swallow. Knowing him, Enzo will force me to sleep on the floor while he takes the bed. He’s no gentleman, that’s for damn sure.

Enzo pushes my feet off his lap angrily and stands. The tension in the air thickens, and unsurprisingly, Sylvester doesn't shy away from his glare. Awkwardly, I shuffle to my feet, the pain flaring in them again while I clear my throat.

“We’ll make it work, Syl. Thank you.”

Enzo turns his eyes to me, but I’m not as brave. Not that I ever plan to let the asshole know that. So despite the need for my spine to bend, I force it straight. It’s ingrained into the very marrow of my bones to shrink beneath the weight of a stare. If I allow them to look too long, they might see beneath the brittle mirage I’ve built around myself. They’ll see the cracks and the imperfections, and with one poke, they’ll find that it was nothing more than a clever illusion.

The man before me has already seen the ugly beneath the glimmering rainbow. Turns out, he was only looking into his own reflection.

I may carry ugliness inside of me, but he’s no fucking beauty queen, either.

Sylvester waves us toward the spiral staircase.

“I’d like fer you two to be in your room by nine o’clock every night, if ya don’t mind,” Sylvester says as he leads us toward the metal steps. “It’s about ten o’clock now, so I’ll get ya settled in quick.”