Vipers and Virtuosos (Monsters & Muses, #2)(95)

As if I could focus on anything but.

“I was legally dead for like, two full minutes. Maybe that’s why faking my death was so easy.”

It’s an attempt at a joke that she punctuates with a nervous laugh, but it doesn’t hit. I don’t move, don’t blink, and she sighs, crossing her legs.

“It, uh, took me to a pretty bad place for a long time. The stuff the doctor said he’d done to me… I can’t remember it fully, just bits and pieces, but I know it was bad. New York was the first non-school function I’d gone to since the attack, and, well. We both know how that night ends.”

My eyes are glued to her hip, and now I’m imagining a man standing over her and carving into her flesh. Stealing a life that didn’t belong to him, taking innocence he wasn’t worthy of.

I try not to think about how my coming here and torturing her must have felt, after all that.

“I’ve never slept with anyone,” she’d told me, and I don’t know what the fuck I thought she meant, but it wasn’t something as gruesome as this.

“I swear to you, I had nothing to do with that rumor.” Licking her lips, she sits up. “I hadn’t even told anyone but Fiona about meeting you, and I didn’t even know about the allegations until I’d gotten back home. You have to believe that, Aiden.”

I don’t say anything. Can’t. The words don’t form, my lungs struggling to work properly the longer I listen to her horror story.

One I punished her for.

Agony rips through my spine, notching like a knife between each vertebrae, and bile teases the back of my throat. I press my palms harder into my legs, trying to catch my breath.

“I didn’t come forward because I couldn’t. In case… the man who attacked me, he was involved in sex trafficking. I guess my mom had made some sort of deal with him, and I was the product he was supposed to deliver, and never did. Both he and my mom wound up dead, and my brother was worried that if I came forward and people recognized me, I’d be in danger.”

“Look, we didn’t mention it because someone showed up right after you left and threatened our lives if we did.” Jenna’s words at the tattoo shop, making me think it’d been Riley who’d contacted them.

Riley continues. “And then I got an envelope in the mail, and it was this extreme breakdown of my entire life. My location, my medical history, and a note that said they knew what I’d done.”

Tears well in her eyes as she looks up at me. I reach out, because I can’t stand not to touch her right now, and she leans her cheek against my palm.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she admits, closing her eyes. “I was scared, and… I don’t know. I copped out, I guess. It was selfish, and awful, and I’m so sor—”

My hand slides from her cheek to cover her mouth, my chest pinching at her apology. God, no wonder she lives with shame on the tip of her tongue.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, moving my hand just enough so she can answer. “Why now?”

Her hand lifts, reaching into my suitcase; it dives to the very bottom, and she tugs out a garment, draping it over my extended arm.

Emerald green.

Satin.

I can still picture how perfect she looked in it.

“You kept it,” she whispers, smoothing her fingers over the material. “And you were right. You deserved to know.”





44





I’m not sure what I was expecting my confession to do.

Not even sure what I wanted it to do.

The idea of keeping Aiden sounds good in theory, but he’s a rock star and I’m a social pariah from Maine. He’s a bad guy, and I’m a traumatized girl who finds solace in his depravity.

Star-crossed doesn’t even begin to cover our story.

He doesn’t even say anything after my spiel; just kisses me and says he can’t miss his flight. He stops by the bathroom one last time, and I quickly stuff my hand in my pocket, pulling out the late Christmas gift I came to give him in the first place.

I store it down in the side of his duffel bag, and then slip out the front door before he comes back out, disappearing into the brush by the cabin so I can watch him leave.

When he strolls outside and starts loading his Volvo up, I try to memorize every little thing about him; the slight, almost imperceptible limp in his step from a stage injury when he was a teenager. The tattoos that cover his body, the smirk that seems permanently etched into his lips.

The circle imprint in his cheek as he sucks on a peppermint.

He glances around the area, and for a second I wonder if he can see me. Or if maybe he’s checking for paparazzi, or a stray fan.

His head turns toward my cabin, and he takes a step in that direction.

I hold my breath, waiting.

Go, my mind screams. Go over there and make me come back with you. Or stay. Don’t pretend you’re done.

But then he shakes his head and gets in the vehicle anyway.

The last thing I see as he drives down the road is the fiery glow of his brake lights, reflecting off the white snow, and then he’s gone.





“I’m going to throw that television off the fucking balcony if you don’t turn it off in the next three seconds.”

“Good luck explaining that to the owners. What if they’re sentimental people, and you destroying their stuff sends them into a murderous rage?”