Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2)(69)

“I have…things,” Blood Honey says, almost to himself. Wind rattles through the windows and garbage bags once more, smudging the sound of his voice.

Another sob. Higher this time, and desperate. Pleading.

I know that sound.

Fuck. Fuck.

“Leo?” I shout. Suddenly, half my skin is on fire, the other half rigid ice. “Leo!”

She just croons in that horrible tone, pain fused with crippling panic.

“Leo!”

Blood Honey swipes up an armful of something from the table. “I’ve been asking myself for the longest time, what do you see in her? And then I took off her clothes.”

My blood cools in one frosty, magnetic swoop.

“I took off her clothes and I saw the beginning of something interesting. It is the beginning, isn’t it?”

I don’t decide to move; it just happens. I’m rocking back and forth, trying to gain speed, traction, anything to get me just a centimeter closer to this raging cunt so I can bite off every one of his fingers.

“You hurt her and I swear to God—”

“God can’t help you now. Oh.” He smiles. “I’ve always wanted to say that.”





THREE YEARS AGO

Leo





Aged 21

Rachel Fordham’s apartment, downtown NYC



Rachel’s got this ironic obsession with unicorns. Her palatial apartment is full of them: sculptures in eggshell white on glass coffee tables and oak bookshelves, stuffed cartoon characters slung across jewel-colored velvet sofas, and offensively bright posters framed beside classic watercolor paintings. It started when we were in therapy; we were friends, we confided in each other, and she wanted something stupid to waste Aeron’s guilt money on. Unicorns it was, because…well. Unicorns.

Then things changed between us, and she’d give me that devilish little grin of hers and say I rubbed off on her. That the unicorns were her OCD, as if it could be passed on through osmosis during kisses.

On weekends, when I can sneak away from dorm parties and company meetings for my pet venture, I come to stay with Rachel and her unicorns. It’s enough to make her feel like I’m really hers, most of the time, and when I show up with bags of her favorite coconut marshmallows, she’s like butter for me. Pliable, salt-sweet, and soft.

Tonight, we’re cocooned on the floor of her grand salon in a makeshift bed, sandwiched between silky green comforters and piles of velvet pillows. Blinds are pulled shut, lights turned low; I lie sweating and naked beneath the covers, still panting as Rachel kisses her way back up my belly. Her dark mop of hair tickles, all damp and wavy, and her pink lips are swollen, almost bruised. Drunk pleasure paints her cheeks flushed; she’s slicker than me, no doubt, and stickier. I played marshmallow games between her legs.

“You okay?” She collapses beside me with a contented sigh, the pillows gasping around her in hollow coughs of air.

“Better than okay.” A laugh bubbles up until I can’t contain it. Feels like it might be a pink one. “Like…very okay.”

“We have to work on your dirty talk,” she scolds.

“I went beyond words. Happy?”

“Kinda.” She rolls on to her side, almost plastered against me. Brushes her lips to my hot cheek. “I mean, you’re here and all. I’m not complaining.”

“Couldn’t stay away.”

“God, Lee. You’re such a cliché.” She gives me a fond smile. “You and your ra-ra stiff upper lip.”

“Not one bit of me is stiff, thank you very much.”

“I noticed. Well.” She runs a finger over my erect left nipple, her neat brows dipping as she watches it pucker further. “Most of you.”

They tell you so many lies when you’re younger. There’s this shiny, manipulative concept of The One: your soulmate, your everything, the only person you’ll ever truly love. Keep it in your pants for The One, girls—anything else is just a waste! Then they tell you sex is best when you’re in love, that anything else will hollow you out until you’re so numb that new love will just bounce off, and all that came before will rattle around in the dry ventricles of your tired heart. What they don’t tell you is that you can have satisfying, spark-spewing sex with someone you don’t even like a great deal. Or that you might still grow to love that person—you don’t fall, it’s not like that, you just feel—and they’re not The One, but it never matters. So confusing. Grey waters, bad for swimming in, but like a red rag to a desperate bull.

As if a bull could do anything but sink. I deserve to drown.

I didn’t know I wanted Rachel until she kissed me. I didn’t know I loved her until she showed me her scars, and though I tried not to feel anything, my tears pushed through regardless and all my words melted to a senseless mess of sympathy, the kind that claims you whether you throw yourself on the altar or not. Only when I left her arms did I realize it was the wrong kind of love; calm and restful, but not live-or-die. Not the kind she felt for me. I keep this to myself, of course. I don’t want to lose her, or the echoes of him I find inside.

There are nights when I wonder what kind of person this makes me. On the same nights, I wonder why they tell us all the lies.

“You know, I’m thinking of getting a mural on the ceiling,” Rachel declares as we lie there, side by side, gazing up at her glass chandelier. “Like the Sistine Chapel, but with unicorns—really rotund, sad-looking unicorns, twined around artsy foliage and clutching candles and works of great renaissance literature.”