Page 115 of His Pretty Little Duet

I shake my head slowly. "No." My throat tightens with those dry contractions. "No. You can't."

My head moves violently from side to side. No. You can't. Not you. Not the most impressive man in the world. "You're just saying it. You have seen the absolute worst of me! You have seen all the flaws. You can't. I don't believe it. I'm just your burden. Your pretty little burden. I'm?—"

"I didn't see any flaws, little deer. I saw you tearing down the middle. I saw you being mauled by life. I can't rip those fuckers from your mind, but I will rip them from this world. All of them."His eyes blaze. "Idid.I will be your thorns, sweet girl. Your future is with me. You'reCosa Nostraroyalty. Do you know what that means?"

I blink ahead because amidst the horror of the past two days, in the middle of all this trauma, he is saying everything I have ever dreamed of. They are the worst words to associate with this feeling, with this dissonance, self-hate, and the words that I most needed to hear.

To believe them, though.

I can’t.

Can I?

After all I have endured, believing would be like jumping from a tree the moment I was gifted wings. Not trying them out. Or growing into them. Just diving headfirst and hoping they fit. They hold my weight. The weight of my past.

The whiplash of this decision wraps around me. I can’t grapple with what to feel or say or organise in my mind because it's too much.

When I don’t answer, his deep, commanding voice rumbles, "It means you aren't ordinary, sweet girl." I relent my internal debate, finding his eyes—piercing, fierce blue vortexes of sentiment. "You'repowerful."

I nod slowly.

"It's in your blood, that power."

My mouth opens as his words sail around me, my chest pumping harder to draw in air.

"You're not my pretty little burden, Fawn." He lifts my chin. "You're my pretty little queen."

THE END

of Part One—His Pretty Little Burden

His Pretty Little Queen

Book Two

Clay

Eighteen years old.

Dustin observes from the doorway.Even though his reputation is impeccable and the nursing staff and every other fucker in this city are enamoured by him, I still peer over my shoulder to see if we have been noticed.

My hands shake, but I ball my fingers in tight to control them. The beeping of a machine draws me back to the little blonde girl on the hospital bed.

She looks like a doll.

Her face is like porcelain. Below the thin veil of skin, her malnourished body barely thrives, the blue of her veins like soft pen lines down each white cheek.

"Get it over with." Dustin's hoarse utterance cuts through the room, and I react immediately, cramming down my innocence and youth in order to take hers.

I sit on the edge of the mattress, my eighteen-year-old frame shadowing the tiny person already barely clutching at the seams of her existence. And while the perpetual beeping indicatessheisstill alive, her white, lifeless features contradict the mechanical echo of her heartbeat. She could be dead. She looks almost dead. Peaceful. I find solace in those thoughts, accepting the cold, heartless part of me that I need to finish this.

Finish her.

For my Family.

For Jimmy.

She knows too much, but that is all he told me.

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