Page 28 of Fix You

"Why would I dance with my baby sister out of pity?”

I shot him a pointed look. “You know why.”

With a grimace, he eased down in the chair beside me. "I’m sorry, love. If there was any way I could take away your pain, I would.”

"I know.” And it was the truth. Callum wasn’t just shooting me a line. He’d proven to me he meant every word when he’d tortured and killed Oisin.

But despite what he could offer physically, there was no way he could soothe the emotional hell I was mired in. “I just want to be a normal girl. Not poor, broken Maeve.”

“We don’t look at you that way.”

I blinked at Callum. For a usually emotionally intelligent man, how could he be so blind? “But you do.Allof you do.” As my brothers’ haunted faces flashed before my eyes,one remained. Swallowing hard, I thought of Kellan’s and my meeting earlier. “Kellan still can’t look at me without tears in his eyes.”

“He’s wracked with guilt.”

My heart truly ached for Kellan’s trauma. With his empathetic nature, I knew the pain he carried wasn’t just about what he’d been forced to do that night, but what I’d had to endure as well. "I know he is, just as much as I know there was absolutely nothing he could’ve done that night.”

Not once had I ever harbored one iota of blame towards Kellan and Eamon. Mam’s life had been at stake as well as theirs. It would’ve been far more agonizing if I’d lost Mam or one of my brothers. I would’ve ended it all had they been taken from me.

Shaking my head, my voice lowered to a whisper. “My rape is the first thing everyone thinks when they see me.”

"Maeve–”

"It’s okay, Callum. The only time it matters is when I’m back with the family. At school, no one knows any of it. I can just be me without the baggage.”

He sighed. “I’m so fucking sorry, love. Once again, I mean it when I say if there’s anything I could do–”

“You already went above and beyond for me, Cal.”

Although I knew Callum had murdered our father for me, he'd never openly admitted it. I imagined he worried that I would feel guilty for being the cause.

But I didn't.

My father deserved a much more torturous death than he'd received. His sins didn't begin the night he'd allowed Oisin to rape me. He'd emotionally and physically abused his wife and children for years. He’d earned days–if not weeks–of arduous torture.

In the end, Callum didn't have the time to give my father what he truly deserved. Rather than facing a coup with myfather's men, he'd put a bullet in my father's head. The only consolation I got was that my father had looked Callum in the eyes and knew in his final moments he was going to die by his son’s hand.

When he'd come to the hospital that night to see me, he'd promised me he was going to give Oisin a slow, tortuous death. I’d bit my tongue to keep from asking him to give me the details. It wasn’t until about six months later when Eamon got ridiculously drunk, that he spilled the story of what had happened during Oisin’s torture.

The girl I was before the rape would’ve never been able to handle the gruesome details of the beating, the stabbing, and the dismembering.

But the new Maeve could.

She held onto every word of how they’d stripped Oisin naked before stringing him up with steel chains. After experiencing the excruciating agony of burning, Quinn had spent hours using a blowtorch all over Oisin’s body. To his raw and charred skin, Eamon beat Oisin with a belt while Dare had used a Cat-O’-Nine’s Tail, leaving him with bloody whelps among the exposed flesh.

Every time it looked like their beatings and stabbings might end his life, they'd pumped him full of adrenaline to keep him going. He begged for mercy for over twenty-four hours, but he never received it. Despite his usual aversion to torture, Kellan delivered the final blow by castrating Oisin and letting him bleed out.

Callum squeezed my hand, bringing me out of my dark thoughts. "I’d burn the world down for you if you asked me.”

In that moment, I not only experienced the warm glow of my brother’s devotion, but I also felt the sharp sting of envy. More specifically, I couldn’t help feeling a little envious of Caterina.

To imagine having such devotion within the confines of a relationship was overwhelming. What would it feel like to have a man who wasn’t your blood be willing to do anything in the world to make you happy? Even though they’d just been married a week, Callum had already shown me he was willing to do for Caterina the same things he’d do for me.

Despite the tears stinging my eyes, I smiled at Callum. “You know your devotion and adoration has ruined me for any future men.”

With a laugh, Callum replied, “Just know that whoever you choose will have to answer to the five of us.”

I rolled my eyes. “Like any man in his right mind will ever want to take me up on that.”

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