Page 54 of The Devils of Saint City

Her once shaking hand is now steady as hell as she levels the gun with his heart. I see it now, what he means. She looks like every photo I’ve ever seen of Joanna, just cold indifference wrapped up in a lethally attractive package. But right now, she’s holding my life on the line because she’s holding his.

“There’s one problem with your little theory, big brother,” she croons, stepping forward with an almost psychotically stoic look on her face. “You’re wrong. You’ve always been wrong, and you’ll always be wrong. I’m not her.“

She shoves the side of the gun against his chest and turns away, and for a second, I fear Asher’s going to do something he won’t ever be able to take back.

The click of the safety unlocking makes me flinch and stop breathing all together. “Have you ever even shot a gun, Rhea?”

He follows every step she takes away until she’s spinning to face him. “Yes, I have. Please leave me alone.”

“Oh, so we’re saying please now, huh?” I breathe again when he clicks that safety back on and tosses the gun aside, but before I realize what’s happening he’s grabbing her by her arms and shaking her once. “Why didn’t you do it?”

There’s a manic confusion all over his face that barely seems to phase her. It’s like she shut down and the Rhea we know isn’t home right now. “Because. I realized I’d rather kill myself thanyou, and I won’t do that. I still have hope, Asher. Even after everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve endured... I still have hope that things will be better someday. That all of it was leading up to something amazing. And you? I pity you. You don’t have any hope at all.”

“Because hope hasn’t ever given me shit!” Releasing her, Ash turns away like he can’t stand to face what he just admitted, and I take it upon myself to stupidly intervene.

“But yesterday you had hope, we both did.”

He gives me a look I’ve never seen on his face before, but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t realize what it was. That sliver of hope is gone.

“Ash.”

“No,youhad hope, and I let you convince me it had merit. Look at her.” He waves a hand in her direction without looking. “She’ll never want what you want. Wake the fuck up, Manson.”

It seems that way because we’ve never fucking come out and said it. We’ve beat around the bush, we’ve pushed her, alluded to it, whatever — but we’ve never once admitted out loud that we want this to be more. That we want her to love us, and we want to love her. Why would she want something she doesn’t think exists?

I stumble over the words, choke on the admissions, because at this point they seem pointless. We just stole every penny from her bank account and now I want her to believe I want to love her? That I already might? I feel like an idiot. “It didn’t have to be this way. We could have been so fucking good together!”

I’m yelling at him now, and I don’t even know why, because it’s me I want to hit. There were so many opportunities for me to turn this around, and as much as I want to pin the blame on Ash, I know he would have listened at any point. People might think he’s the asshole that runs things here, but we know the truth. I’m the only one he trusts enough to listen to.

“Rhea,” I practically plead. “Don’t close off yet. If hope is what you cling to, then cling onto whatever fucking sliver you got for this situation here. I am.”

Her eyes are filled with tears that won’t spill as she answers quietly, “I’m tired.”

That’s it. No hope, no denials, no anger or hatred or love. Just exhaustion.

It’s barely 11:00am, but I can’t say I blame her. I feel like I’ve lived a year in the last hour. I take one glance at Asher before I move in to pick her up and carry her to her bed. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but knowing it’s better to be safe than sorry, I cuff her to the bed again. I can’t risk her getting up to shoot him for real.

With guilt practically suffocating me, I turn to leave her alone, but she grabs my wrist with her free hand. “Stay.”

Frowning, I take a deep breath and climb into bed with her. We both flinch when we hear a loud crash come from the kitchen and somehow I know Asher just broke her laptop. So much for us starting over.

21

For almost three hours, Manson lays with me. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t do anything but stare at the wall while I try to hold myself together.

I no longer have a job. I lost my savings, my website. They’ve got me in a cage I no longer have a hope of escaping, especially since I proved I don’t have the balls to kill them.

I thought about it. I did. But while he might’ve deserved to die, I didn’t deserve to be the one to carry that burden. My mother took enough from me without adding that too.

Yet despite everything, I’m not crying. I barely feel sadness. It just feels like all of this was inevitable from the day I was introduced to Asher Ellis. Like I was always meant to fall under the thumb of the Devils of Saint City. It just took a while for the transformation to be complete.

But I have questions. What Asher said, what Manson alluded to? There’s more to this story. More going on, maybe things I refused to see or things they simply refused to show me. Either way, I’m done hiding. I’m done letting them skirt around and send mixed signals.

I need the truth.

“What did you and he talk about last night?” I ask. “About me, I mean.”

Manson’s sigh is filled with so much exhaustion I let myself believe he’s about to be completely honest with me. “You. This. Us.”

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