Page 70 of The Devils of Saint City

She’s sleeping against him like she doesn’t plan on going anywhere, but we all know how Ash is when he’s made up his mind about something.

“I’m not,” he deflects, but I see the way his hand tightens on her shoulder. “It’s not fucking real, Manson. She’s been telling us since day one it would never be real. Don’t you remember? Her submission would never be anything more than survival.”

I hate that he remembers that, and I hate that she said it. I’ve been trying to pretend those confessions never happened, but nothing could ever erase them from my mind. At least I’m not alone there. “I thought it didn’t matter?”

“It didn’t.” He scowls, tugging the blanket a little higher on Rhea’s shoulders. “It fucking didn’t.”

“What changed?” I ask, my tone a little more pleading than I expected. “Tell me what changed.”

Say you love her or I might actually punch you in the face.

He’s silent for so long I think he might actually do it, but I should’ve known better. “Punishing her doesn’t feel good anymore. That was the whole reason I did this shit to begin with.So if I can’t punish her and everything else will forever be fake, what the fuck is the point?”

My fists tighten with the urge to hit him, but I manage to hold myself back for now because he’s finally trying to communicate. “What are you suggesting we do then, hmm? We’ve taken every dime she had, hid her car, kept her captive. What are you even trying to say, Ash?”

“That I want to fucking undo it!” he hisses. “Fucking all of it. I want to go back to the day she showed up here with her desperate fucking murderous eyes and slam the door in her face harder. I want—” She stirs, shutting Asher up just long enough for him to take her to her bed and lay her down. When he comes back alone, I already know it’s too late to change his mind. “It’s over, Manson. All of it.”

“No,” I argue, getting to my feet to stand my ground. “Why do you get to decide that alone? You got us here. You! All I’ve wanted is for us three to live in peace, and now that I finally have what I want you’re going to fuck it all up? Fuck you, Ash.”

This isn’t the first time he and I have had to fight through an issue, but I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve stood up to him like this. It isn’t because I’m scared of him, it’s because I respect him, but this? This I can’t respect.

“So what, then? You want to keep her here, knowing damned fucking well that she’s probably thinking about how much she hates you when she sucks you off? That you fucking disgust her? But because she puts on a pretty smile and kisses you all sweet, you’re willing to just ignore that, right? Grow the fuck up, Manson. Think it through. She’s only sweet and touchy and amenable because she knows that’s the only way to make it through the day without getting cuffed to a goddamn bedpost or shocked until she’s near ready to piss herself. Does that sound like fucking happiness to you?”

I might hate him for being right here. The urge to deck him for it has me taking a step forward, but the fact that I can see he’d take my fist gladly has me stopping short. He wants the physical pain because it will always hurt less than the emotional kind, and I’m not going to be the reason he gets relief there. Not this time. We’ll suffer this together. “No. It doesn’t.”

Being honest about it stings, but he brought logic to this argument, and in reality all I’ve brought is childhood abandonment issues and trauma. What a fucking pair we make.

His voice shakes as he takes a step closer. “I can’t even fucking look at her anymore. I told myself all these years that she was just a miniature version of her fucking bitch mother, but when she chose not to pull the trigger, I...”

He doesn’t have to finish it. I know. When she proved he was wrong about her, everything else turned to ash. He couldn’t avoid what he was doing to her anymore, the sick things we’ve done. It wasn’t revenge anymore, it wasn’t divine or just or anything of the sort. It was just cruel.

“Fuck,” I hiss, my hands tugging on my hair angrily. “So how do you see this being fixed? Letting her g—” I clear my throat. “Setting her free?”

“Wake her up. We’ll spend one more evening with her, but put something in her hot chocolate tonight when we go out to see the stars. Once she’s out, we’ll... we’ll pack her things, get her car, and take her to Blair’s. She already knows.”

If he talked to Blair about this, he’s been planning it longer than just today.

I narrow my eyes at him. “If I didn’t press you about this, did you plan on doing it behind my back?”

“No, of course not.” He softens, stepping forward. “I don’t think I’d have the balls to do it without you. I called Blair a few nights ago because she’d know better than anyone how Rheareally feels right now. I called her to talk me off the ledge, but she did the fucking opposite.”

My body relaxes with someone else to aim my anger toward. I hate being mad at Ash, I just don’t see how that’s going to change for a while. “She offered her a room?”

“She did, yeah. Told me she still hates us both, but that Daddy would kill her if she turned Rhea away. She’ll protect her. Probably better than we ever could.”

That’s bullshit and he knows it, yet as I think of her sitting in the truck as bullets flew, I think I might know what he means. “I fucking hate this, you know that?”

“You and me both. Now go wake her up, we—”

“Me?” Rhea asks, making me whip around toward her. I’m worried about how much she heard until I realize that she isn’t awake at all. Her eyes are distant, unfocused. She’s having a fucking episode.

“Damnit. We can’t wake her up now,” I mutter, moving over to take her in my arms. “Hey, baby. You miss us?”

She curls against me like she was always meant to be there, reaching down to palm me. “I always miss you.”

“Fucking joke,” Asher mutters. “Guess the universe just handed us one last opportunity to be the worst people to walk the earth.”

I hate how his words do nothing to stop my dick from getting hard. “She needs us, Ash. Guess she’ll be going to Blair soon instead.”

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