Page 6 of To Have and to Hold

Theo was quiet, waiting for me to talk more. He didn’t move his hands from my body, didn’t recoil from my touch, just waited. Patient as ever, soothing as ever. He had no idea what direction I was about to take this in. And if he hated me for it, if he scoffed or ridiculed or hurt me, the tiny flame he kept alive in me would be snuffed. The ocean would call.

“I contemplated throwing myself at one of the wait staff, or running off and stripping my dress away and just jumping on the first man I came across… I… Theo, I can’t let him take that from me. It’s the only thing I have over him, and I don’t want him to have it. If… if I can go to my doom with that man, knowing he didn’t get what he wanted, that whatever all this ridiculous talk of sacrifice and blood was ruined for him and he didn't even know? I think it would help.”

A beat, then Theo moved away and my heart reached the precipice of breaking. He took his warmth and stood, walking to lean over the banister just a few steps away from me, but it felt so, so far away. I’d ruined everything. The only good thing, it washopeless, I was disgusting— He believed it too, clearly, believed in the rivers of blood and the sacrifice to whatever devil they worshipped.

I gulped back a sob. I hadn’t even explicitly asked… hadn’t made any mention about where my mind was drifting. But he still rejected, still pushed me away. He was disgusted, horrified. I was disgusting, horrifying. Of course I was. I deserved everything that was coming for me. if this was the direction my thoughts were leading me.

“I need you to say, very clear and succinct, what you want, Violet.” Theo’s voice came, his eyes remaining ahead. Not on me, crouched on the floor and breaking and dying. It made it impossible to know what he was thinking.

I steadied my breath. “Theo…”

“Say it, Vi,” he said, voice low. “I’ll give you anything you want. Just say it.”

Chapter 3

Theo

“Theo,I…foralong time—” she scrunched up her face and mumbled words to herself that didn’t reach my ears. I stood frozen, waiting for her to spit out whatever she was about to. My stomach clenched up like it had a bottomless pit of concrete solidifying from ribcage to ballsack.

“Tell me, Violet,” I demanded, careful, like I might spook her. She was my little sister, the person I loved most in the world… the idea that she was struggling to communicate something to me pissed me off.

“I don’t want Rafael to take my virginity.” The words hung heavy in the cool evening air, the swoosh of the waves nearby creating a soothing rhythm at odds with the tension. What. The. Fuck. What was she getting at?

It wasn’t shock at her statement. No. I’d expected those words. It was the way my stomach awashed with surprise warmth, a gush or tug like a fish hook yanking me towards her.Nonsensical, mindless. My mouth hung open as I gasped for a response. But then my gaze locked on hers. And the devastation behind those big, wide Bambi eyes snagged me still.

“What do you mean, Vi? What are you getting at?”

That tension picked up again as she scrambled for an answer for me, and I stepped towards her, arms stretched. But— the relief in her eyes, that she thought I might… I moved away. Two steps. Three.

“Theo— Ah!” she whimpered. Her lip wobbled, and she slammed her head into her hands as clear despair and grief rippled through her.

“Speak Vi,” I demanded. “Just speak.” I couldn’t get closer, it would mean false hope. False, confronting hope that I didn’t want to give her yet.

Muffled through her fingers, with her hair hanging over her face, she spilled her truth. “I w-was going to ask you to take my virginity, Theo. That’s how messed up I am. I tried to find someone I’ve been trying, but there is no one. Has been no one. I’m kept locked up tighter than a tiger in a zoo and I just… I’m desperate.” She managed a sarcastic laugh through those gulping sobs punctuating each sentence, sometimes each word. “If you failed to notice, I am desperate.” She looked at me then, red-rimmed eyes and curls sticking up from her head. “Desperate to have something of myself kept from that monster in there. I’m sure you’re aware that my only value is that I’m a virgin and that he can force his babies into me, take whatever it is they take from their… theirvirgins.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to give him that. I want to keep it, and lie, and let him think he’s won it when he hasn’t. I… I know it’s crazy, arbitrary, really, to anyone but them, but… it’s in my head. It feels… it feels urgent.” Then, with a whisper. “I’ll die. I think I might die if he can take it. If I can’t…”

Yep. Shit. My stomach bottomed out, my organs falling out my ass, bouncing down the steps and rolling through the fucking mud. For her to think it, to admit it… so sick, so twisted. Unexpected and ghastly. Her desperation wasn’t just evident in her speech, it was plain on her face as she watched me react. This is what true despair looked like. This church, the things it turned people into…

I took another step away, shattering something between us. A chasm of distance that made her shoulders slump further.

“I’m so sorry,” she muttered. “I’m so sorry.”

She left me scrambling for the words. “No, you don’t need to be sorry, my love, you don’t.” I wanted nothing more than to scoop her into my arms, to rush over, across the dank balcony and sweep her away. But I moved closer to the steps instead. War battled in me, to comfort my sister, my wonderful, kind and brave sister, or to run from the depravity she’d asked of me. I knew what I should do.

She watched me openly as I placed more and more distance between us, her tear-streaked face at odds with the mask she was trying to put on. She bit her lip, hard enough to make it bleed, and held her eyes on me as I made the decision to abandon her. Violet tried to steel herself, but I saw the second she failed. No one ever gave her what she wanted, she never had that grace. And now she belonged to another, a depraved, dank-hearted man raised to believe he was powerful, special. All because his Grandfather made up a bunch of shit about the tenets of society and persuaded weak-minded men to follow him.

They all made fast money, buying and selling drugs, weapons, people, and they blamed it on their church, their beliefs and their rituals. Blood, sacrifice of women's bodies, trusting them with the precious, life-giving members of their families on the belief that it would make them wealthy, powerful, too.Somewhere along the way, their success had grown to the point of deep control over way too much. They ran deep.

And I had no doubt not a one of them truly believed it was because they fucked the blood out of virgins. Married them, pure, only their spunk invading their bodies to make untainted children. They were just sick fuckers, ingrained and unwilling to lose their freedom to do whatever the fuck they wanted.

And my father wanted in. He'd wanted in for so fucking long he'd ripped Violet and the others away from the outside world, kept them locked up until they could be useful. And I… I'd been too much of a weak, pathetic idiot to stop it.

“Theo, please,” Violet whispered, slumping against the fence, almost sinking down, but holding herself up with a hand thrown backward to grip the railing as the rest of her body heaved in a sob. “Please don’t go. Please don’t leave me when—”

“Vi, I can’t. You know I can’t do that.” I just couldn’t. There was no chance. I needed to— I had to do something. My feet itched, my calves burned and my spine zapped with daggers up and down each disk. There was no way I was addressing why. It was because I felt the need to get away from the despicable question. Not because…

“Have I ruined everything?” she asked, distraught, her expression raw, gutted. She looked more devastated than when she’d first appeared at the top of that aisle, her evil husband barely giving her a passing look as Father handed her over. Placing her hand from his to Rafe’s, handing over her innocence, her joy and her body while everyone that was supposed to protect her watched. Including me. Including Charlie, our big brother. Our mother. Everyone. We all observed, mindless and effectless, as she became the possession of a monster for our betterment, our acceptance into this joke of an organization. My mind rejected the notion it was a church… they used thereligious aspects as much as they did the women. It was all about control. Manipulation.

I knew I was missing a lot of information, history, but it was clear to see the rituals were a farce, a path to the pleasure of men, of the leaders.

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