Page 33 of Worse Than Wicked
“I heard that,” Harper calls back.
Olive giggles and lowers her voice. “I know they won’t catch me watching extra if they’re making noise together because that means they’re having sex. They have sexa lot.”
I try to imagine the man she’s describing, a father figure limiting a kid’s screen time, but I can’t fit it with the pictures of Royal in my mind—a boy with dry, cracked lips begging for freedom; one with only hatred burning in his eyes when he looked down and saw the blood, and instead of letting the riverwash me away with it, he told me I didn’t get to take the easy way out, that I had to suffer like everyone else.
And then we’re stepping into the living room, and he stands from one of the chairs, and my mind loops in on itself. He’s even bigger than I remember, too big—make it fit—and he takes up all the air in the room, and I can’t breathe.
Baron is snuggled against me, “he hasn’t been with anyone since that night…”
He’s smiling, pleading, and I want to make him happy, and Royal is over me, inside me, and I’m tearing in two, and he spits on my face.
Darling whore.
Now Duke is pounding him on the back with his arms around him, and Royal skips the back-pounding and just wrenches Duke into his arms and wraps around him like he’s some sort of amoeba absorbing its food. He closes his eyes when he hugs his little brother, and I think it’s such a strangely personal thing to hug someone, your whole bodies pressed together, eyes shut tight so you don’t see anything, all you do is feel.
And then Baron’s greeting him, and they embrace too, and I watch with a detached fascination as they stand there with their chests pressed together, arms circling each other, neither of them slapping each other’s shoulders the way males typically do to assert dominance, establish comradery, or avoid giving the impression of intimacy. It’s like they’re aliens engaged in some inhuman form of communication, a portal in their chests plugged in to each other, information passing at light speed along the connection.
And then Royal’s lids lift, and he’s staring directly back at me with those inky black eyes, and I’m sure he knows, he knows everything, even though I never told.
Duke sits and pulls me onto his lap, and I can’t breathe, I can’t—I can’t—
“Hey.” Duke’s fingers wrap gently around my chin, and he brings my face around. His eyes stare into mine, the warmest chocolate with tiny flecks of caramel, sweet and comforting. “You okay?”
I nod mutely, trying to breathe. I’m not crazy.
You said you’d let him. Why are you acting like you didn’t want to?
I’m not crazy.
You’re lucky someone brought you in when they did… With this amount of internal bleeding, you could have died.
Lucky. I’m lucky. Not crazy.
Would you like to tell us what really happened, Miss Darling?
This is a normal reaction. I’m a normal girl, and this is a normal feeling, and I’m not crazy.
“I’m right here,” Duke murmurs, touching his forehead to mine. “Nothing’s going to hurt you, Duchess. You’re okay.”
“Okay.”
I’m okay. I’m lucky. I’m alive.
“Look what I can do,” Olive says, bracing her hands on the arm of our chair and bouncing up and down. “I can run with the same arm and the same leg at the same time. Want to see?”
“Sure, kid,” Duke says. “Let’s see. That sounds complicated.”
Olive starts galloping around the room, swinging her arm forward on the same side as whichever leg is moving forward.
“Thank you,” I whisper to Duke.
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” yells Olive.
“Yeah, you are,” Duke says, encouraging her.“Brava!”
Then to me. “What do you think we should name our kid?”
“Duke,” I say, my heart twisting and my throat thickening.
