Page 169 of Boy of Ruin
“How’d he feel?” I ask her, unable to stop digging the wound into my heart a little deeper. “He’s got a big dick, huh?”
She takes a small step back, and I almost go for her throat.
“You guys all fucking Ophelia, too?” I don’t even recognize my own voice, but I’m very familiar with what I’m feeling. That anger to disguise my pain. “The four of you fucking—”
“No,” she breathes out, shaking her head, her eyes almost pleading with mine. Fuck her pleas. Fuck her. Fuck him.
“It wasn’t like that, it was—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to fucking hear what it was like.”
I can’t stand still after that. I knock my shoulder into her arm as I push past her, my chest tightening when I round the staircase. I don’t know why I want to confront him now, about Ella, but I feel high. Manic. Fucking insane. And since Mayhem helped, too, since he was fucking part of it, now seems like the exact right time.
I hear Ezra mutter, “Uh oh,” and Maverick’s wild laugh because he thinks everything is a game.
My husband is silent, and when I wrap my hands around his throat, he’s going to stay that way.
I jump the last step, anger pumping through my veins as I catch sight of the five of them sitting on the floor of the empty living room, something that looks like a weird pipe in my husband’s hands, a baggie of what resembles sand beside his knee. There are red candles, unlit, in a corner of the room. An incense burner curling up pale gray smoke toward the ceiling, dim lights on overhead.
Otherwise, there’s nothing but them, and my eyes narrow on him.
His legs are stretched out, one ankle crossed over the other, and I notice they all have their stupid skeleton bandanas on.
Good thing because I’m about to fucking choke them with ‘em.
Everyone seems to stop talking as I advance toward them, seeing nightfall beyond the windows.
I hear Ella creeping down the stairs at my back and my hands ball into fists as I come to stand beside my husband, Maverick sitting on the floor behind me.
Lucifer holds the pipe in one hand and offers his scarred one up to me, and I see the bandages on his arm. “Come sit with me, baby girl,” he says, his raspy voice grating on my fucking nerves. He must be drunk or already high if he thinks I came down here to sit with him.
I glare at his hand, my chest heaving. I think about tackling him to the floor, but I don’t. Instead, I take a step back, try to take a steadying breath.
I hear my brother call my name behind me, but I ignore him, trying to think. Breathe.
“You fucked Ella too.” I bite those words out, almost choking on them.
There’s only silence from the circle, save for my brother calling my name again.
Fuck him too.
Lucifer’s blue eyes widen, and I see his already-pale knuckles blanch around the pipe in his hand as he drops the one he offered me, fingers splaying on the wooden floor.
I gesture toward the pipe. “You got high every day, fucked your best friend’s girlfriend, Ophelia, Julie, and who the fuck knows else while I did what I had to do to protect our baby, but you want me to believe you gave a fuck I was gone?”
“Sid, I—”
“I’m not done,” I snarl, taking another step back. Someone’s hand clamps around my ankle and I know it’s Mayhem, but I don’t care. “You wanted me down here, you fucking listen to me.”
He narrows his eyes, but I keep going.
“You know what Jeremiah did while I was with him? You know what he fucking did?”
My brother’s fingers tighten around my ankle and I hear Cain’s voice say, “Sid,” his tone a warning, but he can go fuck himself too.
“He cared for me. Taught me self-defense. He was there when I had nightmares. He fucking cooked for me and he cared for me and the only time he touched any drug was when he was trying to stop the pain that you fucking caused him!” I realize I’m screaming now, leaning down close to him, my finger pointed in his face.
Maverick’s grip is painful against my ankle, but I don’t move away from my husband.
