Page 14 of Screwed

Whateverthey had knocked me out with had to still be in my system. I must have been delusional, hallucinating,something,because surely my sweet, protective boyfriend from university couldn’t have been there.

But there was no disguising the guilt that flooded his gray eyes, and the dirty-blond hair that curled down to his shoulders. He had kept his hair shorter when we were younger, tidy. I shouldn’t expect him to look the same, because only hell knew I looked completely different from the girl he had fallen in love with. But I couldn’t juxtapose the Ray I used to know, who smiled at me from across campus, and picked me up at my dorm with flowers, with this man on his knees in front of me.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” His jaw tightened, the muscle ticking beneath the skin.

“What are any of us doing? What we have to do.”

I scoffed. We all had to do things we didn’t want to do in this world, but there was always a choice. I had chosen to live alone in the woods. Ray had chosen to assault innocent women and sell their babies. “And what you have to do is stick your dick in unwilling women?”

“No.” His response was firm, and his eyes didn’t waver from mine. Was he so brainwashed that he truly believed what he was doing was right? My stomach churned unhappily, and I was immediately grateful I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten.

I saw red, my blood pumping furiously. I couldn’t control the anger I had toward the man I thought I knew. The man I once thought I would marry. “What do you mean, no? These women aren’t your girlfriends, Ray. This isn’t the fuckingBachelor. I’m not stupid. I know what the Kingsnakes do, and I know why they kidnapped me. I know what you’re doing. You can tell yourself whatever you want so you can sleep at night, but I’ll call it as I know it.Rape.” I looked away from him in disgust, but there wasn’t much else to look at in the barren room.

Ray grabbed my chin in his hand – one of the same hands I remembered running down my body in the still of the night – and wrenched my face to look at him again. His eyes were deadly serious, even more so than that night so long ago. “Mila. Shut up for five seconds and listen to me. I don’t rape the women.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And I’m a friggin’ supermodel. The whole Choosing and bone mask tell a different story.”

“I don’t rape them.” Ray released my chin, and I felt an odd sense of loss from where his hand had gripped me so tightly. Sitting back on his heels, he ran his hand through his tangle of curls, a motion I remembered well. I waited to hear what excuse he was going to pull out. “Each month, I choose a woman who will keep my secret. Every two nights, I pretend to fuck them. But I don’t touch them. In exchange for their silence, I offer them a portion of my payments. And now I’ll need you to keep my secret as well. If it gets out that I’m going against the blood oath...” He trailed off.

I shook my head, only slightly less angry. “You’re still here, knowing what they do every night to these girls. What they want to do to me. How do you make your peace with it? Do you even think about their families? Fuck, Ray, do you even think aboutAvery?”

“Goddamit, I’m only herebecauseof Avery,” he roared. He pushed up off his knees and rose to his feet. He turned away from me, and even though I could no longer see his face, I could feel the thrum of anger as it stretched between us. “I’m thinking of Avery every single night. Avery, and Ella, too. I’m thinking about how I don’t want them to end up here, or on the streets, or starving, or a thousand other possibilities that are way tooreal. So yeah, I come here and sell my soul. And try to make it a little less dirty. But I’m only doing it because I have no other fucking choice.”

Ella?Who was Ella? “There’s always a choice,” I muttered. He didn’t bother turning around to look at me.

“Real sound logic, coming from the girl who ran off the moment things got rough.”

“Excuse me?” I clenched my hands into fists, my heart racing. I tried to remind myself that he didn’t know about Olivia. How could he? But I was indignant and I couldn’t stop the words from spewing out. “Did you want me to sit still while the world fell to shit around us? When tomorrow couldn’t be guaranteed, let alone next week?”

“I looked for you, you know. I went to look for you the next morning, but your apartment was nothing more than a burnt-out shell. It was still hot to the touch.” He shook his head, his words so quiet I wasn’t sure if they were meant for me. But then Ray whirled around, glaring. “I told you I would fucking protect you. I promised you the world that day, Mila. I promised I would shelter you with my life. And instead you just never showed up the next morning. In fact, you never showed up…ever.”

I jumped to my feet, forcing myself to ignore the electricity pulsing between our bodies. What was once there couldn’t still be. It had been too long. Too much had happened. And yet my soul yearned for his, two magnets attracted together.

No. I was just angry, furious at the idea that he thought he could protect me from an imploding world. When nobody had been around to protect Olivia. Nothing more.

“How did you think you were going to protect me? Lock me up in an ivory tower, watching me grow older by the day? But at least I’d besafe, right? At least I’d beprotected.” I scoffed, watching his own rage roll over his face.

“Don’t kid yourself, Ray. I might not have much, but at least I’m free.”

“You’re so bloody stubborn, you’re not even hearing what you’re saying.” The gray of his eyes grew darker, tendons popping along his forearms where his hoodie sleeves were pushed up. “Are you really free, babydoll? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re still in the lair of the Kingsnakes, and I own you for the next month. Does that taste like freedom to you?”

Every drop of blood rushed to my face, setting my skin aflame. I wasn’t a possession, a trophy to be set on the wall. I was my own person. Freedom came in more than one form. “No one owns me, Ray. Least of all you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” he snapped. “I figured that out a long time ago when I gave a girl my heart, only for her to crush it into a million pieces.”

A knife of pain pierced my chest when I realized what he must have felt when I ran. But it was a new world, and I had only done what needed to be done. I shook my head, ignoring the trembling in my fingers. “We were kids. Did you really think I was going to stay based on a fantasy you were constructing for us?”

Ray gripped my shoulders once more, his voice a deadly whisper. “It wasn’t a fucking fantasy for me, Mila. I told you I would protect you with my life, and I meant every word I said.”

For a moment, I was stunned into silence. Had he really been harboring these feelings for this long? Even though I ran away, leaving him and everything I had ever known behind?

“Ray, I...”

“Just shut up, Mila. Shut up for two goddamn seconds. I have so much to tell you. And yet, none of it matters, does it?” He sighed, a sound that weighed more than the world. His gray eyes pierced mine. He slid his hands up my neck, along my cheeks, so close his breath brushed against my lips. I forced my body to not react, not cave to the touch I had dreamed about for so long. “None of it fucking matters anymore.”

Before I could turn away, he pressed his lips to mine, kissing me in a way that made all the time apart insignificant.

His mouth on mine erased all the years between us, and I couldn’t help the moan that slipped out. Ray’s mouth curled up in a smile where his was still pressed to mine.

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