Page 51 of Vicious Hearts

His warmth soothes me. No one ever just held me before, not like this.

“What happened after your mom died?” he whispers, smoothing a strand of hair off my face and tucking it behind my ear.

“My father sold me. He owed some money to his so-called buddies, and they wanted a house slave. I’m sure everyone involved knew what they had planned for me, but my father didn’t have the balls to do it himself.”

Ben tenses around me. I feel the raw power of his body, but instead of fearing it, I melt into him.

“Fuck.” His voice is a deep rolling growl. “If you say what I think you’re gonna say, then I swear, I’ll destroy every one of those junkie cunts. There won’t be anything left to find—they will fuckingvanish.”

“It’s okay,” I say, squeezing his shoulder. “It didn’t happen like that. They wanted to wait until I was thirteen before they started selling my body, but I managed to escape one day when they were all strung out. I’d been with them for three years by then. Then I lived on the streets and had a few near misses before the cops picked me up. I went to Juvie and met Ali there.”

Ben is holding me almost too hard, as though he’s afraid my past might burst in and drag me away. He cradles my head in his hand, his other arm wrapping my waist. My lips meet the hollow of his throat.

“It’s personal to you, isn’t it?” he says. “You were a child alone with no one looking out for you, just like those kids who were murdered. And Farraday deserves a chance to get his life back. His kid should have the tire swing and sugar cookies, too.”

Deep down, I knew this about myself. But he sees through me so easily. It’s frightening.

Ben pushes me off his lap abruptly. I almost burst into fresh tears, but then I see his face.

17

Ben

Roxy was right. I shouldn’t have tasted what was in the capsules. My fucking curiosity will get me killed one of these days.

It ought to have occurred to me that a tiny bit of amphetamine wouldn’t do much, but a drop or two of fuckingacid?

It’s been years since I last took LSD, and that was under duress. The Gurin Bratva boys thought it would be funny to haze me, so they dosed me—at just sixteen years old—and then turned me loose in one of their brothels. I don’t remember it, but I knew I wasn’t a virgin anymore when I left. I slept for twenty hours straight, and my entire body was in agony. To this day, I don’t know what they did to me.

“I’m sorry,charodeyka,” I murmur. The couch cushions warp as though they are melting, and I close my eyes so I don’t have to see them. “The capsules are LSD. No wonder your boy Farraday could barely string a sentence together, the poor fucker.”

Roxy snatches the vodka glass from my hand. I hear the faucet, and the glass is back, nudging against my knuckles.

“Water,” she says. “Drink it.Now.”

I drain it in one. I lie on the couch, staring at the featureless ceiling. Roxy tucks herself under my arm, stretching out alongside me.

I click my jaw. Ghosts are swarming on the blank space above me, waiting for me to give them a voice.

“Talk to me, Ben,” Roxy says. “Just stay with me. Tell me aboutyourparents.”

I close my eyes again. Faces I used to know. Still there, emerging from the dark.

“They were heroin addicts,” I say, “and from the age of ten, so was I. Like all junkies, I got feral when I couldn’t get it. My parents would beat me black and blue if I didn’t help them, so we stole. Mugged people, robbed houses, broke into cars.”

I’m tripping, and this isn’t a good train of thought. But talking about it is easing the pain, like some kind of psychological trepanning.

“When I was twelve, my father and I broke into a house but made far too much noise doing it. The guy came down the stairs with a knife. He went for my dad, and like a fucking idiot, I tried to get between them. I got cut up bad, but my dad got a hold of the knife. I passed out after that, and when I woke up, I was in the hospital. They’d found the guy dead in the hall.”

Roxy’s fingertip moves along my scar.

“What about your parents?”

“Gone. The police went to my house and found it smashed to shit. The guy who died was a retired cop, so someone had to pay, and I didn’t deny I’d killed him. No one was inclined to give me a pass, and I guess I freaked them out, so I got diagnosed as a disordered personality and stuck in an asylum, pegged as a murderer.”

“That’s horrendous,” Roxy says, her voice strained. “Didn’t you try to tell them they had it wrong?”

“Why would I bother? I wassafein the hospital. They got me sober, taught me to read and write, and gave me medication that kept me floating around in a numb haze. Does that sound so bad?”

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