Page 15 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

“I’m sorry,” Felicity said, and her voice had true anguish in it. “Hopefully we’ll be done with all this nastiness soon and you can get back to your family.”

“Well, even if I can go back to Cherri and Nathan, I still won’t have Venom. That sucks,” I said. “I wish there was a way to get him out too.” Felicity went eerily quiet at that. She took a deep breath in, opened her mouth like she was going to say something, and then stopped short. “What?” I asked.

“Well… Thereisa way… technically, but…” She looked at me sadly.

“But what?”

“You… love Venom, right? Like a dad?” Felicity asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good, then hopefully what I’m about to tell you won’t change your opinion of him.”

I shook my head. “After everything he’s done for me and my shit-for-brains sperm donor, that’d be pretty fucking difficult.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” She lifted the remote from the couch and turned off the television which had been droning in the background. “Venom would kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but I think you deserve to know. You and his paths did not cross by chance.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There’s a lot that you don’t know about how you and Venom found one another, and I have a funny feeling youaren’tgoing to like this story.”

6

Cherri

Once Brayden agreed to tell us what he knew, he asked for a few minutes to speak with Kyle alone. That was nearly an hour ago and Nathan and I were still standing far enough back to not be invasive, waiting for any sign of our ride being ready to go.

It was the first time I'd been alone with Nathan since his attack in the bathroom, and that must have been what was on his mind as well, because he was keeping his distance. For as awful as that was and as much as I wasn't about to give Nathan a total pass for raping me, I didn’t really blame him for what happened. His father was as sociopathic as they come, and I knew firsthand the pressure he was under. Deon told me that Nathan had been under that level of stress since they were kids. He barely handled it as a teenager; how on earth he managed to survive up to that point was beyond me.

“Are you uncomfortable?” Nathan asked finally, breaking the silence between us. “Around me, I mean.”

“I won't lie, it’s a little weird, but I'm not afraid, if that's what you mean,” I replied.

He tipped his head back and forth. “In a strange way, that's better than I thought.” He turned to look at me properly. “Would it make you really uncomfortable to be alone with me for an hour or so?”

“You mean an additional one?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Yeah. By design.”

“Um, I think that would be okay.”

His eyes widened, but then softened. “Cool. Let's give these two some space and I can explain a little bit.”

“That'd be good.”

Nathan lifted a hand and called out towards Kyle and Brayden, “Hey, we're gonna Uber back. Just come along when you're ready.”

Kyle stood up and shook his head. “No, sorry, here we come.”

“Seriously,” I interjected. “It's fine. Take your time.”

Kyle looked at Brayden, then us, then Brayden, then us, then quickly shuffled over. He dragged his keys out of his pocket and handed them towards Nathan. “Take my truck at least.” He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “You good?”

“Yeah, I'm good." I set a hand on his arm. "Go. What's a few more hours?”

“Thanks, Cherri,” Kyle said, then with one look back at Nathan, he ran off to return to Brayden, where the two easily fell back into conversation. At one point they smiled at each other, and my heart leapt.

“Okay, let's go fast, because I need to understand,” I said.

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