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16
WILLOW
The bank bagmy mom gave me is lying on the ground at my feet, dropped there when Malice pinned me against the car. Somehow, I manage to rouse myself enough to grab it, then stumble inside my building and make my way up to my apartment. I barely notice the walk up the stairs, and my fingers fumble with my keys for a second before I let myself in.
My mind and body both feel like they’ve been put through a blender, and the apartment seems to spin around me as I glance at the boxes I won’t be needing anymore.
I don’t know what the hell is going on with these men, but I’m realizing more and more that I’m in over my head.
What is happening?
Why am I so attracted to them?
Sodrawnto them?
I’ve never slept with a guy before, never even climaxed from a man’s touch. But I just did with Malice. And not even from his touch, but from the thick, muscled hardness of his thigh wedged between mine. He never even really touched me, never kissed me.
He just invaded my senses, and the overwhelming feel of him made me come.
I can still smell him on my skin, the heady, smoky scent that’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever smelled before. I shiver just from the lingering fragrance on me, and then wrap my arms around myself, like I’m trying to hold together all the pieces I feel like I’m fragmenting into.
I can barely remember when my life wasn’t consumed by these men, even though it wasn’t that long ago. Now I spend my days wondering what they might do next, where they might show up, and how they might shake my existence up even more.
“No. I can’t keep doing this,” I say out loud, even though there’s no one to hear it but me.
Malice was right, and I need to take his warning seriously. After he stood up for me to my mother and admitted he knows what it’s like to be used by someone who claims to love you, I started to feel a connection to him. Started to feel like maybe I knew him or understood him, in a way.
But the truth is, I don’t.
He’s a mystery to me, and everything about that mystery is shrouded in darkness and violence.
I can’t stop the Voronin brothers from doing whatever they want—that much has become abundantly clear—but I need to get my head on straight. I need to force them out of my mind and put up higher walls around myself. Because no matter how hard I’ve been trying to keep them out, they keep worming their way into my thoughts.
And that’s beyond dangerous.
* * *
Weirdly enough,life goes back to normal for the next several days. After depositing the remainder of the money my mom stole into my bank account, I go back to school and fall into my usual routine.
I was packing up to leave my apartment when Malice burst in, since I couldn’t afford the rent with no job and no money thanks to my mom, but after dropping off a check to my landlord, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Things are going smoothly again. Or at least, as smoothly as possible.
I haven’t heard from my mom since Malice and I left her house, and that hurts, in a way. I know I’m never going to get an apology from her for stealing or for lying to me about the money being gone, but I wish she would say something.
I know she’s pissed at me, even though she was the one who stole from me in the first place. In the back of my mind, I can acknowledge that maybe this is for the best, all things considered. Maybe it will be good if this causes a rift between us that can’t be repaired.
I’ve been putting up with my mom’s bullshit for so long. Too long. But she was the only person I had for a long time. The person who adopted a scarred, scrawny toddler and took her home.
Instead of dwelling on that or thinking about the guys, I throw myself into my school work. More than ever, I want to do well, to get my degree and position myself for a better life than the one my mom has tried to suck me into time and time again.
Focusing on the future I want and how I’m going to get it is the perfect way to get my head back on straight.
I have just enough time to make sure I do well on my next English Lit paper, so I stay late one night, claiming a table in one of the study areas in the library while I pour over the books I have checked out.
Unfortunately, I don’t have as much peace and quiet as I’d like. April and her usual group are at a table nearby, laughing and talking.
“It’s going to be wild, I heard,” one of them says, sounding excited.
