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I wait until I’m back in my car before the weight of what I’d done falls on me. I crank the stereo loud, so loud it drowns out the screaming in my head.
I punch the steering wheel until my fingers bleed.
Mackenzie
“Bastard,” I mutter into the phone.
“You like this guy,” Antony chuckles.
“Cocksucker.”
“I bet he has a motorcycle. And dark, brooding eyes. You’re so predictable.”
“Wanker.”
Antony laughs. “That’s a new one.”
“I learned it from Gabriel. The British have such eloquent insults.”
My veins hum with rage, and I long to wrap my fingers around Eli’s neck and squeeze, or pull him to me and crush my lips against his. I can’t decide which. All I know is that every word in that diary has been burned into my skull. My house, my refuge, my ticket from hell is tainted now, the walls dripping with blood. It’s a gilded prison, a coffin lid nailed down tight over my parents’ abuse. And if it wasn’t for Eli, I would still be blissfully unaware of the horror in my past.
Eli wasn’t in school today, so I couldn’t talk to him about what I read in the diary. Which means Antony gets the brunt of my annoyance. Once he stops laughing, he says goodbye. He’s got a big fight this weekend, so he needs to focus on training. Even though I’m desperate to talk to him, I let him go – he’s done me a solid and sent one of his thugs to scare away the reporters at the gate, so for now, tonight at least, Malloy Manor is safe again.
I shove my phone into the pocket of my hoodie as I move through the kitchen, tearing the lid off a can of cat food and tipping it onto a gold-rimmed saucer for Queen Boudica. Queens deserve the best. She jumps up on the table and buries her face in the bowl.
When I first found Queen Boudica two years ago, she was a skinny, scrawny bag of bones living in the trash cans behind the diner. My boss, Lenny, said someone dumped a bag of kittens in the alley, and he called the animal shelter, but they didn’t seem to care. When I went out to dump some empty bottles, her fierce yellow eyes surveyed me from the shadows. She was scrappy. A survivor.
Like me.
At the end of my shift, I crawled behind the dumpster, scraping up my bare arms on the bricks. I managed to cradle her in my apron. I expected her to fight me, but as soon as I held her in my arms she curled up and went to sleep. The bus driver gave me a dirty look as I hopped on with her, but he let me sit down. I stared down at the tiny body in my arms and swore I’d look after her.
When I got home I set her down on the marble floor of the foyer and she sat as regally as an Egyptian statue, peering down her nose at me as if she expected me to wait on her. I named her for the Queen of the Celts, who stood up against the might of the Roman Empire. Ever since, she’s ruled this house and my heart. She’s probably the only thing that’s kept me sane.
I pull out a container of leftovers from the school dining hall and dig in. Across from me, Boudica abandons her bowl to sniff mine. I push her away. “Just remember, until you can master the opposable thumbs thing, you need me as much as I need you. So don’t piss me off.”
When we finish our dinner, I cradle Queen Boudica in my arms like a baby, carrying her into the study to choose a book and a bottle of wine. I carry the cat, wine, and book to the ballroom and curl up in the pile of cushions by the window while Queen Boudica climbs all over the cat jungle gym.
I try to focus on the story, but my mind swims with everything that’s happened since that cop appeared on my doorstep. Noah and his coal eyes filled with hate. Gabriel’s relentless flirting and cocky smile, Eli’s intensity and unrelenting kindness.
Insect legs prickle the skin on the back of my neck. I’m being watched.
I look outside, my fingers reaching for my knife. I start as I notice a figure sitting on top of the wall.
Eli.
I should be freaking out that this guy’s watching me like a creepy stalker, but now I’ve read the diary, I can’t see Eli as a serial killer. He’s a man out of time, a knight-in-shining-armor come to save the maiden in the castle. Too bad he doesn’t realize the maiden transformed into a fire-breathing dragon.
Eli sees me looking at him through the window and waves. His smile makes my heart flip.
The words in the diary rush back to me. Eli, my secret friend, who would keep watching over me even when I was a bitch to him.
But we all have secrets. Even my house has secrets that I now wish I’d never uncovered. Which reminds me, I need ammunition. I need to not feel as though I’m the only vulnerable one. I drop my book and pull up my phone, searching for Eli’s name. It doesn’t take me long to find news reports covering his dad’s trial – Walter Hart, self-made man, owner of a funeral empire, going down for selling corpses on the medical black market. Apparently, civil suits were still ongoing as relatives of his victims sought damages for being given bags of cement instead of their loved ones.
I freeze on a picture of Eli, looking damn fine in a pinstripe suit that hugs him in all the right places, one hand on the shoulders of a woman who’d had too much plastic surgery. His mother, I guess – they had the same golden hair, the same piercing blue eyes. Eli’s other hand pushes on a reporter’s chest, his fingers splayed, shoving the man away from his family. Protecting them.
Just like he protected me. Maybe he’s still protecting me now.
The thought makes my chest tight. Because that girl Eli was protecting, that girl he thought I was – she doesn’t exist. Not anymore. He thinks I’m someone I’m not, and nothing I do or say will make him see that. The dragon will always be Mackenzie to him.
