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I thrash on the bed, pushing those hands and whoever they belong to away, a strangled, “No!” bursting out of me.
The sound of my own voice somehow wakes me up the rest of the way, and I blink, seeing Malice sitting on the bed with me. He’s not touching me anymore, his hands held up so I can see he’s not a threat.
My chest heaves as I fight for breath, putting one hand over my heart to try to calm myself down. I force myself to breathe in and out, purposeful, counting the way Vic does. Malice reaches out like he’s going to touch me, but he stops before he gets too close, something flashing in his stormy gray eyes.
Ransom must definitely have told them what happened. How hard it is for me to be touched right now. And now Malice has seen it for himself.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his dark brows drawing together.
I swallow hard and nod. “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m okay.”
I’m definitely putting on a brave face, but I don’t want to seem weak right now. I don’t want tofeelweak.
Malice just looks at me, and I can tell he sees right through me, the way he always does.
“Solnyshka, I know,” he says, giving me a look. “I know how badly it can fuck you up.”
At first, I just blink at him, but then it hits me in a rush that hedoesknow. After what happened to him in prison, he definitely understands what I’m going through right now. Honestly, he’s probably the only one I know who would get it. Vic has plenty of trauma from what their father did to them, so I’m sure he can understand a lot of what I’m feeling right now too. But Malice was assaulted in prison, so even more than his twin, he can probably relate to the way I feel like I barely belong in my own body right now.
I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them as I look at him, taking in the strong lines of his face and the scruff of a dark beard on his jaw.
“Did it help?” I whisper softly. “When you killed the guy who… did that to you in prison?”
His eyes harden, but he has a thoughtful look on his face as he nods. “Yeah, it did. But… not as much as I’d hoped it would.”
I swallow, my stomach twisting. He really does understand, then.
“I thought seeing Troy die, seeing him crumpled up and unable to hurt me again, would help,” I whisper. “And it did, a bit. But the part of me that he broke still feels broken.”
I hate saying it out loud like this. It makes everything I’m feeling seem more real, as if giving words to it means it’s never going to be fixed. But Malice doesn’t look disgusted or angry—at least, not at me. He’s not even looking at me with pity in his eyes.
His jaw is set tight, and he curls and uncurls his fingers in a way that makes me think he’s either wishing he could reach for me and pull me into his arms, or that he’s wishing he could resurrect Troy so he could torture and murder him all over again.
“I remember how it was that first night after I killed the gang member who assaulted me,” he offers. “I was running on a high from doing it, from taking back what he took from me. I knew that it was going to change shit for the better, and I wanted it to feel… I dunno. Different. I wanted there to be this shift—not just externally, but internally. I wanted to erase what had happened, but after I killed him, I realized how impossible that was. Nothing could erase it or undo it. Not even killing him.”
I nod along with him because that’s exactly it. I thought there would be some shift between Troy being alive and Troy dying, and all I felt was just numb. Even though there’s a feeling of relief that he can’t hurt me again, all the ways hedidhurt me are still lingering at the edges of my mind, ready to break into my thoughts at any moment.
“How long did it take?” I ask, trying to keep the plaintive note out of my voice. “For you to start feeling better? To start feeling more like yourself?”
He shrugs, lifting one muscled shoulder. “I don’t think I can really put a number on it. It wasn’t like I woke up one morning and had completely forgotten about it. But it stopped weighing on me. I found my purpose and my strength again. It was gradual though. One step at a time.”
“That’s what Ransom said last night,” I tell him.
Malice snorts. “Yeah, well, he gets things right sometimes. But it’s true. It won’t always be like this. You’re fresh out of that shit, so it’s still deep, and it still cuts you up when you think about it. But you won’t always feel like this.”
He says it with such complete conviction, and he’s the only person right now who could say it like that and make me believe it. Because he lived it. He lived it, and he’s here, strong and confident and not shattered into a million pieces. A part of my brain whispers that Malice is just stronger than I am—but then, he thinks I’m strong too. He believes in me.
Now I just have to believe in myself.
Malice’s gaze drops from my eyes to the spot on my shoulder where he gave me my last tattoo. Almost under his breath, as if he’s talking to himself just as much as to me, he murmurs, “Mjagkaja i krasivaja, no so stal'nym pozvonochnikom.”
I don’t know what the words mean, but the warmth and pride in his voice as he speaks makes my stomach flutter, a welcome distraction from the agitation prickling beneath my skin from the remnants of the nightmare.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “For talking to me about this. I know it’s probably not easy, but it helps to know I’m not alone.”
His eyes burn as he leans a little closer to me. “Of course. I figured you’d know by now that there aren’t a whole lot of limits on the shit I’d do for you, Solnyshka.”
That makes me smile, just a little. “Thank you for coming to get me too. I don’t know if I said that last night. But you and your brothers saved my life.”
