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Gareth smirked. “Well-deserved… I guess.” He draped an arm around my back, holding me close to him, as if he had to stop me from scooting away. “You believe me about Rick, so why won’t you believe me about Erin?”
I thought back to everything Rick had said, what Alistair had said, everything Gareth had said in his defense. And then I thought of all the terrible things Gareth had done to me, to other people, and it got harder to view him as possibly innocent. Still, for whatever reason, I found myself more willing to believe it now than before.
Shit. This serial killer had somehow wormed his way into my heart, I think. It was official. I was royally fucked. Nothing good could ever come out of this.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I whispered. “If you didn’t take her, if you didn’t hurt her… then who’s behind it? And is she still alive?” I swallowed, and I had to shut my eyes when Gareth ran his hand along my back, right over my spine. A gentle, comforting touch that was so unlike him.
“I don’t know.” Gareth’s cluelessness did nothing to assuage the worry in me. In a much quieter voice, he whispered, “I can’t believe I didn’t kill Rick. All that… for nothing.” It sounded like he was aggravated with himself about it.
“Well, I, for one, am glad you didn’t kill him.”
“I did cut his neck and stab him in the shoulder, though.”
That got me to pull away from him and sit up, glaring down at him with a frown on my face. “Gareth!” I hissed out his name. Maybe Ishouldmessage Rick and ask how he was doing. If he was stabbed…
“What?” He didn’t act repentant at all, though he did push himself up into a sitting position against my headboard. “He deserved it. Hell, he deserved a lot more than that. You’re mine.” His green gaze narrowed, though it was an odd expression without his glasses. “I don’t care who you let between those legs of yours—you’re fucking mine.”
He reached for me, but I slid off the bed. I gave him my back, walking to my dresser to put on some clothes. I chose a pair of shorts, along with a bra and a loose tank. With my back turned to him, I asked while I dressed, “So, you’re not going to attack your uncle? Just making sure, since you were so gung-ho about killing Rick earlier.”
Speaking of Alistair… my core was a little sore, if you know what I mean, though I didn’t know if that was because of the man himself or the fact that I’d had a dildo stuck in me for hours upon hours.
When I turned to face the bed, I saw Gareth had gone for his glasses and slipped them on so he could watch me get dressed. It was way too early to start the day, but let’s be honest: I wasn’t going to get any more sleep.
“No, I won’t kill my uncle, but he does have to answer for what he did,” Gareth muttered, frowning. He got up and walked across my bedroom, closing the distance between us and reaching for me. As he pulled me in to his chest, he wrapped his arms around me and held me there. “You are mine. I’m not going to sit back and let my two uncles fight over you without staking my claim first. Rick might’ve kissed you at the wedding, but I tasted you first. Remember that.”
“From what I recall, you didn’t give me much choice.”
He chuckled, but he let me go. Gareth shrugged as he took a step back, giving me his signature smirk. “I’m not going to deny that. I had to make my point that night. I think it was an… enlightening night for us both.”
One enlightening night of many I’d had in this house, trust me. I could hardly recognize the girl I was today. So much had changed, and yet, in the end, had anything truly changed, or did my eyes simply open and see the truth that had been lying before me this entire time?
I held Gareth’s stare for a few moments, and then I walked around him, muttering, “I’m going next door. You aren’t welcome to come.” I mainly said that so he would get it through his skull that he couldn’t dictate what I did or who I did it with.
Sure, I might’ve said I belonged to him, but that was just to get him to shut the fuck up about it and not hurt Erin. And look at where we were now. Erin was gone, along with her family, Gareth claimed innocence—and I was now starting to believe him. In addition to all that was a mixture of feelings for two other men, one whom my mom freaking married, and the growing realization that I could only belong to one person.
Myself.
I locked myself in my studio all day. I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch. I focused on a new canvas, sketching out what I’d soon paint. Based off memory, my hand worked on its own. I’d never claim to have a picture-perfect memory, but objectively, the sketch was pretty damn close to being perfect.
It wasn’t anything new, of course. Not really. But at the same time, it was.
It seemed all I could do was make pictures of Gareth ever since coming here, but this one… it was a little more than that. Instead of being divided in half either hotdog or hamburger style along the canvas, it was divided into three separate areas vertically, dividing up the face I’d sketched. That was, in turn, divided by another line in the middle.
Faces, I should say, because each vertical slice was based on one of the dicks currently taking up my thoughts—Rick was on the right, while Gareth was in the middle, and Alistair was on the left. The line that divided top from bottom separated the realistic half from the skeletal portion.
It was like three faces stared back at me from the canvas, each revealing the darkness within. It wasn’t easy changing the eyes; Gareth’s portion commanded most of the middle of the face, along with the innermost portions of each eye, but it was enough to separate him from the others.
Never in my life had I been more focused on my work. Not once had I ever flown through a detailed sketch on a canvas quite like that. I only left the studio to go to the bathroom, and even that was infrequent since I didn’t eat or drink anything.
I didn’t message Rick to ask how he was doing, though a part of me wanted to. No, I spent the day struggling with myself, with all the feelings inside. I didn’t know anyone else who had to deal with things like this—having real, genuine feelings for multiple people at once, and killers, at that.
Something had to be wrong with me.
My phone buzzed sometime around two, but I didn’t check it until three-fifteen. I was so into what I was doing it was like the rest of the world ceased to exist. I’d never had the freedom of an entire studio before, so it was easy to zero in on my work with no distractions. I could understand why Gareth liked to lock himself in the pool house for hours on end.
Of course, I also knew what he was painting with, so.
I’d just rounded up the colors I was going to use as a base coat for the canvas when I decided to check my phone. When I saw whose name popped up on my screen, my gut twisted and churned, and I couldn’t believe it. I literally couldn’t believe it. My mouth dropped open when I read the name again, just to make sure I wasn’t making anything up.
