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Chapter Fifteen
Scrubbed clean with the pricey soaps that would mute her scent, bathed in the various other products that would further hide her dynamic, Devin emerged from the dilapidated warehouse a small step behind Jackson. No longer an equal, she followed him out into the stark light of day.
The dress Beau told her to wear might cover the fresh marks he’d given her, but it hugged every curve. Indecent though clinging black fabric covered her. Devin kept tugging at the too high hem, the fish and rotting wood breeze off the bay making her lack of underwear painfully apparent.
Banished to the backseat, there were no breakfast burritos or kind conversation. Jackson’s face remained black and blue, butterfly bandages holding the worst of the split flesh together. A splint on his left arm kept his wrist immobile, awkward on the bulky Beta.
Rey’s scent saturated the car, not a hint of anyone else. The black sedan and its leather seats curled in around her, cradling her in the lazy heat trapped within the car’s interior. It made it difficult for her to process anything but the fresh waves of pain each time the tires found a pothole.
The drive was much faster this time, too short for Devin. She’d thought herself in over her head, in a league far above her paygrade, but she’d had no idea. She was a plaything for a criminal, a monster who had no empathy. Rey did nothing to stop Beau’s abuse, even aided him once.
Crawling from the backseat, careful not to come anywhere near to even a glancing touch to Jackson, Devin shuffled her way towards the club’s back door. She tried to open it, stinging needles jabbing deep all the way to her fingertips, a painful tingle through her chest before it all went numb for a breathless second. Mincing around her, Jackson pulled the heavy door open and stepped back for her to enter.
Cradling her arm, Devin flexed her fingers to try and bring sensation back. Brief worries of permanent damage fading as feeling returned in another rush of pins and needles. Somehow, she found her way to the second floor, the few people she passed giving her a wide berth until she threw herself into the small office she and Chrissy shared.
“Gods, you look…” Chrissy cleared her throat and smacked a stack of papers against the desk. “There’s some water in the fridge. You’re to drink it.”
“What?” Devin dragged her head up, feeling fuzzy and heavy in all the wrong ways. The adrenaline that had kept her awake all night seemed to be fading fast. It left her swaying, using the wall to prop herself up.
“What Beau gave you. You need to stay hydrated, okay?”
“Yeah… okay.”
“Fuck’s sake, here.” Chrissy slapped the near frozen plastic bottle into Devin’s hand, clenching the other woman’s fingers over it until she was sure Devin held it. “Now sit down and drink it. Small sips.”
“You do this often, then,” Devin asked, collapsing into the nearest chair. Sprawled over it, head lolling as she attempted to focus on the bottle in her hand enough to unscrew the top.
“I don’t do this. At all. They keep their shit away from me for a reason. Gods damned BS in accounting and I’m being forced to babysit.” Chrissy’s disdain was clear without Devin needing to see the sneer.
She’d been so nice before, but Devin couldn’t really blame the Beta for finding her disgusting. Not after everything she’d been through so far. She hated herself just as much.
“I’m sorry.” Managing to crack open the seal, Devin took a gulp of the too cold water, almost choking on it before her throat remembered how to work.
“Just sit there and be quiet, all right? I have to get this shit in order.” Chrissy heaved a sigh, plopping down into her chair to shuffle through more papers.
Guilt and shame battering her, driving her shoulders further down, Devin huddled in the chair. She was a small, cowering, pathetic thing. Deserving of their collective displeasure. She’d walked right into all of this, naïve to the very last. Thinking there’d been some moment of hope in the not-so-distant future. Had she really been that stupid? She’d really believed that the arrangement she’d agreed to would somehow work out for her.
Yes, she really had been that stupid.
Chrissy muttered over her paperwork, entering numbers into the computer from various packing slips and inventory forms as Devin sipped her water. The minutes ticked by into hours, no one disturbing them. Finishing off the last of the tepid liquid, Devin felt a bit more herself, the lumbering depression lifting its sucking wet folds from her enough that she took a deep breath and stood.
“Where are you going?” Chrissy dropped the form she’d been holding, half rising to frown at Devin.
“Just to the bathroom. Maybe I can help with something when I come back?” Devin offered a twitch of her shoulders, a hopeful note in her voice. It was what she was here for, and she needed some sense of normalcy to cling to.
“You can wait. I need to finish this.”
“What are you talking—”
“Will you sit down and let me do my job? We don’t all get a free ride here.”
Devin recoiled from Chrissy’s anger and the once kind features twisted up in a scowl. Feeling for the chair behind her, Devin sat hard, ducking her head to hide herself as much as Chrissy’s contempt.
“Maybe next time you won’t go prancing your slit off in front of every guy here, and we won’t have to go through this bullshit,” Chrissy hissed, slamming her chair under the desk. “Stay here.”
Devin tried hard not to cry. She sniffed back the tears, angling her head back to stare at the ceiling to calm the tide. Nothing helped. Quiet sobs racked her frame, one too many escaping the prison of her clenched arms to echo through the empty office.
She’d never felt so alone. Not once, in all her life, had anything even come close to this level of awfulness. Not when she’d left home, when she’d first arrived, or the countless times she’d tried and failed. Devin always picked herself up, kept going. This, though… this was going to kill her.
