Maybe it was all a dream.
And then I sat up and realized how badly I wished it was.
My legs were on fire. My vagina lips were so swollen I wasn’t sure my clit was even attached to my body. There was an inverted cross tattooed on my inner thigh.
The entire night before was a blur in the background of a raging headache. I wanted to lie back down but knew I needed to get up.
Stumbling out of the bed I didn’t remember being put in, I made it to Romero’s dresser and tugged open the upper drawer.
Propping my head up with one hand, I lazily dug through, looking for a shirt that would cover all my bruised assets.
My fingers slid over something metal and broken. Shoving clothes out of the way, I picked up the frame and flipped it around to see what was inside. Popping the back off, I removed the photo and studied it.
There was a tightening in my chest, and my throat constricted when I tried to swallow. Suddenly, the clarity of where I’d seen the skeleton ring before came rushing back to me.
Tilly had it on when this picture was taken, and she’d had it on when I first met her through the border fence. All of them were pictured together: Cobra, Grimm, Romero, Tilly, and a brunette.
“What are you doing?”
I turned, still holding the picture in my hand. I opened my mouth to say something, unable to find words.
His dead eyes looked at the picture, then back at my face with an understanding so clear I almost believed he was a mind reader, forgetting that fast how well he knew me.
“That’s the girl.”
“Tilly. She has—had—a name,” I bit out.
His brows raised and he laughed. “Her name sure as fuck wasn’t Tilly. Her name was Tiffany and she was one of the most fucked up bitches I’ve ever met.”
Tiffany?
“She wasn’t, she was good,” I refuted.
“No, she was an unstable and untrustworthy narcissist who happened to be obsessed with me. The problem was her thinking she was better at mind games than I was. She ended up being the perfect puppet. She was not anything remotely good.”
I knew in my gut he wasn’t lying, which meant she had, like everyone always did. I let the picture flutter down and tried to move past him.
“Shit, Cali, I didn’t know, baby.” He wrapped his arms around me and smothered me into his chest.
I didn’t want to find comfort in his embrace, not when there was an ocean between us and so much that hadn’t been said. I shoved away, almost falling on my ass.
“What the hell is this? Last night, us, and now this? Who the fuck are you?”
My brain felt like it was going to split in two. I never wanted to unravel, never wanted him to see I was weak, never wanted any of the bad shit that happened to me. I wanted to live. I wanted the yesterdays full of happiness back.
I angrily swiped at my face, feeling the first tears spill over.
“Who are you?”
“Yours.”
That made it worse.
“Tito wanted me to find you,” I blurted out. “Is this why? Because you fucked his sister? What did you do to her?”
“Everyone fucked her, Cali. If you want to know what a real whore was, it was Tiffany. I didn’t do anything but give her enough rope to hang herself, and she did.” He paused and looked me over with an inexpressive look on his face. “This isn’t the time to tell you about this. I promise I didn’t know, Cali. It wasn’t a fucking secret; I just didn’t think it was relevant for you to know about.”
“Tito is the one who sent me into the woods.” I said it in a way meant to lash out. My gut instinct about bad blood between them had been right and was the only thing I had to throw back at him. I regretted it the second I said it because I knew Rome wasn’t trying to hurt me.
When his facial expression didn’t change, I repeated myself, fully accepting he might hate me and think I was using him.
“Did you hear me?”
He looked at me another minute and then finally came forward. He scooped me up like I was a doll and carried me into the bathroom.
“I’m going to take care of you now.” He kissed my forehead and turned the water on.
I didn’t bother trying to stop his hands from cleaning and massaging every inch of my skin.
I didn’t bother pointing out that with every touch, he made me more his than I wanted to be. I was too busy going round and round with the madness in my head.
When he was done, he took me back to his bed and sat with me in silence, staring at one another, neither of us bringing up anything that needed to be discussed. I was okay with that right then; talking would make it all worse before it got better.
The longer we stared, the harder my heartbeat started kicking. I reached for him at the same time he reached for me.
It was the right thing to do at the wrong time. I indulged in the taste of him. His hands were everywhere, gently teasing my skin, leaving me no choice but to focus on him and nothing else.
When he finally brought our bodies together, he made it hurt in a different way.
It wasn’t brutal or cold. He fucked me lovingly, and the pain went deeper than anything I’d ever felt before. It was beautiful agony. He was tearing me open and digging out the soul I didn’t know I had, taking it for himself, permanently tying us together.