Chapter One
I stared at the fogged-up mirror feeling stupid for being grateful that it was there. Not the mirror, but the condensation covering it. It hid my face from view.
A face I had no desire to get a good look at.
I was a coward.
And I really didn’t enjoy feeling like one or knowing that I was one.
Looking around the small bathroom, I drew in a deep breath and forced myself to remain calm. Easier said than done given my current circumstance.
Avoiding the mirror, I clutched the towel I had wrapped tightly around my body to my chest as I bent over and picked up a black backpack off of the floor. Tyson had given it to me right before shoving me into the bathroom and closing the door right in my face.
I had assumed the bag had clothes in it for me and I had not been wrong. After placing the bag on the counter next to the basin, I unzipped the bag and dug around inside. Frowning, I pulled out something black that was too big to belong to me. It was a plain, black V-neck t-shirt. The material was incredibly soft. I put the thing to my nose and inhaled in hopes of catching the scent of the owner. I caught nothing but Tide. At least it smelled good.
Annndddd I was stalling for time.
I dropped the towel to the cold floor and pulled the black t-shirt over my head. It fell down past my hips and didn’t stop until it hit mid-thigh. The thing was huge on me. It probably belonged to one of my Salt and Pepper twins.
I shook my head. Why did I care who it belonged to? In reality, I did not care. I glanced at the pile of clothes on the floor. My clothes. They were ruined, covered in both my blood and Dash’s. The majority of it being Dash’s. He was quite the bleeder.
I raised a hand towards my face but stopped it before making contact. It seemed I was quite the bleeder as well.
My vision blurred as tears began to pool. Not now, please not right now. If I let the tears fall I would end up a sobbing, hysterical mess. I could fall apart later, when there weren’t several people standing on the other side of the door. People who were upset and worried, waiting on me to come out so they could see for themselves that I was okay.
My eyes shot to the mirror before quickly skirting away.
I ran my shaking hand through my wet hair.
A loud knock sounded on the door, making me jump and my heart beat speed up.
I had locked the door, at least I had that going for me. Modesty wasn’t the issue. What did that matter when they had already seen the goods? It didn’t, at least not to me. My face, however fucked up it was, wasn’t the issue either.
So, what was the problem, you ask? If not those things, then what?
It was the tears threatening to come pouring out of my eyes at any second. The goddamn tears I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to keep at bay for much longer. It was the slight tremble in my hands. Yeah, it had come down from full-on body shaking and feeling like my body might rattle apart, but it had taken a while to come down to simply having hands that held a slight tremble to them. How long would it last, before my hands stilled? Hours? Days? I had no idea; time held no meaning to me at the moment. The last problem? The psychotic look I imagined going on in my eyes. If they were reflecting anything I had going on on the inside? I wouldn’t want to look myself in the peepers at the moment.
No, thank you. To all of it.
“What’s wrong?” Tyson called through the door.
Ah. So it must have been him pounding on the door. I wondered if he had been sitting right outside of it the whole time I had been in here. Not a surprise, actually. Or, it shouldn’t have been.
What had he asked me?
Shit.
“Ariel?”
I cleared my throat. Twice. “I’m fine.”
Two little words. One ginormous lie. I hated lying to any of my boys. Absolutely despised it. But I was too raw for the truth, to frightened by my own emotions to go the truthful route. If I let one thing out I feared my whole world would come splintering apart.
How would I put myself back together again?
The door handle rattled as Tyson tried to open the bathroom door and barge in on me. None of these guys knew the meaning of the word privacy, something that I found annoying on a normal day.
“Ariel,” he barked through the door in a rougher voice than he’d had seconds ago.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” I lied.
I could feel him hesitating outside the door before moving away. My breath left me in a relieved rush.
With a new sense of urgency, no longer stalling for time in the slightest, I pawed through the backpack. Thick white socks that I immediately unrolled and bent over so I could stuff my feet into them. I was grateful to whoever had packed the socks for me. I didn’t like walking around barefoot in places that weren’t home. Next, I pulled out a pair of pajama pants. They were gray, had an elastic waist and a drawstring. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to belong to the owner of the t-shirt. I pulled the pants up my legs and tied them tight. They stayed in place at my hips, and I knew they did not belong to the twins. Maybe they were Ty’s?
The bag didn’t have a bra or panties in it, so I went without. No way was I digging through the pile of bloody clothes to get the matching set I had put on earlier in the day. Those clothes were going into the garbage can, never to be worn again.
I dug around through the rest of the bag’s contents. A black pull-over hoodie with a silver pentagram on the front. It was so big I knew it had to belong to one of the twins. A red beanie that I wanted to steal and keep for myself. Another pair of socks. Why were there two?
I didn’t put the extra pair of socks on. Nor did I put the hoodie or beanie on.
There was nothing else in the bag.
I wished there was more in the bag.
Coward, I whispered to myself inside my head.
My eyes shot back to the mirror, and my body froze solid. The fog had disappeared, and the mirror showed the room behind me.
And it showed… me.
The very thing I did not want to see.
There was a raw, jagged cut on my cheek, and it was oozing blood.
Where had the stitches gone?
There was so much blood leaking out of my face. It kept coming, pouring out of my cheek at an alarming rate.
Too much blood.
As my head grew light, my face began to melt in the mirror, distorting my image.
The picture that was left was so grossly distorted, my face so deformed that I opened my mouth and screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
And sat up in my bed, wide awake.
My breath left me in a rush as I flopped back down onto the mattress.
Tears traveled across my cheeks, running into my hair. I held my body completely still and hoped to all that was holy that I had only screamed in the dream and not in the real world.
Footsteps in the hallway told me I wasn’t going to be lucky tonight.
The soft tapping on the door was to be expected because we had done this very same dance for the last three nights, ever since Dash had been released from the hospital.
If I had had my dreamcatcher hanging above me while I slept, I didn’t think I would be having these dreams or having to deal with this nonsense. But, Quinton had gotten his way, like I imagined he always would. And it hadn’t just been me who had been unable to tell him no. None of the guys had put up a fight or argued in the slightest.
“Ariel.” Quinton’s rough voice came at me through the door.
I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me, or the fact it was loud and sounded annoyed.
“I know you’re awake,” he informed me like he’d done the past three nights as well. “I heard you screaming.”
Fuck him.
They all heard me screaming, all seven of them. Quinton was the only one cool enough to point it out to me.
“Ariel.”
Always persistent, was Uncle Quinton.
One thing he was good for? He made my tears stop leaking out of me.
“I’m fine,” I grumbled quietly. I was worried he wouldn’t have heard me, but I shouldn’t have been.
He didn’t respond, but I knew he was still out there. Five minutes later, I heard his body slide down the wall, and I knew when the sound stopped it was because his ass had landed on the carpet.
I sighed again. This time it wasn’t loud or annoyed. More like sad and frustrated.
I closed my eyes even though I knew there would be no more sleep for me tonight. Just like I knew Quinton would be sitting guard outside this room for the rest of the night. I didn’t imagine there would be more beauty sleep for him either.
Then again, I had no clue how I had managed to fall asleep in the first place. Exhaustion, perhaps?
I thought about my mother being buried in the basement and sat up quickly. I flicked my fingers out into the darkness and willed the lights to come on. The ceiling lights flickered to life. I couldn’t be alone in the dark after thinking about her.
I thought about Quinton sitting out in the hallway all by his tortured self and shook my head.
I think I hated this house. Dash needed to hurry up and heal so we could go home to his house and get out of this one.
I threw off the covers and climbed out of the bed made for a freaking giant that this room housed. On bare feet, I walked silently across the room, stopping when I made it to the door. I turned so my back was against the wall and silently slid down until my butt hit the carpet. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs.
Quinton was on the other side of the wall, if not for it we’d be back to back.
It was his fault I was here, in this house, his house.
Mr. Cole was gone, having left as soon as I had told him I would be moving in with Dash. He’d texted me, telling me the moving company he’d hired would pack me all up and leave my belongings at the Alexander’s house. He assured me he would keep in touch, and that he’d be back to see me soon enough. I had sent him two text messages since then but had yet to hear one word back from him. I tried not to think on it, but I would find my mind wandering to him and I couldn’t help but worry about him. He’d been way off, and I couldn’t help but feel like he was hiding something from me.
I had every intention of figuring out what he could possibly be hiding from me, but then Quinton went and did what I learned Quinton did best. He got bossy and had told us all what we were going to do when we left the hospital. All my plans about going home to Dash’s so we could bond while I played nursemaid to Dash and momma to Binx went right down the shitter when Quinton told us we were all going home, with him, until Dash made a full recovery. Even Damien and Julian, who had their own separate house, had to stay at Quinton’s house. Quinton had insisted we all stay together, and no one had the good sense to argue with him. Not even me, even though I had balked at the idea of going back to this house. But Quinton had had this look in his eyes that had made me uneasy, so I had gone along with his demands. That look hadn’t gone away since, and it hadn’t gotten any better. In fact, it had deteriorated to extremes in the three days we’d been here. He looked like, at any given moment, if the wrong thing got said or the tinniest little misstep got made, he was going to become unhinged and turn into a freaking mad man and explode.
This lack of sleep wasn’t helping matters either. For him or for me.
I laid my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. I imagined him doing the same on the other side.
Yes, if Dash didn’t heal fast so we could get out of this house soon, I was going to go insane. I feared I would be dragging Quinton along with me for the ride.