by Eva Ashwood
“A dive off campus. Warren’s, I think it’s called. But I’m calling it a night. I’m tired.”
“Cool.” He keeps pace with me, completely abandoning whatever destination he originally had. “I’ll walk you.”
“I’m a big girl. I can walk myself.”
Cliff grins, a flash of white teeth. “Oh, I’m well aware of that.”
He chuckles, and the sound grates at my nerves. They were barely soothed by the whiskey I just drank, and now he’s undoing all of that, stealing the last bit of my numbness as irritation burns in its place.
“Well, then.” I stop and turn to face him. “You can go do whatever you were planning on. I don’t need a babysitter.”
He shrugs lightly, glancing up and down the street as if looking for threats. “If you say so. Just trying to do my duty as a gentleman; make sure you’re alright. I know you haven’t had it easy since you got here, and there are a lot of creeps on this campus.”
“Yeah.” I shoot him a pointed look. “There are. Which is why I’d rather walk on my own.”
I turn to start walking again, but Cliff catches my arm, stopping me. He gives me a bashful grin when I turn back to him. “Okay, look, I have an ulterior motive, alright? I wanted to ask you out. Actually, I’ve wanted to for a while now, but I was never quite sure where you stood with the Sinners. But sometimes a guy’s just gotta go for it, right?”
He grins again, and I tug my arm out of his grasp, wishing like fuck that I had asked Max to come with me to Warren’s tonight. “Cliff, I’m not—”
“I really like you, Sophie.” He catches my arm again, both of them this time, pulling me a little closer to him. “I’ve felt this… this connection to you ever since you came here. You feel it too, don’t you? This thing between us?”
“No. I don’t.”
The words are blunt. Hard. I’ve been trying not to be a bitch, but maybe that was my first fucking mistake. I should’ve shut this shit down weeks ago.
Cliff lets out a startled laugh, like he’s surprised I could answer so quickly and decisively. Then his brows pull together and he looks at me again. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I don’t want to go out with you. I don’t want to fuck you. I don’t want to do anything with you.”
There. Read between the lines of that, fuckhead.
Cliff’s eyebrows furrow even more, and he shakes his head a little.
Then, with no warning at all, he pulls me against his body and crushes his lips to mine.
I’m stunned, frozen in shock for a second. Then I shove against his chest, breaking away from him and stepping back. “What the fuck?”
“You feel that, don’t you?” His eyes are a little wild, and he advances on me again, his grip on my arms bruising now. “You can’t tell me you don’t fucking feel that, Sophie. That’s fate. That’s connection. We’re meant to be.”
Holy fuck.
This guy is unhinged.
I shove at him again, bringing my knee up to hit him in the groin. He twists to the side and I only catch his inner thigh, but he still gives a grunt of pain, his grip loosening.
Lunging away from him, I turn to sprint down the street, but before I make it two steps, pain blooms at the back of my head as I’m snatched back by my hair.
I cry out, the sting so intense it’s enough to pull hot tears from the corners of my eyes as I’m dragged backward, my hands scrabbling at his tight fist as I try to break his grip.
Fuck, Cliff is a lot stronger than I gave him credit for. He doesn’t play football like Gray does and Elias used too, but he’s almost as broad-shouldered as them, and it’s all goddamn muscle.
The way he’s grabbing my hair makes it impossible for me to get a good grip on him, impossible to pry myself loose, and he handles me like a rag doll as he drags me off the street and into a narrow alley between two nearby buildings.
As soon as we’re in the darkness of the shadows, he shoves me against the brick wall. Its surface digs into my skin, the little grains of it sticking painfully into my exposed upper back as the straps of my tank top and bra slide off one shoulder.
“Fuck you!” I scream, writhing in his grasp as he uses his body to pin me against the wall. I claw at his face until he grabs my wrist and pins it to the wall, and when I raise my voice again to call for help, he claps his other hand over my mouth.
The full weight of his body is bearing down on me, pressing me hard against the brick, crushing the air out of my lungs, and I try to bite at his hand, making him hiss with pain.
“Shit.” He curses, adjusting his grip on my face so that his palm is under my chin, trapping my jaw shut. He presses up and to one side, craning my neck painfully as he drops his head, running his nose along my skin.
“Fuck, you smell good. You smell like heaven,” he groans, and a cold shiver runs down my spine.
He kisses my neck, running his tongue over the pounding pulse that flickers there before biting down on my earlobe. A shock of sensation ricochets through me, and I scream against his hand, tears burning my eyes.
I can feel him getting hard, his dick grinding against me as he sucks on my neck again, lapping at my skin as another groan spills from his throat.
“This is real, Sophie,” he mutters, and my body bucks again as I try desperately to throw him off me. “I know you want this just as much as I do. Now be a good girl and do as I say.”
With one hand still clamped over my mouth and chin, he scrabbles at my clothes with the other, trying to tug my tank top up over my breasts before giving up and tearing at the material, shredding it down the front with a loud ripping noise.
His hand is on my stomach, on my breasts, sliding beneath my bra to massage the flesh with a bruising, callous grip. Then it’s sliding lower, flicking open the button of my pants and yanking the zipper down, sliding inside, his fingers probing, seeking, sliding through my folds.
Cold fear fills me. Something beyond anything I ever felt when Brody got too handsy, beyond what I felt when my first foster father beat me.
It’s a terror so visceral and raw that it sweeps through me like a drug, making the world swim in my vision.
I would rather die than let this man touch me.
I’d rather die than let him have me.
My stuttering heartbeat seems to slow, and for a moment, it’s like I’m floating outside my body. Another person is experiencing this, not me. Another hapless girl is having her legs forced open as some entitled man touches her, exposes her, seeks to take what isn’t his.
No.
The single word slams through my head like a freight train. I’ve been here before. I can’t do it again. Won’t.
I no longer see Cliff. Everything is a black haze around me, but I hear things, strange voices that echo in my head. My own thoughts?
You can’t let him.
Don’t let him.
You hate him.
You always have to hate him.
Never give in.
Never give in.
Be a good girl and do as I say.
A coppery taste explodes across my tongue, flooding my mouth. Cliff’s sharp cry of pain breaks through the cacophony of noise in my head.
“You bitch!”
He yanks his hand away from my mouth, blood streaming down his wrist from the ragged teeth marks in his skin. His face looks pale in the dim light, the boyish smattering of freckles across his cheeks at odds with the way his lips curl back in a snarl.
Cradling his bitten hand to his chest, he swings out with his good one—a wicked backhand that catches the side of my head and sends me reeling.
But it doesn’t stop me.
The rush of pain narrows my focus to a pinpoint. The only thing my mind lets me focus on is fighting back. Hurting the person trying to hurt me.
With a feral scream, I launch myself at Cliff, fists flying as he staggers back in surprise.
The world around me is a fury of red and black. Pain, fear, and violent rage course through me unt
il it’s all I can feel in my veins.
I’ve let people hurt me before.
Never, ever again.
I get glimpses of Cliff as my fists connect with any part of his body I can reach. His face looks foreign, the freckles and red hair and angular features seeming to belong to someone else. But whether it’s Cliff or some other person from my fractured past, my fists don’t care.
Even when he fights back, striking out and catching my face with a vicious right hook, I still don’t stop. I just keep hitting and hitting and hitting, following him down to the ground as my fists fall like hammers over and over again.
I’ve been here before.
I won’t let anyone drag me back.
22
Everything is black.
A dark-washed cocoon blankets me, smothering consciousness.
It’s comforting. Strangely peaceful. Fresh grass and soil fill my nose with their scent. It’s the closest I’ve been to nature in years, and some faint memory of begonias in a garden in spring tugs at my mind.
“What the fuck—”
“Holy shit.”
“Fuck, Elias, can you—”
“Yeah.”
The voices startle me, tugging at the part of my mind that most wants to remain asleep. I want to remain enveloped in the darkness. In the scent of soil and memories of begonias.
I want to stay here. But I can’t get my mouth to say the words, and before I’m able to utter a sound, someone slips their arms under me gently, lifting me from the grass and the faint flicker of old memories.
“Jesus. She’s cold as ice.”
Am I? I vaguely register the shiver that rushes through me, even though I don’t feel cold.
I don’t feel anything.
My teeth are chattering though. They clack together loudly, hurt my head and my jaw. I flex my swollen fingers and manage to open my eyes and look down at them.
They’re covered in blood.
I suck in a breath, an unsteady one that rattles through my lungs. I cough up gunk, and a broad hand smooths over my back.
“We need to get her inside.”
It’s Elias. It registers, finally, who has me in their hold. Who’s been speaking around me.
The Sinners. All three of them.
What are they doing here? How can they be here to help me? Why would anyone help me?
A flash of remembered desperation rises up in me, and I shift weakly in Elias’s arms. I need to get away. To stop them. To hurt them before they hurt me.
“Whoa, whoa.” Elias tightens his grip on me a little, hugging me tighter to his broad chest. I can feel his heart beating hard and fast against me, and I wonder why. What’s he afraid of?
“Calm down, Sparrow.” Gray’s voice is gentle, but there’s a roughness to it I don’t recognize. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”
Leftover panic and adrenaline are still buzzing through me, and I force my sagging eyelids to open. I crane my neck to look at Gray, intending to ask why the fuck I’m supposed to believe him of all people. He’s just as much of a piece of shit as Cliff. Just as bad as…
No. No he’s not.
Even I can’t claim that Cliff and Gray are remotely the same. Not after tonight. Gray has done a lot of shit, but he wasn’t the one who left me like this.
As that thought settles in, I stop trying to wriggle out of Elias’s hold. He’s got me cradled in his thick arms, and Gray and Declan both stand close by, watching me with worried expressions.
I try to breathe in a way that isn’t gasping for precious air. I try to stop shivering, but shudders wrack my body anyway.
“What happened?” Elias’s voice rumbles in his chest, a comforting vibration against my side.
What happened? The question echoes uncomfortably in my brain.
“C-Cliff.” My voice is rough, the word broken into pieces by my chattering teeth.
A silent ripple passes through the trio of men. The tension in Elias’s arms is mirrored in the expressions on his friends’ faces.
Gray’s nostrils flare as he takes a step closer, his eyes churning. “Did he rape you, Sophie?”
My body hurts. My hands are bloody. My tank top is gone—the shredded pieces must’ve fallen off my shoulders sometime before I passed out.
But no matter how beat up I am, I’m positive about one thing.
“No. I didn’t l-let him. He d-didn’t get that far.”
A flash of relief passes through his eyes, but it doesn’t last more than a second before concern overtakes it again. He looks above my head, meeting Elias’s gaze. “Dammit. She’s still shivering like fuck. We need to get her inside.”
“Yeah.” I feel Elias nod. “Come on, Blue. We’ve got you.”
Carrying me as if I weigh nothing, he turns and heads toward campus, the other two men flanking him tightly on either side.
I try to keep my eyes open. I really do. The survival instincts in me keep screaming at me not to let my guard down, even though it’s impossible not to feel safe in Elias’s arms.
Everything is still fuzzy and blurry though; consciousness is an elusive, slippery thing I’m holding on to only by a very thin thread.
I don’t know how long or far we walk. My face is buried in Elias’s shirt, my nostrils drawing in his clean, sharp scent with every inhale.
Maybe they’ll take me to my dorm. Maybe they’ll have the decency to lay me down on my bed so I can curl up and let oblivion take me.
But a door clicks and we walk inside, I realize we’re not in my dorm building—they took me to theirs. We walk up to the third floor and down the hall, and Declan’s smooth voice comes from my right. “Here. Bring her in.”
He flips on a light as the door closes behind us, and I barely open my scratchy eyes to get a look at the living room before Elias carries me into the bedroom.
The large bed is covered in a soft comforter that smells like Declan, and I want to burrow into it, to wrap myself in his scent. In Gray’s scent, and Elias’s too. I want to fall asleep under a pile of blankets infused with the essence of these three men, and I’m not sure I want to ever wake up.
What happens next is fuzzy, almost like a series of snapshots than a continuous chain of events.
Declan pulls out the small first-aid kit that’s provided in all the dorms. Gray disappears for a moment and comes back with a glass of cold water, helping me sit up and insisting I take a drink. They give me two painkillers, and I swallow them gratefully. My head is still throbbing, and the cacophony of aches and pains in my body is only growing louder.
“We’re gonna clean you up a little. We’ll help you change too. Is that okay?” Elias’s concerned face swims in my view, and I nod.
Three sets of hands fall on me, more gentle than I ever expected from any of these men. It’s familiar, in a way. They’ve all touched me at the same time once before, and just like that time, their large, firm hands on my skin ease the panic roiling inside me.
It’s grounding, as if each touch is an anchor binding me to the earth, keeping me from dissolving into mist and floating away.
Gray dabs gently at my skin with a warm, damp washcloth. He winces every time I wince, as if my pain causes him pain, and he examines me as he cleans me up, speaking to the other two men in a low voice.
“I don’t think most of this blood is hers.”
“Yeah,” Declan murmurs, his features twisting into a grimace as his fingertips ghost over my cheek. I can feel that my face is swollen, the area above my cheekbone tender and hot. “He got her good at least once though.”
“Look at her knuckles.” Elias’s palm slips under mine, lifting my hand a little. “They’re all torn up. She must’ve split them open.”
“Any broken bones?” Gray asks, shifting his gaze from my face to Elias’s before looking down at my hand.
“Don’t think so. They’re a little swollen, but nothing’s bent the wrong way or too black and blue.” Elias makes a noise in his throat. “I think most of this blood is Cliff�
�s too.”
“Good.”
There’s something heavy and dark in Gray’s voice, and despite the harshness of his tone, it soothes me.
Good.
They help me out of my jeans before slipping me into an oversized pair of sweatpants and a thick sweater of Declan’s. Music is put on in the background, something I think is meant to calm me and fill the quiet room. I wish it was Declan’s music, and I wonder idly if he ever plays the songs he’s working on for his friends. Does he play them for other girls in stairwells, or was it just me?
I wonder where Cliff ended up after I passed out.
Was he still there when the Sinners found me?
No. He can’t have been.
So where the hell did he go?
My thoughts are disjointed, shifting aimlessly from one thing to the next. Something frantic and wild still crouches in my chest, and I feel like it could burst out of me at any moment.
Maybe the men sense it, because they stick close to me, all three of them gathered on the bed around me, large bodies surrounding mine. They’re talking again, in the same low voices they used earlier, but it’s harder for me to follow the conversation.
The series of events that led up to this moment is catching up to me like a stack of dominoes falling, and my eyelids droop again as exhaustion steals over me. At one point, the mattress shifts a little, and my entire body jerks as panic floods me. I reach out desperately, latching on to Gray’s hand and squeezing hard, even though it sends a jolt of pain shooting up my arm from my bruised knuckles.
“Don’t go!”
My voice is scratchy and raw, and if I were more coherent, I’d probably be embarrassed of the open need that’s clear in my words. But I’m too far past that point to worry about it now. All I know is that I can’t stand the thought of him leaving my side.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
He gently unwinds my fingers from his before lifting my hand a little. I feel lips brush my abused knuckles softly, and the tenderness of the gesture makes fresh tears sting my eyes.
I’m crying, I realize. Soft droplets slide down my cheeks in a steady stream even as my breathing slowly evens out—as if the emotions that have built up inside me over the years, always hidden or pushed aside, are suddenly too much for my body to contain.