Badlands

by Callie Hart

  “He…he hurt…me,” she sobs.

  “Who? Who hurt you?”

  She just shakes her head, over and over again, refusing to say anything more. She screws her eyes shut tight and that’s when I make a move, prizing her fingers open so I can take the razor from her. As soon as she lets go the fight seems to leave her. She falls sideways into me, burying her head into my chest, and then that doesn’t seem to be enough. She’s climbing into my lap like a petrified little girl and my heart is my throat because I know, I just fucking know some terrible has happened to her and it hurts to even think about it.

  “Shhh. Shhh, it’s okay, kiddo. It’s okay. I got you. Shhh.”

  Lacey sobs; it feels as though she cries forever. She shivers against me, knees drawn up close, arms drawn into her sides as I rock her in my arms. It’s not even an intentional thing. I only realize I’m doing it when my cell slips out of my pocket and lands in the water next to me.

  “Fuck.”

  Lacey stops crying. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, her voice small, scared.

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. C’mon, let’s get out of here.” I lift her in my arms, and she weighs nothing at all. She doesn’t make a sound as I carry her through to the room next door, the room I normally sleep in when I crash here, and I place her down onto the bed. I rush back into the bathroom and turn the taps off, pick up my phone—it’s fucked—and go to fetch some towels to dry Lacey with. When I head back into the bedroom, Lacey’s stripped off all of her clothes and she’s standing in the middle of the room, bearing a striking resemblance to a drowned rat. Her normally curly hair is plastered to her scalp and neck, and her whole body is shaking. She hugs herself, arms wrapped around her body, shoulders up around her ears, and I’m filled with a violent and complete rage.

  Who could hurt her like this?

  Who could damage her enough to make her into this person?

  She’s so small and fragile, like a small bird with broken wings, and I want to find the person who broke those wings and I want to rip his balls off and shove them down his fucking throat.

  “I was wet,” she whispers, tears still streaking down her face.

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” I’m worried about how she’s going to take it, and yet she doesn’t object when I wrap a huge towel around her shoulders and I begin to slowly rub it over her skin. It’s not even a remotely sexual act.c She seems to calm down as the seconds tick by and I carefully and methodically dry her. Once the jobs mostly done, bar a few areas I don’t feel comfortable attending to myself, I get her to wrap the towel around herself, securing it under her arms and then I take another towel and begin to gently dry her hair with it.

  I’m almost surprised when she speaks. “You’re not like him,” she says.

  “Like who?”

  Again, she clamps her mouth shut, eyes growing wide, like she was on the brink of breaking a secret she’s been sworn to protect. I don’t ask her again. She won’t tell me, I know she won’t, and pushing is only likely to make her panic again. Instead, I guide her back to the bed and get her to lie down underneath the sheets. I’m planning on making my way through to the main area of the warehouse, to tidy up some of the carnage she created there, but she reaches out and grabs hold of my hand.

  “Please. Stay.”

  It’s not the best idea to leave the place absolutely trashed, especially since I can’t text Zee and let him know what’s happened now that my cell is fucked, but there’s also no way in hell I can deny this poor girl what she wants, either.

  She’s so broken. So damaged. All I want to do is take her in my arms and protect her from the world that has so cruelly fucked her over. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never wanted to protect something so desperately that it’s made my body hum with frustrated energy. Frustrated, because it’s already too late. The hurt has already taken place. The damage has been done, and there’s nothing I can do or say that can take it back. I kick off my shoes and my wet clothes.

  “I’ll be back in a second,” I tell her. And for the second time today, I find myself wearing another man’s clothes. Zeth’s this time. I grab a pair of his sweats and a muscle tee from his closest, allowing myself a mildly entertained smirk when I catch sight of the black duffel bag on the floor in the corner of his walk in, and then I head back to Lacey. She’s bundled up in the bed, hands fisting the sheets, eyes wide and scared, as though she was expecting someone else to walk through the door instead of me. When she sees that it is me, relief visibly washes over her and her hands let go of the sheets. I climb into the bed beside her, and she shifts over to me without hesitation, neatly folding herself under my arm, pressing up against my body, the same way Sara did last night. This is different, though. So, so different. I wrap my arms around Lacey, holding her to me, wanting her to feel safe. Wanting her to know that no matter what’s happened to her before, she’s okay now and that I’m not going to let anything happen to her now. Never, ever again.

  She breathes heavily for a while, and then she says something that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “You can…you can fuck me. If you want to. If…if you’re gentle.”

  I reel away from her, propping myself up on one elbow so I can look at her. She won’t meet my eye, though. She ducks her head, chin practically pressed against her chest, damp hair falling across her face. I sweep it back, tucking it behind her ear. “No, Lacey. No. I don’t want that.” I get the feeling that this is a part of her history—trying to handle men with her body. Rewarding them, or appeasing them. Either way, it’s fucked up and I almost feel sick thinking about it. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “Not with me. And definitely not with Zeth.” God, it would be awful if she tried. Lacey shakes her head once, a tiny movement.

  “No, definitely not with him,” she whispers. “Are you…are you not going to get mad if we don’t?”

  I’m struck with the desperate need to hit something. What kind of men has this poor girl had in her life up until now? It doesn’t even bear thinking about. I don’t want to think about it, can’t, because if I do I’m going to finish the job she started and there won’t be a stick of furniture in the warehouse left in tact. “I’m not going to be mad, Lacey. Fuck. It’s never going to be like that with us. I’m going to take care of you, okay? I promise you, I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. And neither will Zeth.”

  “You think he’ll let me stay here? With you guys?”

  I lay back down, pulling her to me again. She shakes in my arms, and for the first time in my life I know what it’s like to care about something more than myself. God knows how it happened. Lacey isn’t my sister, isn’t my responsibility, and yet there’s something about her. I murmur into her hair, holding onto her tight. “He’ll let you stay, Lace. Of course he will. You just say the word and we’ll burn the fucking world to the ground for you, sweet girl. You can count on it.”

  She falls asleep eventually, and I lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking. Hoping to god Zee doesn’t flip his shit when he comes home to find his place destroyed and me in bed with his goddamn sister. Weirdly, though, as I fall asleep myself, I’m mostly thinking about Al and one of the last things he said to me before we parted ways. ‘I know. But that’s all the more reason for me to stop for the good ones, right?’

  The good ones. They do exist, it would seem. As sleep takes hold of me, dragging me down into the murky depths of unconsciousness, I wonder how I would go about becoming one of those people.

  If it would even be possible at all.

  CALLIE’S NEWSLETTER LOTTERY

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Callie Hart is the international bestselling author of the Blood & Roses Series. Badlands, a Christmas short story, combines characters from both the Blood & Roses series and the Dead Man’s Ink series.

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