“You’re owed a notch,” he says, finishing the last of his coffee. “Are you packed?”
“I didn’t have a bag, so I put the things I want to take on my bed.”
He nods and calls a girl over, tells her to pack my things into his bag. It’s quiet while I force the rest of my breakfast down.
“A word of advice,” says Gregory, and I am forced to look up at him. All I can think of is how he looked at me last night. How he touched me. How he watched us. Watched me come. “Don’t taunt my mother. She has nothing better to do than hate you.”
“Am I just expected to sit here and be humiliated? Morning and night?”
“You are the Willow Girl,” he says.
“I don’t care what you do to me. What she does to me. I can’t—I won’t—just take it. I’m not that kind of Willow Girl.”
“You’re all that kind of Willow Girl by the end,” he says.
I touch the bone ring on my finger and will myself to be strong. To have just a little bit of my Aunt Helena’s strength.
But they are wearing me down. Slowly and surely, whittling me down to bare bone. I wonder if they’ll make a notch out of me.
A prize.
“Finished?” Sebastian asks.
I guess I’m staring at Gregory, processing his words. Remember Sebastian’s: “Be careful with my brother, Helena. He’s not what you think. In fact, he’s just as wicked as the rest of us.”
A chill makes me shudder.
I set my fork and knife at a diagonal across my plate and turn to Sebastian. He’s watching me with his slate eyes, and I swear he knows every thought in my mind. Knows my every weakness.
“Yes.”
He rises and pulls my chair out. I’m surprised by the politeness.
“We’ll leave in fifteen minutes,” he says and disappears into the house.
I reach under the table to pick up my abandoned sandals from last night and dart to the pool in the rain to scoop up my clothes before heading back into the house, drenched. But before I get past him, Gregory grabs my wrist and stops me. He looks up at me from his seat, lets his gaze run over me before looking me in the eye.
“I mean it. Be careful with my mother.”
I swallow. “I’m not scared of her.”
I try to pull free, but he rises to his feet, keeping me close, bruising my wrist. We’re so close, I have to crane my neck to look up at him.
“What about me? Are you scared of me?”
I guess I’m not expecting that, and I guess I’ve given him the reaction he wants. That deer in the headlights look.
He gives me a grin, then releases me and goes inside. When I’m alone, I sink down into the closest chair because my knees give out.
Did I think for a second last night that Gregory would come to my rescue? I did. I did for a split second. But I have to remember that no one’s coming to my rescue.
No one but me.
Chapter Fourteen
Sebastian
I don’t mind the rain. I like it. It’s a nice change of pace.
The drive to Verona takes twenty minutes longer than the hour and fifteen minutes it should because idiots don’t know how to drive in rain, but our hotel is dry and our suite has a great view of the city.
I’m unpacking some things from our overnight case when Helena comes out of the bathroom drying her face. She looks around, and I wonder if she notices the lack of telephones. I made sure they were removed before we got here.
She’s been quieter than usual this morning. I expect it’s because of last night, and I guess that was my point. Bring her down a notch.
She sits down on the edge of the bed like she’s exhausted. “What are we doing here?”
“I have a meeting this afternoon, and I thought you might like to get off the island at least for a night.”
She looks around, scoots back a little on the bed. She’s taken off her sweater. When she reaches to brush the hair out of her eyes, I notice the bruises forming on her wrist. She follows my gaze. She must have noticed them herself because she closes her hand over them and rubs.
“Can’t tell who leaves the marks anymore, can you?”
I can see she’s on edge.
“I can’t,” she continues. “You. Your brother. Your stepmother. All I know is it’s like playing a game. I’m the punching bag, and you all just keep taking turns, one after the other after the other, just beating on me while you have a grand old time.”
I take her arm to look at her wrist. “Gregory?”
She doesn’t respond, but I know.
“When did he touch you?”
“You mean after you allowed him to last night? After you offered me to him last night? After you let him watch?”
I look at her, and I know I have to keep myself reined in. I see it all over her face. She’s barely holding it together.
“When, Helena?”
“This morning. After you left.”
“Did you provoke him?”
“Provoke him?” She pulls her arm back. “I didn’t. But even if I did, in your family, if a girl provokes one of you, she earns the bruises? They’re her fault?”
“What happened?”
“So, let me be sure I understand,” she continues. “By your logic, if a girl is walking on a street at night, is it her fault if she’s attacked? Or do these rules only apply to the unlucky Willow Girls?”
I draw in a long, slow breath and count to ten. “He has no right to touch you.”
“Of course, he does. You let him, remember? You invited him to touch me.”
“Last night was different.”
“Because you were putting me in my place. Not him. Is that it with you? Only you can punish me? Hurt me?”
“Be careful.”
“You like hurting me. You said so.”
She looks down, begins to pick at a cuticle. I see her forehead crease, and it takes her a minute to smooth it out again.
“I know you’re not my friend. I know you’re not my ally, even if you say you are, but even when you hurt me, I know you’re not really going to hurt me.” She gets up, puts her hand to her forehead, and crosses the room. “God, that’s dumb.” She turns to me, and the delicate skin around her eyes is red. “I guess I’m not as much a challenge as you thought, huh?” Her voice breaks, and she wipes tears from her eyes.
I go to her, take her wrists, pull her hands from her face. “Helena—”
She slaps my arms away, steps back. Her eyes are fierce through the tears. “Don’t you mean Willow Girl?”
I take hold of her arms, back her against the wall. She doesn’t fight me.
“I think the hardest part is that I don’t understand why some stupid part of me keeps thinking or hoping you’ll save me even when I know you won’t,” she says.
She’s coming apart, and all I can do is watch her. Stand there, mute, watching her. Because what can I tell her?
“You like this, right? When I cry?” she continues.
“Not like this.” I touch her face, take it into my hands. I feel like I’m always wiping tears from her eyes. I lean in and kiss her, holding her, just kissing her, trying to pull her to me.
She makes a sound, tries to push away, but I kiss her harder.
“Stop,” she says when I draw back, when I undo the top buttons of her dress, and pull it over her head. “Stop.” She pushes me away.
“Shh, let me take care of you, Helena.”
She shakes her head, but it’s a weak effort. When I reach behind her to unhook her bra, her fight is halfhearted.
“It’s like you said,” she says when I pull the straps off her arms and stand back to look at her. “My body wants it. You were right. You keep winning. You keep collecting the notches.”
“No notches.” I take her face in my hands again, tilt it up, and make her look at me. “Not tonight. Not here, okay?”
I kiss her again, then lift her in my arms, lay her on the bed, and drag her panties from her before stripping off
my own clothes. Keeping most of my weight on my forearms, I slide into her, watching her feel me, so close to her that it’s not possible to get closer.
She opens her mouth a little wider, and her breath hitches as I stretch her.
“Fuck, Helena. You feel so good. So fucking good.”
I’ve only fucked her up until now, but this, being inside her now, warm and tight and safe, it’s different. It’s slow and deep and as close to making love as I have ever or will ever get.
I’ve never made love before. I’ve never wanted to. I’ve never wanted to be that close to anyone. But right now, with her like this, vulnerable and breaking a little, fracturing before my eyes, I want to make love to her.
“Sebastian—”
“Shh. Just you and me. Here. Now. No Willow daughter. No Scafoni son. Just you and me.”
She stares up at me. I kiss her mouth again. She’s so soft and so sweet when she’s not fighting me. I know she wants this too. I know she wants it like this, who we are erased. The past absent. Just us.
I kiss her cheek, her jaw, her throat, that delicate hollow between her collarbones. Her hands are on me, on my shoulders, then in my hair. Her legs wrap around my hips when I bring my face to hers, watching her as I fuck her deep and slow. She’s wet and tight and fuck, I love being inside her.
Taking one of her legs, I open it wide, bending it at the knee so I can see her, see her taking me, and go deeper still because I can’t get deep enough with her. I can’t get close enough.
“I’m going to come,” she whispers against my mouth, closing her eyes.
“Look at me. I want to see you. I want to see you come like this.”
She opens her eyes. Her hands are on either side of my face, and I’m fucking her deep, each thrust closer to her center, each thrust cleaving us together, and she doesn’t come like she does when I fuck her hard. This is different, a gradual building of tension, a wave, not a tsunami. I watch her, watch how soft her eyes go, her face, watch her as I feel her squeezing around me. Hear the sigh of her breath. It takes all I have not to come too, not to empty inside her.
Lifting her, I shift our position so I’m sitting against the headboard and she’s straddling my lap. Our eyes lock. I grip her hair, pull her to me, kiss her before shifting on hand to her hip, moving her over me.
She claws my shoulders, and I watch her when I kiss her. I need her like this right now. I need all of her. My cock in her pussy, my tongue in her mouth, my hands on her, holding her tight to me.
Fuck.
I tighten my grip on her hair and drive deeper into her.
I’m rough with her, and when I tug her head back, she cries out, coming again, coming harder than before, milking my dick as I keep her speared, feel her throb, her cunt pulsating around my cock, her breath warm in my mouth.
I watch her as I empty inside her. As I hold her close and just watch her because I can’t stop fucking wanting her.
Rain comes down in sheets outside. Spent, I cradle Helena in the crook of my arm. We’re quiet for a long time as she rests against me. I like it, I like her like this. Like us like this.
“I know why you sleep in my room. Why you shower there. I know it’s that you’re safest from the others there. I know it’s not me.”
She shifts a little to look up at me.
“But you know what you do at night?” I ask.
I look down at her. I don’t know why I’m telling her, but looking at her like this, seeing what I see in her eyes, I have to. I have no choice.
“You curl into me,” I continue. “Always. It’s not that you hold on to me. You don’t. You curl up into my chest, but you don’t quiet until I put my arms around you and cocoon you.”
She smiles, looks away for an instant then turns back to me. “Do you know how creepy that sounds? That you watch me sleep?”
I look at her midnight eyes. “You have the prettiest, saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
At that, she pulls away, but I don’t let her go. I hold tighter, and she buries her face in my shoulder.
“You shouldn’t talk to me like this,” she says.
“Why not?”
She turns her head to meet my eyes. “Because I…” She stops, blinks, scrunches up her forehead, then seems to change her mind. She scoots off my lap and draws the covers up to her chest.
“Because no matter what, Sebastian, you are a Scafoni and I am a Willow. We aren’t friends. We’re enemies. You will destroy me inch by inch, and it’s easier…I have a chance…if I hate you. And this, what just happened, you touching me like that, talking to me like that, like I’m not just the Willow Girl…”
Her lip trembles, and tears fall from her face and one lands on my forearm. I almost look away from her to watch that drop slide over my skin. Almost.
“Like you care,” she says.
It’s quiet again, but something is building inside her. I see it. Feel it.
She shakes her head, slips off the bed and I let her go. She takes the blanket with her, holds it against her chest, hiding herself from me.
“It can’t ever happen again, Sebastian, because I can’t care about you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Helena
After swearing our conversation wasn’t over, Sebastian left for his meeting.
I’m sitting in the hotel room watching the sun curl around an angry cloud, promising more rain to come.
He’ll be gone for several hours. I’m surprised he left me unsupervised. Even allowed me to go anywhere I like—as long as it’s inside the hotel. Eat something, buy something from the boutique, and just charge it to the room.
Christ, I feel like a child. I don’t even have a dollar to buy myself a cup of coffee.
I look around the large living room and realize there isn’t a telephone in here, not even on the desk. I get up and search the bedroom. There are phone jacks, but no phone. I snort, remembering how on our way up here, we’d passed a housekeeper’s cart. I’d noticed the two telephones with their cords wrapped around them on top of a stack of towels. I’d thought it was strange, but it hadn’t really registered then that he probably had the hotel remove the phones before we arrived.
I shake my head. All that sweet talk. All that lovemaking. More Scafoni bullshit. But he made a mistake, leaving me here.
He unpacked the overnight bag before he left. I go to the closet and open the door. Like the obsessive neat freak he is, I see he’s hung up our things. A suit for him, a pair of jeans, a dress for me. Our shoes are neatly lined up on the floor, mine next to his like we’re just a normal couple. Like we’re here on some lovers’ getaway.
Is that what he thinks this is? Is he pretending that’s what we are?
I reach into the pockets of his suit jacket as well as the dress slacks but come up empty. His jeans, though, turn up a wad of bills. Not a huge amount, about €90. Not enough to do anything significant, but something.
It’s not like him to stuff bills into his pocket. Maybe he did it when we stopped for gas and he bought himself a cup of coffee and me a bottle of water. I take the money, put on the raincoat Sebastian had the presence of mind to bring for me because I hadn’t packed one, and head downstairs.
In the lobby, I see a telephone. I start for it but then stop, remembering it’s the middle of the night at home. I can’t call yet, but I will. I have no idea what I’ll say, but I will call.
I bypass the restaurant and the gift shop and step outside, hesitating on the stairs of the beautiful hotel, knowing I’m breaking his rule.
What am I even doing? Running away?
I shake my head and turn back, even take a step back inside the hotel entrance, but I can’t. I can’t just give in. Give up.
And so, without thinking about where I’m going or what I’m doing, if I’m coming back before he gets back or if I’m disappearing, I walk out of the hotel and into the beautiful city not seeing a thing, too deep in thought.
One thing I can’t stop thinking about is how I know tha
t no matter what happens to me, my sisters will continue this tradition when it comes their turn. They will dress their daughters, my nieces, in those rotting, yellowing sheaths and put them on those horrible blocks to be looked over, judged, touched by the next Scafoni bastard. Put there for him to take his pick. Like we’re not human. Like we’re animals.
I guess we are to them.
My thoughts jump back to what just happened between us. To him talking to me like he did, holding me like he did. Making love to me. It’s the only time I’ve been made love to.
The first time I had sex, the only time before Sebastian, the boy and I were both sixteen. Kids. Neither of us knew what we were doing, and the only reason I did it at all was because I needed him to rip through that thin sliver of flesh that marked me a virgin.
It didn’t feel good. In fact, I remember it hurt, but I gritted my teeth and tried to block out his wet, panting breath at my ear. He’d used a condom, and he’d come quickly with a little grunt. I remember I wanted him off me as soon as it was over.
It’s very different with Sebastian. I want sex with Sebastian. And it’s not just my body betraying me. It’s me wanting to be close to him.
And this is what scares me the most.
I give a violent shake of my head. It’s so out of place that the people passing me stop and stare. I only half meet their eyes but hug the coat to myself and walk on.
I can’t think about that. I can’t think about him making love to me. Touching me gently or roughly. I can’t think about what he said, that he watches me sleep. that I curl into him, that he cocoons me. Shelters me. I know that already, and I can’t go there.
But then again, maybe it’s my dependence on him that makes this so strange. That confuses my feelings so completely.
I think about my Aunt Libby and wonder, for the first time, if she wasn’t heartbroken when she came home. If she didn’t kill herself because of missing her Scafoni master. Because maybe this is what they do. Maybe we become so helplessly dependent on them that we think we love them.
I wander around for a while, not sure where I’m going, and only notice I’m out of the center when I realize the streets aren’t as busy here and the shops are local shops, markets and a dentist, a beauty salon. A run-down antique shop stuffed so full that the faces of the dolls smashed against the window watch me creepily as I walk by.
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