by Janie Marie
Lykos took a right instead of a left, the road that would lead them out of Blackwoods.
“This isn’t the way to the gym.” Logan scanned the road, wondering if there was something Lykos saw that he didn’t.
“Nope.” Lykos stuck a cigarette between his lips, mumbling, “I’m taking you to see the bitch.”
Logan had the urge to jump out of the car. “We’re supposed to stay close to Janie today. I’m not even allowed to visit Kylie. And don’t call her that.”
“Dad asked Lorelei to add us. They’re considering letting the girls out to attend school.” Lykos cracked the window, blowing out a stream of smoke. “And Janie knows about this.”
“What?” He pulled his phone out to call his dad, but he saw Janie had texted him.
My Forever: Just go see her as a friend. Gabriel says she’s doing well. But she wants to leave town.
My Forever: And she thinks we’re together.
Logan ran his hand down his face, then replied: Do you really think seeing me will help her?
My Forever: I think she’d like to know you haven’t forgotten her
My Forever: And it would be nice to clear up we’re not together. Not that you’ll get back with her. Just that you didn’t come back to me.
My Forever: Maybe don’t tell her we kissed. She won’t understand.
Logan rubbed his lips, remembering the taste and feel of her. But it was Kylie’s face he suddenly saw in his mind. Fuck.
He slowly typed out a response: I think it’ll be obvious we did.
My Forever: I think once you see her, you’ll forget me.
Never, was his instant reply.
My Forever: I meant the kiss.
My Forever: You think about her a lot. You focus on me because you don’t want to think about her.
That was true, and he smiled, responding, Why do you know me so well?
My Forever: Because you’re forever mine.
Logan closed his eyes. She meant it in the sweetest way possible, that they would always love each other and no one would stop them. He was thankful he’d ended things with Kylie, because it would destroy him internally if he had tried to make things work while being so close to Janie.
The phone vibrated again, but it wasn’t Janie.
Your Death: Stop flirting with my girl
Of course, Ryder was reading everything. Logan responded to him before thinking about what he was texting: Don’t give me a reason to make her mine again.
Your Death: Bitch she’s mine.
Your Death: Go see your blonde and stop thinking about your past with my baby so damn much.
He chuckled, sending him a quick reply: Just making sure you don’t fuck up like I did.
Your Death: I won’t. Now fuck off.
Your Death: Btw, don’t count on Blondie throwing her panties at your face after your dumbass confessed you’re in love with my girl.
Your Death: Moron.
Logan sighed, rubbing his jaw. When word reached them about how bad Kylie had flipped out on the way to the center, Logan had admitted to them he’d blurted out he was in love with Janie. First, Ryder had laughed, then he’d punched him, calling him a dumbass before telling him all his decision-making privileges were revoked. It would almost seem like Ryder cared about Kylie, but everyone knew Ryder was using her to have a reason to hit him without Janie getting too mad.
Lykos chuckled, putting out his cigarette. “Little brother, Father didn’t raise you to be a bitch about girls. I couldn’t care less that the blonde is someone you still get a semi at the thought of, but I agree with the others; she needs to be kept safe.”
Logan pocketed his phone, his leg jumping because he was nervous as hell to see Kylie again. “What if I feel something for her?”
A tauntingly dark laugh erupted out of Lykos’ mouth. “I tell you what, baby brother, I’ll go buy you a lap dance after we finish with this shit.”
“I don’t need a lap dance.” He laughed, but he was panicking because Janie was right; he thought about Kylie a lot. Whenever he caught himself, he deliberately focused on Janie, anything Janie, just to stop himself from letting his thoughts drift to his little hood.
There was no way he was considering trying to rebuild anything between them, but he feared his reaction to her. She could disarm him with a single look. She made him reckless, and right now, he couldn’t afford to do anything stupid. Too many lives were on the line, including hers. Even if she was dark and confused about right and wrong—she wasn’t someone he wanted to see harmed. And he didn’t want to witness her become something truly evil, as the others expected her to.
Dammit, he missed her. He missed protecting her. He missed teaching her how beautiful she was. He missed his lips against hers. Because as amazing as it was to kiss Janie, Kylie’s kiss took him somewhere Janie’s never had.
“I’m betting Kevin makes a play for Lorelei and the daughter,” Lykos said.
Logan needed the distraction. Thinking about kissing Kylie or Janie was a bad idea. “You think?”
Lykos nodded. “Trevor won’t give Janie up—he’s too crazed about her. So everyone has asked, do we keep them split up? Or do we get the girls together—make the pie sweeter?”
Logan glared at him. “Don’t suggest using those poor women as bait. Janie’s bad enough with her little stunts, but she’s trained, and she has a fucking army behind her.”
“So train the others.” Lykos shrugged, a sly smile on his lips.
“Are you kidding?” Logan groaned. “That’s what this is? You want me to convince her we can train her—give Kevin and Trevor a bigger prize? Do you realize you’re putting Janie and Kylie in the same room?”
“Look at it this way, little brother—you might get your cat fight.” Lykos snickered. “Ryder told me about your fantasy.”
“It’s every guy’s fantasy.” Logan laughed into his hand, scanning the parking garage Lykos had taken them to.
“Janie will fuck her up,” Lykos said confidently.
Logan didn’t argue; Janie was a great fighter, able to use anything around her to make up for her lack of strength and size. But Kylie had size, strength, and a lot of hate for Janie. Damn, he didn’t want to see them near each other because they were both holding onto a lot of anger between them. What was Janie thinking?
“We’re switching vehicles to make sure we’re not followed. Black sedan on your side when I park.”
As soon as the car stopped, Logan slipped out and got into the driver’s side.
“I don’t like being chauffeured.” Lykos dropped into the passenger seat.
He grinned, holding out his hand for the key. “I know the way.”
“Don’t get me killed.” Lykos slapped the key in his hand.
“What am I supposed to do, then?” Logan backed out, checking to make sure no one was following.
“Well, the consensus is that if Kylie and Maura return to school, it’ll be irresistible for Kevin and Trevor, and they’ll take the chance to attack. If Kevin gets Kylie or Maura, he knows Lorelei will come to him. But Janie, she’d give him the advantage. He knows Ryder and Luc care only about her, and they’ll do anything to get her back.”
“Even sacrifice Kylie, Maura, and Lorelei,” Logan finished.
“Thinking like a villain.” Lykos nodded approvingly. “And you know who the villain was in the story.”
Logan took a deep breath. “Kylie’s a victim. A monster raised her, and if she is who you all say, then she has a dark soul. But she was still a little girl whose dad abused her.” The thought of what Lorelei had confessed—of Kylie being strapped down with her dad holding her gown over her breasts—made him angry and sad. “I can see why she’d forget. I should’ve been more patient—given shit time to sink in.” His heart ached as they both sat there quiet.
“I doubt letting it sink in would matter—you still needed to break up with her. You were both liars. She didn’t even know reality from her delusions. Plus you’d always think of wha
t she said and did. It would’ve derailed your progress, and you needed therapy. Just like she did.
“She was going to the center, and you were going to live here . . . No girlfriend alive could stand knowing how close you’ve chosen to be with Janie this past month. This way, she had no claim on you. I’m sure she’s been imagining the worst, but it’s better this way. Who knows, she might have tried to escape and come for Janie herself.”
“It’s not like I’m having sex with Janie.” Logan knew Lykos was right. He just felt like shit for how he’d handled things with Kylie.
“No, but you’ve kissed her, you’ve slept in a bed with her while Ryder’s been doing shit, and you’ve been mending your friendship as you learn more about your soul and hers.”
“I get it.” Logan cracked the window to let the cold air cool him. He was in trouble. “I just wish I had treated her better. I was the worst boyfriend. Everything I gave her is tainted, and she doesn’t even know it. Then she’s thinking I hate her guts while I’m shouting I love Janie. I wish Ryder was there to beat the fuck out of me when I do dumb shit. She deserved to know I didn’t see her as the villain.”
“All right, little brother—she’s a victim. Let’s show her how to be a hero, yeah?” Lykos smiled, proud, holding up a video from yesterday of Janie sparring with him. “Maybe instead of a vicious cat fight, they’ll allow us to cover their claws. We’ll let them have a sexy pillow fight.”
Logan remembered how he’d teased Kylie about a catfight. It seemed like such a long time ago. Well, a month in Hell was a long time. “Are you telling me you’re thinking of Janie having a sexy fight?”
“No.” Lykos chuckled, shaking his head as though he’d realized that’s exactly what he was doing. “Asshole.”
He laughed, his panic lessening. “Kylie’s hot. I don’t think I’ll be able to train her. Even if I’m angry about shit with her, she’s still the girl I dated and fucked around with.”
“Pretty sure you had love on your mind, little brother.” Lykos’ dark laughter unnerved him. “Let’s just see what she says. If she leaves town, she’s screwed, and that’ll put everyone in danger. Kevin can’t get his hands on your blonde. She’s the perfect tool to destroy everything we are.”
“He won’t get her,” Logan promised as the memory of Kylie nearly getting taken by Kevin surfaced in his mind. Trevor was as good as dead, but he knew Ryder had already staked his claim on him. Logan had failed twice—he was stepping down from that fight. But if he had the chance to take Kevin on, he was taking it.
“Don’t worry, little brother. We agreed—he’s yours. Avenge your blonde and her family.”
✦✦✦
Kylie’s gaze slid across the library, settling on Maura. Her stepsister was doing the same thing she’d done for the past month: staring out the window, hoping to see Ryder. What a fool.
Sadly, though, she envied Maura’s hope that Ryder would come for her. At least he’d been kind to Maura before abruptly leaving. Sure, he didn’t even say goodbye, but he’d been genuinely nice for once. How many people could say Ryder Godson was nice to them? It was something she’d foolishly craved since first seeing him.
It wasn’t Ryder’s niceness that Kylie envied—it was just that Maura had something to hope for. He’d told Maura she was one of them, while Kylie wasn’t. She was, in Damon’s words, the Dark One. She’d learned that they believed something very horrible had happened in their first world. Her soul was one they had watched destroy, and they hated her. She was their enemy.
So while Maura was an ‘innocent’ holding onto hopes that Ryder would come back for her, Kylie still felt like she was the devil’s daughter. And every day, no matter how much she tried to say she was going to be positive, she thought about Logan. She obsessed over him, wondering what could’ve been and coming up with all sorts of different scenarios.
If she allowed herself to imagine things working out, she saw herself dropkicking him before kissing him until she couldn’t breathe. Then he’d beg her to take him back, and they’d live happily ever after.
Completely impossible, but a girl could dream.
Maybe that was the lesson. Don’t pine after attractive boys. Man-boys. At least until you got to know them. Otherwise you only craved the pretty package, and you never knew if you were getting the genuine deal when they sweet-talked you. Sadly, Logan was proof of that. So was Trevor.
Kylie stopped all her thoughts for a few seconds, wondering if today would be the day her ‘inner-voice’ would return. It had upped and vanished after meeting Gabriel. She didn’t know if that was proof he was a god of some kind, or if she’d imagined the whole thing.
Dr. Godson assured her it was likely she had inner dialogue that conflicted with her conscious thought process. However, he believed it had everything to do with her Dissociative Amnesia. That’s what he called it. Apparently, her mind had protected her by forgetting everything her father had done to her, her mother, and to Maura.
He called her unique because she had kept memories of her abuse toward Maura, but she actively chose not to think about them to where she only saw Maura as the abuser.
Forgetting the horror of her father and what she’d done was only the tip of the iceberg with her. He’d diagnosed her with several things, but the one that always threw her into a fit was that he’d said she had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which was likely why she could push back every bad thing about herself and find others beneath her. Every time she thought of it, she swore she could hear Ryder’s mocking tone in her head as he called her a self-centered bitch.
Dr. Godson promised Ryder wasn’t mocking her. He kindly didn’t add that Ryder and the others were probably not even thinking about her at all, but it was hard to not believe something when Gabriel spoke. She sort of hated him for that. Because as much as she hated being diagnosed with everything he’d put on her chart, which was a lot, she saw truth when he educated her about each disorder. Understanding your disorders was essential to coping and healing, as far as Gabriel was concerned. You couldn’t know yourself if you didn’t even understand what shaped you into the person you really were.
Every time she attended her psychotherapy with Gabriel, she argued that he needed to re-assess her. He always smiled and somehow got her talking about herself, or how she couldn’t believe Maura and Janie were receiving better attention—attention that she deserved. And then she realized she was only proving his assessment of her right; she was a fucked-up mess.
She dropped her eyes down to the table she was sitting at. All the tables had quotes painted on them. Unfortunately, every damn quote had been selected by Janie and painted on by either Logan or Tercero, she learned. “We’re all mad here.” from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was repeatedly written in fancy and bizarre fonts across the tabletop.
Damn them. They were everywhere, and they always had a point. Everyone was fucking crazy, and for them, it was okay.
“Drawing Logan again,” Lorelei commented, pulling Kylie from her thoughts.
She covered the sketch, refusing to look at her stepmother. It was bad enough to have Logan on her mind, but she also couldn’t stop drawing him. As long as her hands were moving, creating, even if it was him, the chaos within her mind settled. The problem was, it came back when she wasn’t sketching him.
Gabriel kept telling her she’d one day realize the pain and disorder she felt afterward was less and less, but she wasn’t feeling that yet.
Lorelei chuckled as she placed the book she’d been reading onto the table. “Let me see.”
“Why?” Kylie pressed her hand down harder, finally turning her head. Lorelei’s wounds had healed, and if she wore a little makeup, it hid the scars on her face—just like they’d always been.
“I never got a good look at him.” Lorelei smiled at her before glancing at Maura. “She misses the other one.”
Kylie rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be mean,” Lorelei whispered.
“It’s just
stupid—Ryder wants nothing to do with her. He’s with Janie.”
“Yes,” Lorelei murmured. “But I’d rather she think of him than Trevor.” Lorelei flinched, like she always did when she said his name. It was hard to feel sorry for her at times, but she did. She really did. There was no way to look at the damage on Lorelei’s body and not accept that her stepmother had paid in the most horrible way for them to have a chance. In Lorelei’s mind, any chance at living was worth her suffering, even if they too suffered. She feared death, feared not having a chance at all.
The End of Gods & Monsters was the book Lorelei had been reading. Kylie eyed the worn paperback. As obsessed as Kylie had become over Logan, Lorelei and Maura had gone just as nuts over the town’s fairy tales. Kylie didn’t know if that made them crazier than her. Well, it was probably her because they were believing in something others did, while she was over here wondering why the voice in her head no longer talked to her.
“They think they’re gods,” Kylie said, still hiding her drawing, hoping Lorelei would get distracted.
A wry smile touched her stepmother’s lips. “Perhaps they are.”
“Ugh.” She chuckled because it would be the ultimate middle finger to her if, one day she realized they were indeed gods, and that Luc was the devil.
“Everything makes sense, if you think about it.” Lorelei slid her fingers over the book cover. It was all black with a half-moon right in the middle. There were various covers on the books, but Lorelei had taken this one because it had handwritten notes from patients in the margins. Patients liked to imagine the Little Moon read them, apparently, and they were sort of wishes or questions they weren’t ready to confide in anyone else.
“I guess this world is filled with its own monsters,” Kylie admitted. “I mean, we all call ourselves monsters, and the people we considered dangerous and horrible are actually the good guys.” Kylie slid down, resting her chin on the table. “Dammit, I’m actually considering we’re in Hell.”
The light laugh from Lorelei made Kylie smile. She enjoyed hearing her laugh; it was rare.