“You think you know me, but you don’t. The girl who’s been sleeping in your house, painting kisses on your lips and fucking you until you were professing your pathetic love stories to me has been an act. She was created by the real me, and the real love of my life.”
My lungs constricted as her next words fell upon me like an axe to my neck. “Shawn Mackenzie is everything I’ve ever wanted and all the things you could never be. He’s the kind of monster that answers all of my darkest desires.” Her gaze hooded as she thought of him and my throat filled with bile at the lustful look in her eyes. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t fucking true.
“Don’t get me wrong, he plays rough.” She ran her fingers over her throat where he’d left bruises on her before she’d come home. “But we had to make it believable, right? I wanted to show up in this town as the little broken girl you’d all imagined me to be for the last ten years. But I knew just falling into your beds wouldn’t be enough to destroy you. So I played the game, seduced each of you in turn. A lifetime of friendships sure are easy to shatter,” she said in an arctic tone that made my gut churn. “I was kinda surprised when I found out Maverick had turned on all of you, but it made it all the more fun to be honest. You became my weapon, Rick. You tortured Fox for me without me having to do a single thing - apart from take yours and JJ’s cocks like a good girl and let you think you owned me.” She smirked and I felt Fox shaking with rage beside me, but Maverick was unnaturally still. “Johnny James, you were the easiest. I thought you’d be the best place to start as fucking comes so naturally to you these days, but I was surprised to find out you’re just the same pathetic, lovesick boy you were for me when we were kids.”
The sting of her words burrowed deep as she shook her head at me like I was the biggest fool she’d ever played and that was exactly how I felt. “I thought you’d tell Fox though, I really thought it’d fall apart so much faster than it did, but it worked out even better when you didn’t. Because you showed your true colours. Choosing one pussy over your boys? Tut, tut.” She licked her lips like she was relishing each word that fell from her mouth. “And Fox, honey, you really need to get laid more often. Ten years pining over one girl? That’s kinda pathetic, don’t you think? I was never yours even back then, so thinking I was yours now was really fucking dumb. But it definitely made it all the more satisfying when you caught me and your best friend together. Do you know how many times I fucked him in your house hoping you’d come home? Nearly every morning when you went for a run, JJ was buried inside me, panting my name and fucking the girl you love. Brutal.” She looked straight into the camera, her gaze clear and it cut my chest to ribbons. I couldn’t even turn my head to check how Fox had taken that, too stunned, too fucking horrified to do anything but just watch.
“Then there was Chase. He was the one who made it more of a challenge. You really should have listened to his warnings, guys. He saw your ruin coming from a mile off. Shawn went a bit off-plan when he brought The Dollhouse down and kidnapped him, but that’s what he’s like. Wild,” she said the word slow and seductively like she loved that about him. Like Shawn really was the man who owned her, who she desired with all her being. But my ears were ringing too loud and a part of me still wanted to refuse every word that fell from her lips.
The problem was, every time objections rose in me, I looked into her eyes and saw the stark truth in them. I couldn’t see even a hint of a lie and that was the most terrifying thing of all.
“Chase got what was coming to him seeing as he almost fucked up my whole plan when he abandoned me on that ferry. You really should have left me to rot in jail, Rick.” She gave the camera a mock pitying look. “But instead you took me home to fuck me like a queen and, baby, I may be in love with another man, but I have to admit I enjoyed that part a little too much. You and JJ really know how to fuck a girl right. But sadly that’s where the fantasy ends. Because who could ever want more of either of you when you’re so messed up inside?” Her lip curled back in disgust and every insecurity I’d ever had peeled open like ripe fruit. “Do you know what I enjoyed even more than all the fucking and all the fighting over me like starved animals while I ripped your little family apart though?” She leaned in closer to the camera as dread seeped through my being and turned my entire body cold. “Seeing how broken you all are, hearing every detail of your sad little tales over all the years we’ve been apart. I wished suffering on you a long, long time ago and to know you’ve all been here in hell this whole time is the sweetest gift you could ever give me in payment. Shawn may have fucked up Chase on the outside, but I fucked you all up on the inside. I was the demon sleeping in your beds, making you love a girl who died ten years ago. Karma’s a kick in the balls, isn’t she? And vengeance tastes so goddamn sweet.” She smiled, shaking her head at us all, making me feel so fucking small I wanted to disappear completely. “Excuse the Bond villain rant, I guess Shawn’s rubbed off on me and ten years is one helluva long time to have been planning your destruction. I think I’m owed a moment to bask in the sun.” She sighed contentedly as lightning flashed in the sky behind her. “Anyways, keep the mutt as a reminder of me, won’t you? I’m going home to my man now. Where I belong.” She wiggled her fingers at the camera in a goodbye then turned her hand and flipped us her middle one before cutting off the video.
Silence fell like death descending on the entire world and my arm lowered to my side with the phone gripped painfully in my hand.
The three of us stared out at the churning sea as the storm blew in and picked up vigour, the sky darkening to deepest, gravestone grey.
“She’s lying,” Fox rasped, breaking the silence at last, but there was no real conviction in those words. We’d all heard what she’d said, all seen the way her face had twisted with vengeance, how her eyes had flashed with victory. This was all a sick revenge plot, and we were the stupid fucking idiots who’d fallen for it.
Maverick suddenly fell to his knees and started punching the jetty boards, over and over and over until his knuckles were turning bloody. I fell on him, unable to just stand there and watch him fall apart as I wrestled him back against my chest and he snarled furiously through his teeth. I could feel his pain as keenly as my own, splitting apart some vital piece of my body as I tried to reason with everything I’d just heard and find a way to refuse it. But I couldn’t see any reason for her to lie. And there was too much truth to her words that made it all too fucking real.
My gut yanked as I remembered she’d been trying to get our keys. I’d seen it for myself. I’d even given her back the ones I’d found in her trailer, trusting her not to open that crypt.
Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Give me your phone,” Fox demanded suddenly, falling down beside us and patting my pockets as he tried to find it. I pulled it out, shoving it into his palm as Maverick elbowed me away and buried his face in his bloody hands.
“Luther,” Fox barked as he made a call. “You need to intercept Rogue, she’s on her way to the Rosewood Manor alone – it doesn’t fucking matter why, just stop her!” he boomed then hung up and looked to me with his hands shaking and his eyes wild.
“Tell me she didn’t mean it.” He grabbed my shirt in his fist, yanking me closer as I started to slip into a dark abyss of chaos and agony inside me. “Tell me this is all some fucking joke, some other way to torture me that you two are in on, anything but this being true.”
I opened and closed my mouth, my throat burning and my heart so broken that I knew it would never recover from this.
“I can’t,” I choked out and hurt washed through Fox’s expression as he hunted my eyes for a lie, but he didn’t find any there.
He turned his head to the sky and roared his fury as the clouds split apart and rain started crashing down on us, the cold trickling over my body and encasing me whole. Mutt howled to the sky with him, a mournful noise leaving his throat like he understood that he’d been left behind too.
This isn’t happening.
This isn’t the end of our
story.
But I knew in my soul that it was.
Rogue had played me like a fool, taken her revenge out on all of us like a wolf toying with lambs. Now she’d ripped us to pieces, leaving us bloody in her wake. And all I could think about was that I should have known. Because Rogue Easton could never really love the boys who’d destroyed her. We’d broken her and should never have expected forgiveness for that. And now we were finally paying the price of that betrayal and it was the worst kind of torture I’d ever known.
I dumped the boat by the Harlequin House dock and jumped out onto the jetty just as the storm made it to me and the rain broke free of the clouds.
There was an ache in my chest which kept growing, sharpening, trying to force me to turn from this path and make another choice. Any other choice. But that was the problem. There wasn't one. Not one that could save them from themselves or the curse of wanting me. This was the only solution that would work, and I was fixed on this decision.
The kiss of the cold raindrops against my skin helped sharpen my focus as I forced that knot of tension deep down into my gut and locked it away with every other bad thought and feeling contained within my aching soul.
This wasn't about me. Never had been. Never should have been.
I strode up to the house as lightning broke across the sky overhead, letting myself in through the back door and glancing around at the dark building in relief as I realised Luther had clearly left.
I lingered for a moment in the kitchen, breathing in the memories of the time I'd spent here with the Harlequin boys and wondering if I'd ever had a chance to do this differently. But as I glanced up at the mirror in the hall, taking in my bruised lips and the emptiness in my eyes, I knew I couldn't have. Shawn had been right about me in that regard. I was just a broken toy, fighting against my place in this world when everyone around me could see where I was destined to end up. So this was just me accepting that fate.
I stepped into the kitchen and pulled open one of the cupboards, pushing aside boxes of cereal before claiming the gun which was stashed there and jamming it into the back of my shorts. Then I turned away from the house full of memories, heading into the garage and snatching the keys for my Jeep from the hook before hurrying down the stairs.
The roof was down but I didn't care about that. I wanted to feel the rain on my flesh. I wanted to feel something other than the burn inside me which was fighting against all of my attempts to contain it.
I started up the engine and drove out of the garage without looking back.
The Harlequins guarding the gates stepped forward as if they had some idea to block my escape, so I just flattened my foot to the gas and smashed straight into the metal gates. The impact sent a spike of shock through my limbs but then I bounced over the fallen ironwork and tore away into the night with the yells of the Harlequins chasing me away.
I chose the most direct route across town while the rain picked up its intensity, pounding down on me and plastering my hair to my shoulders and my clothes to my flesh.
I focused on the feeling of it. Drowning all else out with the cold, wet sensation as I sped through the streets I'd once loved so dearly and headed for my end.
The blast of a horn forced me out of my endless turmoil and I glanced up to look in my mirror as a blue truck accelerated closer behind me, flashing their lights and blaring their horn in a clear demand for me to pull over.
My heart pounded as I just drove faster, ignoring the truck as its engine roared over the sound of the rain and I kept my gaze focused on my destination.
"Rogue!" Luther's voice bellowed over the snarl of the engines and crash of the rain and I glanced in my mirror again, seeing him behind the wheel, his features set into a determined snarl. "Pull the fucking car over before I have to make you!"
I didn't respond. There were no words that I could offer him anyway and my mind was made up, my destination drawing closer. I could end this. I had to end this.
I accelerated harder, taking the next bend so fast that my back wheels slid out on the wet tarmac. I righted the wheel with my heart in my throat as the blare of Luther's horn rang out over and over again.
But I was so close now. I couldn't stop. I just had to get there and the agony of this decision would be lifted from my shoulders. It would be too late to go back on it and I'd finally be able to do something good in my miserable life.
Luther yelled at me again but I only upped my speed, racing between the trees as I shot down the road. But as I took the next bend, Luther pulled out to overtake me, his truck's engine far more powerful than my own and for a brief moment, I looked at him as we drove neck and neck and the rain washed down on me.
The flare of headlights drew my attention to the road again as the blast of a horn alerted me to the truck coming the other way.
I screamed in alarm, jerking the wheel as Luther was forced towards me to avoid the collision. But my wheels had no traction on the saturated road and as Luther's truck clipped my back end, the world lurched out of my control.
The Jeep hit the verge and my stomach leapt up into my throat as the wheels lifted clean off the road. My knuckles turned white where I gripped the steering wheel and my foot slammed down on the brake despite some part of me knowing that it was already too late for that.
The world spun, the screech of brakes and crunch of glass and metal all I knew as the car flipped and I was tossed into the trees within it, fear capturing my heart in a vice and squeezing tightly. The airbags exploded in my face and I was pinned back against my chair for several long seconds before they deflated again and I found myself hanging upside down by my seatbelt.
I coughed out a curse as I unclipped myself and fell out of my seat, throwing my door open as I clambered out of the wreck and pushed myself upright, my body surprisingly intact after surviving that shit.
The blast of the truck's horn racing by sounded as the asshole kept on going down the road, leaving us here to rot and I silently wished a bloody death on him some time in the near future.
My head rang as I looked around for Luther's truck and I swallowed a lump in my throat as I spotted it wrapped around a tree a little way from me.
I stumbled over to it, drawing my gun hesitantly as fear crept along my spine and I found him slumped against the steering wheel with a trail of blood trickling down from his temple.
I leaned in close, pressing two fingers to his neck and sagging in relief as I located a pulse which was closely followed by a groan of pain escaping his lips.
His cell phone was clamped in a holder on the dash and I reached past him to grab it, holding it in front of his face and managing to unlock it with the face recognition. I quickly sent a message to his men, dropping a map pin where we were and telling them where to come help him before forwarding a photo of the wreck so they knew to hurry the fuck up.
But as I moved to drop the phone back into his lap, Luther stirred and caught my wrist, making me gasp as I tried to lurch back.
"Don't do this to them," Luther muttered. "Whatever the hell you think you're doing. Just don't."
I looked into his eyes, seeing all the pain of his past there and knowing that he feared me gifting it to his boys too. But he didn't understand. My leaving wasn't what was going to break them. It was me staying that would do that.
"I'm trying to save them," I breathed, but I was pretty sure he didn't even hear me as his eyes rolled back and his grip fell slack again.
I double checked his pulse to make sure he'd only passed out then turned and took off through the trees.
I scrambled back up to the road as the rain crashed over me and thunder broke across the heavens.
As soon as my feet hit the tarmac, I took off running, my destination so close now. The end of this almost on me.
But as I ran towards the looming gates, Luther's voice boomed out behind me, followed by a gunshot which carved a chunk out of the road a few feet to my left.
"Stop!" he bellowed and I skidded to a halt, turning to look b
ack at him through the sheeting rain as he stood there in the road, one hand gripping his side while the other held the gun primed at me. "That's an order from your fucking boss."
I arched an eyebrow at his words, the Harlequin tattoo on the back of my thigh seeming to tighten like a leash around my soul. But I wasn't his puppet, and he wasn't going to be pulling my strings. I whipped my own gun from the back of my shorts and levelled it at him in return.
"You were right about me," I called to him over the storm. "You were right to get rid of me back then. I'm a curse just like you said. But now I'm going to fix it."
"I can't let you do that, wildcat," Luther warned, stumbling to one knee as I gripped the gun tighter.
"Don't make me pull the trigger," I said fiercely, my posture tightening. "Just let me go."
The gates behind me rattled open and though I didn't turn my head, I knew exactly who was closing in on me from behind. I could feel his presence like a cloak of darkness dropping over my shoulders.
"Well what do we have here?" Shawn called, his voice laced with excitement as he took in the scene and my fingers trembled slightly around the gun.
Luther's aim shifted to him and fear twisted through me as his upper lip peeled back in a warning.
"Back the fuck off, Shawn, or I'll be putting a bullet between your eyes," Luther warned.
"Well you’re the ones who have shown up at my door in the middle of the night, waking the children and causing a ruckus. So I think I'm well within my rights to know what you're doing here, don't you, sugarpie?" His fingers brushed down my spine as he closed right in on me and a shiver of fear darted through me.
This was insane. I knew it. But I'd made my choice and I was going to stick to it.
"I'm home," I said roughly, forcing my tongue to bend around the words that were just for him. "Just like you wanted. So that you'll stop hurting everyone around me."
"Step away from her," Luther snarled, his arm shaking as he tried to hold his gun steady against the pain of his injuries.
Carnival Hill (The Harlequin Crew Book 3) Page 50