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And Missy. Or Melissa. I’ve conceded to the fact that Missy Gaines, my twin, best friend, sister . . . is dead. Missy and Melissa are two different people. Missy would braid my hair while we watched old reruns ofBuffy: The Vampire Slayer. She’d bake Christmas cookies with me every year and she always let me do the decorating.
In a lot of really messed up ways, Missy and I were like each other’s mothers. We took care of each other when one of us was sad. I made her hot soup when she was sick and she made the best flu tea I’ve ever tasted. She’d dry my eyes over whatever stupid boy had broken my heart and I’d stick up for her at school when the girls in our class tried to tease her about the gap she used to have in her two front teeth.
Missy was loving, kind, and caring.
Melissa is vile.
Say it was all for love. Seems like a pretty fucked-up excuse to me, for helping kidnap people. Helping rape them. Sell them into the sex trade.
She drank the poison and that poison wasn’t some illegal absinthe, imported from overseas. It was Marcus Parker. Pure evil Marcus Parker.
The stepfather of the man I’m helplessly in love with.
Sure, he has his faults, but so do I. I can be rash. I can be cruel if I’m angry or hurt. I can even be stupid and walk to the convenience store for slushies when someone tried to kill me the night before.
I know he hid the nature of his long nights in the garage from me. I know he wants to see my mother dead. I know he hates my sister with everything in him.
I also know a man who’s still willing to help me find said sister, even though doing so could literally mean death for him . . . is not a man I want to give up.
My chest constricts at the thought of losing him. Of what will happen when this is over.
Can we survive in the mundane after our relationship was built on destruction? Will he still look at me like he did tonight when I shot a rapist in the dick? Like I was the only other person in the world. Like I was handpicked by God, just for him?
I convince myself it’s water slipping down my cheeks, even as quiet sobs rack through my shoulders. I scrub my skin, even though the blood of that poor woman is long gone, until it’s red and stinging under the hot water.
I move to the other arm with my washcloth, but a big hand stops me, another pulling me back into a solid chest.
Mason’s voice is rough and quiet in my ear.
“Let me,” he murmurs gruffly. I hadn’t even heard him come in.
Disaster looms in the distance, but I push it from my mind, forcing myself to focus on him under the heavy flow of the shower. I lean into him, soaking in his warmth because my mother made it clear tonight. He’s going to show up and when he does, he won’t leave without me.
And then my mother’s going to sell me to Michael, in the most barbaric, public sex trade she can.
Sometimes Mason can be rough, but right now, he’s gentle. Tender. In a lot of ways, it feels like a sin—maybe if those girls had a Mason Carpenter on their side, they would still be alive.
Maybe if I could walk away, he’d be safe.
“You’re so pretty, it hurts to look at you,” he murmurs in my ear while he washes the tiny flakes of blood off my skin.
And then I know it’s not just water on my face.
“You should moonlight as a hairstylist. Or a cheeseburger chef.”
Mason’s cheeseburgers are among some of the best food I’ve ever tasted.
“You’re saying I should work at McDonald’s?”
I shake my head.
“No. This is high quality. At least a Wendy’s.”
That earns me a chuckle.
He takes my empty plate and his, carrying them to the sink. “Well, I’m happy to see you like cheeseburgers better than fish.”
“I hate fish,” I grumble, taking a drink of the sweet red wine he’d poured me before dinner. Well, midnight dinner, I guess.
