Page 62 of His to Keep
“You don’t get to treat me this way. Are you so disgusted by me that you can’t be anywhere near me? After everything? I should be mad atyou.You had sex with Orla, and then me, and you tried to with Maisie.”
“You fucked my father.” Lifting my hand, I slap his face, anger like I’ve never felt raging through me. He turns back to me, wrath and hurt twisted into his own fury. “Get. Out.”
“Fuck you!” I yell, not caring who hears or comes. “I can’t believe you. Did you pretend all this time, so I’d feel sorry for you? So that I’d drop my guard enough for you to get what you want?”
“Sure, I did.”
“You took advantage of me.”
His fists clench. “If it’s what you want to hear.”
“Whoareyou? To think I was falling in love withyou.”
“Love?” he splutters in shock, and humiliation stings my face by the callousness. “Fuck’s sake, Ava. I knew your head was living in a fantasy, but I didn’t realize how much. This isn’t a fairy tale. Did you think I’d be your knight in shining armor come to save you from him?”
“Never. Because you’re acoward,and I’ve always known it.You say you know life isn’t meant to be this way, and yet you live and breathe it. You partake in it, and I’m beginning to think that’s worse. Be disgusted with me. Think what you want to think. But at least I know I had no choice. You, on the other hand, do. But that’s on me. That I thought you’d be man enough to choose me.”
Maisie was right—he did use me. He played with me like a toy and spat me back out now that I’m damaged. Now that his father has completed the ceremony. How stupid I’ve been.
Turning away from him, I walk away, leaving behind the man who told me that he’d hurt me. And he has. And the world gets a bit darker around me.
* * *
Returning to the room,I find Maisie passed out on the bed with tear stains down her cheeks. The letter she received is scrunched in her fist, and while the content is different, the message reads the same as mine. Father Aaron did get to our families to get us. Her dad and my gran, which means no one is looking for us. We’re nothing but speckles of dust on the back of a forgotten shelf.
Crawling into bed beside her, I face the other way so that I don’t wake her. Not wanting to wake the person who revealed the cracks I didn’t want to see. The realist to a dream that I now believe I conjured out of thin air. Did I imagine everything with Callum? Did I fall for someone who feels nothing for me?
Every word and touch and kiss a lie.Stupid, pathetic me.
Breathing out heavily, it physically hurts as I cry into the pillow. That is until the door opens, and Father Aaron comes into the room. I lie painfully still as he tugs the white collar off his shirt and undoes the buttons of his shirt one by one. Staring down at theangelson his bed who hate him.
Removing his shirt, he comes over to the bed and leans over me. Cologne and musk hit my senses. The clogging kind, wrapping around my neck and staying there. My muscles lock as he puts his lips on the side of my face. “Don’t fret over your grandmother, my angel. She died peacefully many months ago.”
Turning my head to face him, I stare up at him leaning over me. Close. Too close. Maisie’s soft snores fill the silence. She’s too exhausted from grief to wake up. Hate burns hot and violent through me, but I suppress the need to scream and rip him apart. “What about her funeral?”
“It was small. Your father was there.” I blink tears away. Dad was at her funeral? Did he question where I was? As if reading my mind, Father Aaron reveals, “He wished you well on your new journey to join the convent. Outside contact at St. Bridget’s is forbidden, you see. He understood your need to grieve with your sisters instead of attending another funeral of the people who raised you.”
“Why?” my voice wavers as I ask the question I’ve wanted to know all along. A question every victim of a crime wants to know. “Why me?”
“Because I wanted you. And when I want something, I get.”
“Like your sister?” It slips from my mouth like a breath. He isn’t aware that I know the truth about Callum’s heritage, and the adoration melts from his face. He grabs my face, and I gasp.
“Yes.” His grip tightens. “A mistake I will never make again.”
I shudder. “I’m s-sorry, my Lord.”
“I suppose I don’t have to ask who told you, the deviantfuckerthat my son is. I have repented for that mistake. The morning-after-pill is in the cabinet in the bathroom for you both to take. Birth control will be administered. His Greatness understands me preventing reproduction given the demon I produced last time.”
And a demon he is.The man I’m in love with on the other side of the house, who has just stamped on my heart that I gave him willingly without any thought of the consequences.The loss of Callum, Gran’s betrayal, and her death are suddenly too much to bear.
I don’t want this life—I want todie.
“My Ava,” Father Aaron whispers, his grip loosening on my face. “Don’t cry. I shouldn’t say this, but you are my favorite.” I feel my stomach twist in the cloud of anguish. If I was his favorite, then why take Maisie? “You fit into this family as if you were always meant to. And now you’re mine, as his Greatness willed it to be. You’re so special. My chosen one.”
His mouth suddenly falls against my lips.
My first kiss flashes before my eyes, and right there, in the corner of my eye, the distinctive shadow of Father Aaron watching it from across the court. Fury smoldering in his blue eyes. Watching a boy kiss the girl he wanted for himself, and probably did the moment he stepped foot into Little Willow and saw me attending church with Gran. And like the cold operator that he is, he twisted the mind of a sick, grief-stricken woman and turned her against her own blood. Using Gran to mold me into the weak little victim that I am right now. Allowing this madman to put his lips on mine and not fighting.