Page 57 of Voyeur
“Me?” I ask.
She nods. “I have a feeling that you’d burn the fucking world for me. It’s scary, I’ll admit. But on the other hand, it’s what I think I’ve needed for a long time. Someone to be there for me. Someone to bring the men who fucked me up to their knees in front of me, covering me in their blood as he avenges me.”
Her words heat me, cock stiffening against her instantly as the images fly through my head like a fucking firework on New Year’s Eve.
“Baby, I’d slaughter thousands for you. I’d walk through fire, coated in the blood of every man you told me to kill, until you felt peace,” I admit, both of us knowing every word is nothing but raw truth.
“Then after we get the truth, they pay.”
“Mmm, that’s my girl. You take the time you need, I’ll be in the shadows, hmm?”
She nods, leaning in and kissing me lightly.
“My umbra guardian,” she mutters.
“Hmm?”
“My shadow guardian.”
My chest fills as I kiss her. No words. There aren’t words I can give to this shattered girl of mine. All I can do is hold the pieces as she builds herself back up bit by bit, and hope in the end, she’ll stand in the shadows with me.
Because fuck she looks good in the darkness.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Emery
“Wes, he’s gone, man,” Conner finally says, tugging Wes off his friend.
Tears are rolling down Wes’ face, heaving breaths emitting from him in droves. My mind can’t wrap around what’s happening. First the girl I’d woken up next to, and now this? Looking over, I spot another girl still lying on the couch, somehow sleeping through all the commotion.
“We have to get her out of here. She can’t wake up to this,” I say absently.
“Good idea,” Conner says, standing and tugging his hair meditatively before he stands and turns toward her. “Help me get her out of here. We’ll call your father once we’re outside.”
I nod, grateful to have something to do, and I move toward the girl. Conner tries to hoist her upper body, but she slumps into him, and he shrieks and jumps backward, dropping her back down onto the couch.
“What? What’s wrong?” I shout, even though I know what’s wrong. She’s gone, died in her sleep likely from the same drugs Declan had ingested.
“What the fuck, man? What the fuck?!” Conner shouts, pacing back and forth as he eyes his feet.
“The drugs...it must’ve been laced...or...” Wes says, rocking back and forth while tugging on his hair to the point of pain as if to ground himself.
Conner grabs his phone out of his pocket, shaking his head as if fully resigning himself to what must happen next.
“What are you doing?” I ask, approaching his left side as his thumb hovers over the last one on his phone’s touchpad to dial the paramedics. Instead of punching it, he backs out and taps on my father’s contact that’s saved in his recent call log.
“What the hell, man? Call the cops! They need help!” I try to snatch the phone from him, but he turns, shrugging out of my hold and heading out the front door.
“Mr. Stanner? We need help...” The door shuts the rest of his conversation out, and I crouch down beside Wes, who’s spiraling into a dark abyss of emotion.
“My life is over,” he sobs.
“No, it’s not. You didn’t do it.” I try to console him, but I can tell he’s long past the point of that. Fuck, we all are. I still don’t even know what the hell happened between me and the girl in the bathroom. I don’t know how I’d passed out, or why she was so beaten and battered.
My insides coil and constrict, stomach bile crawling up my throat like a nightmare refusing to die.
“I was supposed to go to Stanford. This is going to taint my entire life. You don’t understand. Of course, you don’t. You’re a Stanner. You’ll be fine. Daddy will pay your way out of this,” Wes says, standing and punching a wall, his fist going through the drywall and passing in between two studs.