SWNOVELS Vicious Hearts: Chapter 27
“Finn and I were twelve when we aged out of the group home.”
I’ve never once wanted to think about this again, much less talk about it. Even Finn and I had an unspoken agreement to go through our lives as if that period was a nightmarish hallucination that never actually happened.
Even though it did.
And yet, for some reason, I know I can tell Cillian. It’s like looking over the edge of a black canyon and screaming your secrets out into the darkness of the abyss, knowing no one will ever find them again.
Cillian hands me a drink. I nod in thanks, taking it in both my hands as I sit on the edge of the bed, the blankets wrapped around me. Cillian sits in a deep leather chair by one of the windows across from me, naked but for his boxers. He slips a cigarette between his lips—a habit that I’ve noticed he’s been indulging in with less and less frequency recently—and lights it with a flick of his silver Zippo.
I swallow, raising my eyes to meet his through the darkness of the bedroom, lit only by the city lights slanting in through the single open window, and by the glow of his cigarette as he inhales slowly.
“It was in Denver, so we could…”
I look away, taking a sip of the whiskey in my glass and letting the burn dull the pain inside.
“So you could visit that monster.”
I nod quietly, grimacing. “I hated those visits with every single fiber of my being. And then, when we were twelve, it was like a miracle. The doctor stopped her research on him, and that was it. We didn’t ever go back to visit again, and then it was time for us to leave the group home.”
I close my eyes, determined not to let the demons of the past choke away my words.
I’ve never once wanted to come back here. But I know I never will again after today, so this is it.
I’ll see this through—just the once, just to cauterize it from my memory—even if it fucking kills me.
“There’s not a lot of foster parents out there who want a teenager. We’re too broken by then, too rebellious, come with way too much baggage and emotions, not to mention hormones. And there’s even fewer who want two of them. Every now and then, we’d get someone interested in just me, or just Finn…”
I blink, hot tears welling in my eyes.
“But we always made a huge stink. We were not going to let them separate us. And then one day…”
One day, the devil came knocking.
“Una…”
I know he can see the pain walking all over my face and treading on my throat. But I shake my head and push on.
“A man came one day, in this really nice car, dressed in a really nice suit, took one look at us, and told us on the spot we were coming home with him.” I laugh bitterly. “We couldn’t believe it. Finn and I joked we were like Little Orphan Annie and her brother, and Daddy Warbucks was finally here to sweep us off to the good life. He filed the paperwork that day, and two weeks later, were looking up in awe at the front door of his huge fucking house. Three cars, a pool, the whole bit.”
Tears start to roll down my cheeks.
“We thought we’d won the lottery. And for about a month, that’s what it felt like.”
I look away.
“Then we realized we were in Hell.”
Cillian’s jaw clenches, his eyes glinting in the glow of his cigarette.
“He…” I start to cry harder. Cillian stands abruptly, stubbing out his smoke and crossing to the bed, dropping to his knees. He takes my hands in his, gripping tightly as I stare blankly at the wall.
“He’d pick one of us and tell us his back hurt. That he needed us to help him feel better,” I spit venomously, bile rising in my throat.
“On your knees, yes, just like that.”
The ring flashes on his finger. That FUCKING ring—a cheap knockoff Superbowl Championship ring from when the Denver Broncos won.
A ring that leaves marks when he backhands if you’re not fast enough to get to your knees.
A ring that sometimes catches in your hair when he grabs it.
“You and your brother are so good to me, aren’t you? Now, open wide…”
Cillian’s grip on my hands tightens so hard it hurts. But it also grounds me. It keeps me from falling over the edge into the void.
“He never…” I look away, blinking back the pain, the shame I know in my heart I didn’t deserve, the tears. “Finn took it most of the time. He was like that. He always shielded me from predators. It was the same later when we were teenagers on the streets in LA. And those streets were filled with monsters.”
Finn nods to the Lexus waiting at the end of the alley. “It’s fine, Una. I’ll be back in no time.”
My nails dig into his forearm, my eyes pleading.
“Please, don’t do this—”
“It’s fine. Really. Hey,” he shrugs, shooting me that grin of his I love so much. “We gotta eat, right?”
“Then let me go this time—”
The smile evaporates from his face. “Not fucking happening.”
“Finn, you can’t—”
“No, YOU can’t,” he growls. “I’ve got this, Lunatic.”
He stands, pulls a flask of cheap vodka out of his back pocket, and takes a swig. Then a second, and a third, his eyes fading into that faraway look they get whenever he does this.
When he faces the monsters and the predators for the both of us so I don’t have to. When he gets into strange cars with strange, horrible men, and comes back twenty minutes or an hour later with money, and food, sometimes drugs.
Smiling, even though his eyes are dim.
“Finn!”
“I’ve got you, Una.” He turns and grins at me as he walks to the car. “I’ve always got you.”
I start to shake as the tears flow hot down my cheeks.
“That was always the pretext. That he wanted a back rub, alone with one of us. Except it was never just a—”
Cillian snarls something vicious and inhuman, spinning away. My breath hitches at the loss of his grip on me—at the absence of his power grounding me. He whirls, pacing the floor in front of me with a look I’ve never once seen on his face.
Pure hate.
Pure, unbridled rage.
Pure. Fucking. Malice.
“First it was hands. Then he wanted mouths…”
Cillian roars, and I jump when he grabs the lamp off the bedside table, whirls, and sends it crashing into the wall.
“Then, one night when we were fourteen, Finn stole his wallet, woke me up with two bags already packed, and we left. We never went back.”
I’m sobbing now, the agony of the re-opened wound so painful that I feel like I might die. But then suddenly, strong, powerful arms circle around me, cocooning me against his broad, warm chest.
I choke on my tears, clinging to him so hard I know my nails must be drawing blood. But Cillian doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t pull away.
He doesn’t look at me like I’m broken, or disgusting, or shameful, or a whore.
He just holds me, and rocks me, and strokes my hair softly as I scream my pain into his chest, for I don’t even know how long.
When the tears finally stop, he still doesn’t let me go. And I don’t want him to.
I still feel safer in the arms of an actual psychopath than I’ve ever felt before.
“Who is he.”
I stiffen, my pulse racing.
“Cillian…”
“Who.”
It’s not barked, nor does he even raise his voice that much. But that’s what makes it possibly the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s the quiet, unemotional way he asks it.
“Cillian, please…”
“Tell me his name, Una.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing my face to his chest before I slowly pull back, shaking my head. My tear-streaked eyes meet his cold, lethal ones.
“I’ve buried my past,” I whisper quietly, pleadingly. “Please don’t make me dig it up again.”
His jaw grinds. He blinks. And then slowly, I can see cracks splintering their way across the deathly mask he always wears, until it finally falls away.
“Come here.”
He moves onto the bed, sitting against the headboard and pulling me into his arms as I burrow into him.
“We…I can try again—”
“No. Forget that.”
His arms circle me, holding me tightly, possessively.
Unflinchingly.
“No one is ever going to fucking hurt you, understand?” he growls quietly into the top of my head. “I’ll never let anything happen to you ever again.”
The safest I’ve ever felt, in the arms of monster.
Who knew.