Hush

No, that was a lie.

She did.

She knew that she was imagining what it might be like if that hand was resting on her thigh. It might’ve been more realistic to imagine what it’d be like to grow wings and fly around. She was never going to ride in a car with a man’s hand lazily resting on her thigh, Maddox or not.

That possible future had been stolen from her.

An easy touch from a man was nothing but a fantasy. Even if she worked up enough courage to let a man touch her, it would never be easy. His fingertips, his hands, would be touching places already bruised, battered, and ruined by the men who came before him. They’d be like irons, burning her flesh.

She spent the rest of the drive angry at herself for thinking about Maddox’s hand on her thigh minutes after burying her best friend. She should have been focusing on other things. More important things. Like revenge.

“I can teach you,” Maddox said.

They had stopped, Orion just realized that. They were parked in front of her apartment complex. She’d even blanked on him entering the gate. It was good security too. She would’ve had to reach into her purse to show her brand new ID. She must’ve done that, though she had no memory of it.

“Teach me?” she parroted.

“To drive,” he said. “And before you immediately say no, I’m a good teacher. I taught April. She only screamed at me once.” He shrugged. “Never crashed though.”

Maddox was right. She was immediately going to say no. Today—getting in the car with him, offering him information—was an exceptional circumstance.

Temporary insanity.

Orion had already made promises to herself regarding Maddox. Promises about never being alone with him, cutting him out as much as possible.

But she paused before she uttered her refusal because who else was going to teach her? The only other person on earth she felt comfortable with was Shelby and she couldn’t drive either. He dad was teaching her. Orion didn’t have a dad. By the time Shelby could drive, Orion imagined she’d have changed even further. She’d be nothing more than a stranger who she shared a past with.

Orion imagined her brother would’ve taught her.

A pang of sharp and unbearable pain unexpectedly speared her heart. She almost cried out but swallowed the sound. She missed her brother with a pain that was physical.

She hated this fucking life.

Maddox was watching her. She knew this. And she also knew he was dissecting her with that stare. That cop stare.

He was expecting her to refuse, most likely. Hoping she would accept, for what reason? To quell more of that survivor’s guilt? Give himself some power over her? Watch over her for signs of addiction? Insanity?

He was good at looking at her, seeing things. Orion knew this because her skin rebelled every time his blue eyes fastened on her. Everything inside her tried to escape, to transform into something that wasn’t dark and ugly, to blossom into someone new.

If she said yes, there would be more of him looking. Seeing. It was too much of a risk to have Maddox this close with everything she was doing. Maddox was no longer the boy she’d kissed on the back porch of his parents’ house. He was a cop.

He was a cop who arrested monsters and saved victims.

She was not a victim. Not anymore.

Her goal was to become a monster.

“Okay,” she said, unsure who was speaking inside of her.

Was it the victim, the monster, or was it Ri? Who she’d been so certain was just another stain she left on the floor of that cell?

Fourteen

One Month Later

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on or do I have to become a detective?”

Orion looked up from where she was kneading dough. She was making blueberry lavender scones. She thought lavender was a fucking weird thing to put in a scone, but what did she know? She was ten years behind everybody else.

April was channel surfing on her new television. They’d decided after a couple glasses of wine—Orion was now quite partial to it—that the TV wasn’t big enough. Or fancy enough. Orion had bought the cheapest one on the market out of habit.

That same night they had also decided it was well past time Orion spend all the money that was burning a hole in her bank account.

The lawsuit had come through. It hadn’t been the long, tedious battle that Orion had expected, so she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For someone to jump out from behind a curtain and realize she was a Darby, shove her in a trailer, empty her bank account, and forget about her.

But then again, the other shoe had dropped ten years ago.

So, the legal stuff went off without a hitch since the publicity of the case had somehow remained at the top of the public conversation. The state of Missouri and the country itself could not afford to look like they were stiffing victims of the most horrific case of the century.