She gasps, ready to get it.
And I shove her head into the mirror as hard as I can, splintering the glass, and she screams.
“Damon!” she cries out, but I can’t stop.
A wave of euphoria washes over me, and I don’t know why my cheeks are wet, but my muscles are charged, and I just want her to fucking die.
I growl, bringing her head down again and again, blood covering the mirror, and then I haul her up, her body limp and blood pouring down her face, and I hit her, sending her flying to the floor.
She coughs and sputters, and tears stream down my face, but in that moment, I knew.
It would never happen again.
This never had to happen again. I’d kill her if I had to.
Seeing something out of the corner of my eye, I look over my shoulder, seeing Banks standing there with my headphones in her hand.
She looks from my mother on the floor—bloody and weak—to me, her eyes scared.
I rush over, grab her hand, and run from the room. She doesn’t ask questions as I pull her down the stairs, through the house, and out the back doors, into the backyard.
The moon casts a glow over the hedge maze, and we dive in, knowing our way well and finding the fountain immediately.
We climb in and settle behind the water, just like I had done a thousand times before, only once with a girl other than my sister. Banks doesn’t ask me what happened or what I’m going to do. She knows not to talk in here.
Reaching under the groove of the bowl above us, I dig out the silver barrette with pink crystals I hide there, and wrap my fist around it, remembering Winter Ashby’s words from so long ago in that fountain.
Your body can only feel one pain at a time.
She was right. I’ve found that to be true.
But instead of hurting myself to mask pain with more pain, tonight I learned something else.
Hurting others is just as effective.
My mother left after that beating. An hour later, Banks and I had gone back to my room to find her gone, and we fell asleep on the bed, leaving the door unlocked, because we knew. We couldn’t stop the world from happening to us. We could only react.
By morning, my mother was gone, and I never asked where. And as time passed, my father made no effort bring her home again. I didn’t see her until a couple of years later.
And I dealt with it for good that night.
Just like I was going to
deal with Winter and the false hope she nearly destroyed me with.
“I want her to want it,” I told Mikhail, his brown eyes looking up at me expectantly. “I want her to want me, to give me her heart, and be my soft, sweet, smiling Little Devil, clutching at me and unable to stop herself.” My heart quickened. “And then I want her to hate herself for it. To turn against herself and hate that she likes it, so she knows she’s weak and pathetic and no different than any other bitch. That she wasn’t special.”
Once I see her as just like everyone else, I’ll have destroyed her and killed my obsession with her. I would’ve killed her power over me, just like Natalya’s.
“And I think she wants to play this game with me,” I joked with the animal.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come,” I called.
The door opened and closed, and then I heard Crane’s voice behind me.
“She’s inquiring about the dog, sir.”