Dissent (26 page)

Then
there were the kids. Mike and Joey were newer than Burt, but only by
a couple of months. And everything about them seemed silly and
fun-loving. Sure, they liked fucking. But every red-blooded guy their
age did. And maybe there was a little bit of darkness in them. But it
always seemed slight. Harmless. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe they
were sociopaths or psychopaths, maybe they were really good liars.

Mike
had once come up behind me when I was topless, reaching around and
grabbing my breasts, running his thumbs over the nipples. But he had
been completely shitfaced. Drunk and high and horny and I was naked.
I was there. He had apologized for a week afterward, promising me he
didn't mean it. That he didn't think of me that way.

The
problem was, no matter how much I analyzed them, I could never be
sure. And even though I felt justified in not trusting them, I felt
guilty for looking at them differently. So I hid away. I stayed in my
bunk. I got up at night when everyone was sleeping to eat and shower,
then I got right back in. I
read. I wrote.

And
when it was the perfect time, between five and six in the morning,
when everyone was fast asleep... I cried.

I
cried so hard my eyes swelled, my face got red and painful. It didn't
help. I didn't feel any better after. If anything, the hole inside
only felt larger, spreading across my chest, making it feel like my
heart was shrinking, disappearing into it.

Because
I was so completely, heart-breakingly alone. Everything I had thought
I had, was gone. The comfort. The stability. The feeling of
friendship and family. The love I had started to feel grow for
Isaiah. It was all gone. And it would never, ever be the same again.
That was the cold, hard, awful truth.

I
would never feel completely safe again. Even if I did eventually find
out who was tormenting me. Even if they were in jail. Out of my life.
It could never be the way it was. I would never be able to blindly
trust another member of my crew. I would always look at them sideways
if they said something off-color. I would jump if they touched me. I
would feel uncomfortable being naked near them.

A
part of me would be different.

On
top of that, I had falsely accused Isaiah. I had pushed away the only
man I had ever let myself care about. He filled a spot inside that I
hadn't realized was empty. I wasn't done with him. Even when I
thought he was my tormentor, there was still feeling left for him.
Under the anger and betrayal, all I wanted to do was run after him,
hurl myself into his arms, beg him to forgive me.

But
that was never going to happen. He would never forgive me.

I
would be living next door to him, listening to him fuck other women
every night and wishing it was me. I would have to fight the urge to
go over. To leave books I thought he would like on his doorstep. To
walk around naked to try to get his cock involved. Let him hatefuck
me until he realized what we had was different. Special.

I
curled up in my bunk, kissing the top of Poe's head.

I
needed to stop. To grow up. To put my big girl panties on. Because
that was never going to happen. I wasn't going to get a fairy tale
ending. I wasn't that kind of girl. I wasn't princess material. And
he damn sure wasn't a fucking prince.

The
tour would keep me busy. Then recording. And then as soon as I felt a
little less distrustful of men in general, I was going to find and
fuck as many of them as it took to forget how his hands felt on my
skin, how his cock felt inside me, how his voice saying my name still
made me feel a shiver.

I
would move the hell on.

I
wasn't a woman to pine. I wasn't a woman to break her heart into a
million pieces. I was fucking Darcy Monroe. Men fell at my feet every
day. Less damaged men. Men who would be happy to look me in my face
when they fucked me, instead of taking me from behind like an animal.
Men I wouldn't give the chance to become important enough that they
could hurt me.

I
refuse to get any more scars from loving edges sharp enough to cut
me.

I
wasn't going to run around like a fucking bellboy anymore, all too
eager to grab your baggage and carry it around for you.

Fuck
that. Deal with your own shit.

Twenty-two

My
body fought me every step of the way. Every time I swung an ax to
break firewood. Every time I crouched behind a bush with my bow.
Every time I climbed a tree to wait for something to step into my
trap. Every moment, a part of me was screaming in objection. My
biceps, my thighs, my back.

So
much for muscle memory.

I
went to bed aching every night. For weeks. I wasn't even entirely
sure how long I had been back. I didn't have a calendar. My cell
phone died the day after I arrived. I was completely out of touch
with the real world. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

The
air was taking on a cooler breeze and I figured it was sometime in
the middle of September. Fall would come. And then a frigid winter.
My first one out in the elements in years. There was a part of me
that was worried about it. I had gotten soft. Always having food to
cook and eat. Always having artificial heat. There would be nothing
to get me through the winter but the wood I split for the fireplace
and the food I caught. Because I hadn't been around all summer to
plant a garden and can the vegetables like my mother used to do. A
few potatoes a week and whatever meat I could get my hands on.

It
didn't escape me that this would be the first I was ever alone in the
woods for a winter. There had always been someone else. My mom and
sister until I was nineteen. And then my father afterward. Someone to
help with the work load. Someone who knew more about salt-curing and
cooking. Someone to just... talk to. Be around. Put another log in
the fire when they got up at night to go out and take a piss.

It
was just me.

There
were chickens around. The offspring, no doubt, of the ones I had set
free when I left. I had been trying to gather them up day and night.
So far I had managed to get two back into the coop. Which gave me a
whopping total of six eggs per week. But it was something other than
rabbit and deer and fish. So it was welcome. If I got them breeding
eventually, I could have chicken again too. I would probably have to
bring them all inside in the coldest part of winter or their egg
production would slow or stop entirely. I was limited enough in my
variety. I didn't want to lose a source of nutrition.

I
put a piece of wood from a tree I had felled the day before on a
stump, swinging the ax, and getting it stuck in the center.

“I
can split a fucking log better than that,” a voice said behind
me, making my spine straighten. I turned slowly, a small smile
playing at my lips, not realizing how much I wanted to see her. How
long it had been.

“Fiona,”
I said, looking at my sister. Fee was tall and long legged, thin, but
curvy, with long wavy blonde hair and big green eyes. Since marrying
her husband, tattoos had started sneaking across her body, covering
the old scars from our father at first, then working their way down
her arms, displaying the names of her daughters, the crest for her
new family.

Fee
was a force of nature. There was really no other way to describe her.
She had run away so young, so incredibly inexperienced, and she had
lived in a box for years before starting her phone sex business and
getting herself an apartment full of expensive clothes and furniture.
She made a life for herself, insulating herself from everything
outside. Cocky and hardassed,
but
wounded painfully inside, cutting into her skin and drinking all
night because if she was home alone, the memories would sink in. Even
when she got away, our father managed to torture her through her own
thoughts and fears and insecurities and scars.

She
was foul-mouthed and ferocious. A protective mother. A loyal wife. A
ruthless businesswoman. She cursed my father to the depths of hell on
his deathbed and she never looked back.

I
envied her.

Because
when I finally got away, I couldn't get even a piece of what she had.
I couldn't connect. I couldn't get over the grief. I couldn't become
a well-adjusted person.

“You
look good,” I said, nodding.

“That's
it?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Seriously?”

“Well,
I would invite you in for tea and cookies. But I don't have any tea,
or sugar, or flour.”

“Cute,”
she said, dryly.

“What
are you doing here, Fee?”

“What
the fuck are you doing here, Isaiah?” she asked, her face
scrunching up.

“I
live here now.”

“No
fucking shit. Do you have any idea how many times I tried to get in
touch with you? What it would be like for me to get a call from your
company saying they hadn't heard from you in fucking months?”

I
closed my eyes slightly. “Yeah, that had been an oversight.”

“An
oversight? You pick up and leave to come back to this fucking
hellhole and don't tell anyone who cares about you what your plan is,
was an oversight?”

“I
haven't been here for months,” I corrected. “I was... on
tour.”

“What
did you join a fucking circus?” she laughed.

“No.
I was working as stage crew for Darcy.”

“Darcy?”
she asked, looking at me like she was waiting for me to laugh, then
when I didn't, her brows drew together. “The metal band?”

“Yeah.”

She
brought her hands up to her face, rubbing them across her eyes before
looking at me again. “Let's try this again... and how about you
stop fucking making me pry the information out of you?”

I
took a deep breath, pushing the ax/log combo onto the ground and
sitting down on the big tree stump. “The lead singer was my
neighbor when I moved to the city.”

“Darcy
Monroe was your neighbor?”

“Yeah.
And I dunno... I wanted to...”

“Fuck
her,” Fee supplied at my pause.

“Yeah,”
I laughed, nodding. Fee was good at that. Cutting through the
bullshit and telling it like it is.

“So
you got a job on her tour so you could eventually get underneath her
walls... and up her shirt.”

“Something
like that.”

“So
did you? She's fucking sexy. Hell, I want to do her.”

“Yes,”
I said, nodding, feeling a sharp stab somewhere in my gut. I had
gotten good about not thinking about her. Well, that wasn't exactly
true. I got good at pushing the thoughts
away
when they popped up. Which was every fucking other minute.

“Was
she good?” I took a long, shaky breath. “Wow, that good?”
she asked, smiling, leaning back against a tree, resting her foot on
the bark.

“Yeah,”
I admitted honestly, “she's that good.”

She
was the fucking best. There was no contest. It didn't matter that I
had other women who let me stick a rubber cock up their cunts while I
fucked their ass, or wanted me to pound their asses with a paddle
while they sucked me off, or screwed a room full of women who took
turns riding me, sucking me, getting each other off. They didn't
matter. They didn't even come close.

Darcy
was the best. Being inside her was like prayer. It was worship. It
was the closest to God I had ever been.

“So
what?” Fiona asked at my silence. “Was this a wham-bam
kinda thing? Like all your other conquests? Because, I have to say,
it's not like you to put so much effort into fucking some chick.”

“She
was worth it.”

Fee's
mouth fell slightly open, something between shock and a smile around
her lips. “Oh, you bastard. You finally found a woman you
wanted to do more than stick your dick in, didn't you?”

I
felt my shoulder shrug. “She made me break and enter an
abandoned asylum with her. Then eat her out on an exam table where
they used to do ice pick lobotomies.”

“Well,
that sounds like fun,” she said, smiling.

“It
was.”

“So
that's it? That's all you did together in all those weeks?”