Goddess of Pain - Katie May Page 0,31

if I let someone take her from me again.

Chapter 13

I wake to an empty bed.

At some point during the night, I remember Avery crawling in beside me and pulling me into his arms. It felt right…and weird. It’s hard to reconcile the off-limits best friend with the lover. It feels as if I’ve lived two entirely different lives, and I can’t seem to separate the two.

I stare up at the rotating fan a moment longer than necessary. I never noticed before, but there’s a water stain in the corner of the ceiling, the color darkening to a moldy green interspersed with flecks of dark blue and black.

Fuck, I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to face the men awaiting me in my living room. Because if I see them, I’ll have to accept that this is all real, that the life I’ve been living for…for years has been nothing but a lie. It’s almost too painful to think about, like a broken bone that hasn’t quite set right.

The thing is—life hurts.

A lot.

We can pretend it doesn’t, plaster on fake smiles, but there’s no denying that life is a fucking bitch.

Seeing Tate again is the final nail in my metaphorical coffin. No, it’s not just that. It’s the ropes slowly lowering the coffin six feet into the Earth. It’s the shovel filling the grave with fresh, compacted dirt.

Put your big girl panties on, Em, and get the fuck out of bed.

Scowling at the ceiling, I shove my blankets to the floor and meander towards my bathroom. After a quick shower and shave, I dress in a pair of leggings and a sports tank top. I take a brush through my dark hair but don’t bother to braid it away from my face.

I feel like a warrior charging into battle. Only instead of battle armor, I have my own steely determination to defend myself. And I’m gonna need it, especially if I have to face off with fucking Tate.

Tate Blake.

Ha.

When I exit my bedroom, I see Avery in the kitchen, booty shaking as he whips up a batch of French toast. This time, he’s wearing a white apron with the words “Kiss the Chef’s Ass” etched across the front. When he turns, focusing on the griddle, I see his gorgeous ass cheeks.

“Hey, stranger,” I say, smacking his ass as I enter the kitchen. He turns towards me with his familiar boyish grin.

“For a moment, I thought you were Sin,” he replies easily.

“Does Sin spank your ass a lot?” I lift an eyebrow as I pour myself a cup of coffee. “Wait. Don’t answer that. It’s Sin, of course he does.”

Avery chuckles easily as he begins separating the French toast onto five plates. In the living room, I can see the rest of my men engaged in a heated conversation. Well, Helio and Tate are. Arsin is lying upside down on the couch, his head brushing the ground and his legs draped over the back.

“We need to talk,” Avery continues, voice softer than before. He follows the direction of my gaze. “Something happened to us all, something that caused us to lose our memories. We need to figure out what’s real and what’s not. How long have we been away? Who did this to us? Why did they do this to us? There are so many questions.”

“I don’t think my family is actually my family,” I whisper, the pain of those words unfurling in my stomach like a blossoming flower. And though it hurts, I feel my power consume it as greedily as it does physical pain. It’s a heady sensation—the more internal pain I feel, the more pleasure it generates, until my entire world trembles on its axis.

“Sweetheart,” Avery coos, reaching for me at the same time I reach for him. I rest my head on his chest as he rocks us back and forth. This…this is familiar. This is the embrace of my best friend. There’s no confusion in the way my body feels against his, the way his heart beats beneath my ear, the rhythm as steady and as soothing as a drum line.

I wonder if I should be more upset over the revelation from last night—that Avery murdered all of those people—but all I can muster up is an intense longing for the man before me.

The thing is, murderers don’t crawl out from underneath the bed with glowing red eyes and blood dripping from their serrated teeth. They can be friends and family members, lovers