he lowers his forehead to my own. “I was sincere before when I apologized. I—we—want to make it up to you.”
“But I don’t want this,” I hiss. “This is…”
“Revenge,” Lucas states simply. “Our revenge on ourselves.”
“You’re all fucking crazy.” I shake my head vehemently, almost as if I can unhear all that was said. Do they even hear themselves? Surely they’re not deluded enough to think that physically harming themselves will assuage everything they did to me once upon a time.
“Crazy for you, baby,” Cassian teases with a wink, and I roll my eyes. I honestly can’t tell if he’s serious or full of shit. Half of the time, I think he actually has feelings for me, but then the other half…
“We were talking,” Elias whispers, staring at the ground. “About you.”
The air seems to spark with an electrical charge as all four of the men glare at one another. It’s Lucas who decides to speak first, unsurprisingly.
“We all have feelings for you,” he confesses, but like every other word he has said so far, his voice remains devoid of any emotion. He could’ve been telling me that he stole my homework instead of something like that.
“And we know about the whole…” Cassian makes one of his hands into a circle and slides a finger on his other hand in and out of it. “Dirty, dirty, bang, bang.”
“And you want me to…what? Choose one of you?” When they don’t immediately answer, staring at me with an unnerving type of intensity, I laugh humorlessly. “Date you all? Is that really what you guys want?”
“It might not go anywhere.” Cassian shrugs again, attempting to appear cool and nonchalant, but I can see a hint of vulnerability spark in his dark eyes. “But we all want to see if this…” He gestures between the five of us. “…is something.”
“It’s nothing,” I protest immediately, but a little, tinny voice in my head begins to scream at me to accept their offer, to forgive them. “Who said I even wanted to date any of you?”
Hurt flashes in both Karsyn’s and Elias’s face at my words, and I instantly feel like shit. The moments we had together were special, I admit that, but Lucas and Cassian? Why in the world would I ever even consider dating them?
But then I remember the way Lucas sat across from me in the diner, listening to my story without judgement. The fierce glimmer in his eyes when he promised to protect me.
I recall Cassian’s face when he saw the new violin case in my hand only a couple hours earlier. He tried to hide it, I can tell he did, but for a brief moment, his face was unguarded and full of hope. And later, when we were talking and he smiled down at me, it wasn’t tainted by pain or anger. It was just…a smile. A heart-thumping, toe-curling smile.
Oddly enough, it hurts more to heal than it does to be broken in the first place.
“Mr. Gurrel,” I blurt as another thing occurs to me. All four of them freeze, only their eyes moving to track my every move. I begin to pace in front of them, feeling an awful lot like a caged tiger. “Did you guys…?”
Lucas smiles, slow and predatory. A shark sniffing blood. “And if we did?”
I gape at him—at them—in unsuppressed horror.
“You cut off a man’s cock?” I try to sound outraged, but amusement laces my tone before I can contain it. There’s no denying that a darkness exists inside of me, a beast that demands freedom. And maybe that’s what always connected me to the four of them. They saw the roiling sea of darkness in me from the very beginning, and instead of running from it, they embraced it with their own form of…affection? No, that’s the wrong word. What happened five years ago was in no way affectionate or loving.
But was it torture?
Maybe for some, it was designed to be, but not for all. As I allow my eyes to drift from face to face, I find them landing on Lucas more often than not. The way he stares at me now…
It’s the same way he stared at me years ago.
It’s fucked up and so incredibly twisted, but I have to wonder…
Was that his way of showing affection?
Lucas’s smile curls upwards, though the shadows remain haunting his eyes.
“We made the little piggy squeal for what he did to you,” he says without preamble. Without even fucking remorse. “He didn’t see our faces, though.”
Lucas