His to Keep by Lydia Goodfellow

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Change. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and I’m scared. You’d think I’d be used to it, given how my life has always been affected by change. When I left the city and moved to Little Willow. A new school. Grandpa dying, and Gran changing. And then coming here. A whirlwind life that doesn’t stop spinning and moving. Still not stopping.

Maisie is thrown inside the bedroom sometime past midnight. After Callum and I quickly showered and dressed, making sure there was no evidence of what we’d done, we sat away from each other. Him at his desk and me on the bed that I changed and neatly made back up with the corners tucked in. The distance safe, the flames of our desire smothered. Sore and aching, I sat, knowing change was coming. And then it did. It landed on the floor with a frightful, loud bang.

Striding into the room behind Maisie, Father Aaron looks at Callum and me, eyes bloodshot from too much drink. He’s intoxicated, and it makes the hairs on my neck rise. Sitting still, I don’t even blink. Callum does the same, cold glare in place. Nothing happened. We didn’t sin.

“Teach her obedience, or I’ll kill her,” he slurs crossly and nudges Maisie with the tip of his shoe. She whimpers, and he grins manically down at her. “Obey, and you will be blessed. Disobey, and be cursed.”

Backing out, he slams the door and locks it. My shoulders slump that we’re back to locked doors. At least he didn’t notice anything amiss, not that there’d be anything physical to see.

Callum and I share a glance, and I nod, remembering the conversation we had when he held me in his arms after taking me for the second time.

“You have to help her,” I’d said to him. “Like you helped me.”

“She’s not you,” he’d replied, somewhat broodily. “She won’t listen. I can already tell she’s like Orla.”

“We can’t let her end up like Orla. We have to keep her alive,” I insisted, and he sighed, knowing I was right. We had to help her. We couldn’t allow Father Aaron to take another life, not when there was something we could do about it.

Getting up from the chair, he goes over to her and touches her shoulder like he did to me on those few occasions when I was lost in terror. Her head snaps up, and her eyes narrow when they rest on his face.

I squeeze my dress, uneasiness washing over me, knowing what she’s seeing. Does she think he’s beautiful? Attractive? Or does she see the resemblances to Father Aaron that I didn’t? Piecing it all together as I had failed to do.

“Come on, get up.” Holding out his hand, her large eyes drop to it. But instead of reaching for it, she shakes her head, face creasing with fear and anger.

“Get the fuck away from me, psycho!” Her sudden outburst makes my eyes widen as she shuffles back from him. “What do you want from me?”

Callum’s back straightens defensively. “For you to listen. If you do as he says, things will be easier for you. For one, you won’t die.”

“Callum,” I say, and her eyes swing to me.

“Who are you?” There’s a slight twang to her accent, but I still don’t know where’s she’s from. She’s eyeing my white nightdress, similar to hers.

“I’m Ava. I’m…I’m just like you.”

“I saw you before. Downstairs. You’re one of them like that old bitch, Penny.”

“No.” My head shakes. “I was taken just like you were. And this is Callum, he’s…” Father Aaron’s son? The man I just allowed to take my virginity? “He’s like us, too. He won’t hurt you,” I say instead, avoiding his gaze.

I’m nothing like you, I can imagine him thinking.

“That bastard, John, said I have to obey or die. Is that true?

“Yes. I’ve seen what Father Aaron can do to girls like us.”

“Father Aaron?” She looks at me with confusion. “The priest? He said his name was Matthew.”

“Aaron’s his surname,” Callum clarifies, which even I didn’t know. “Matthew is his first name. Matthew Jonah Aaron, though he prefers if you call him your Lord.”

She gasps, and I wish he wouldn’t have said that. It’s too soon. “Fuck you.” Her bottom lip wobbles, but she stifles it, trying to appear more robust than I think she is. “This is bullshit. He can’t do this!”

“Keep your voice down,” Callum growls at her, which seems far angrier than he ever was with me, and I can’t help frowning at him.

There’s a fire in her eyes as she glares at him fiercely. Challengingly. I swallow down a lump in my throat as the tension crackles between them. “Don’t tell me what to do, you masochist asshole.”

Face creasing, he turns to me. “We’re wasting our time.”

Storming past me, he goes into the bathroom and slams the door behind him.

A hand suddenly grabs my arm, and I jump with a gasp. Maisie’s now off the floor, eyes like giant orbs. It looks like she hasn’t slept at all. And why would she if she’s been in the dark since Christmas, not knowing anything?

“Come on,” she whispers. “Let’s find a way out of here.”

“W-What?”

“I don’t believe for a second there isn’t a way out of here. There’s always a way out of these places—you just have to know where to look. Come on. I’m not hanging around to find out what these psychopaths want from us.”

“Maisie—stop,” I beg as she drags me off the bed, surprisingly strong for someone so tiny. “I promise there’s no way out.”

“We can find it.” The back of her voice breaks as she goes to the door and pulls on it like I did. When it fails to open, she darts past me and tries opening the window, not seeing the nails that stop it from moving. It’s dark out. She can’t see how high we are when her eyes land on the chair. “Help me throw the chair at the window.”

“What?”

“Why do you keep asking me to repeat myself? Let’s smash the damn window and use the bedsheets to climb out.” When I don’t move, she screams at me, “What the hell is wrong with you? Come on!”

The bathroom door opens again, and Callum stomps back out, obviously having heard the commotion. “What’s going on?”

“She—”

Maisie gasps. “You’re seriously going to tell him? He’s one of them! I saw him with them.”

My face flushes hot with shame. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know him like I do.Folding his arms, Callum sighs with agitation. “Even if you do manage to get out of the house, there’s a fence caging us in.”

“Like I’m going to believe you.”

“It’s true. I-I saw it.”

She shakes her head repeatedly like she can’t quite grapple with the fact that there isn’t a way out. She begins pacing, and Callum and I exchange uncomfortable looks. “You don’t understand—I have to go home. My boyfriend’s going to be worried about me. My dad.” Tears fall down her face. Boyfriend. Just how Father Aaron thought I had one—Adam. “What does he want?”

I swallow hard, knowing I’m about to put someone through the same despair I felt. Still feel. “Us.”

“What?”

“There’s to be a ceremony, and he’s going to, um…” Why can’t I say it? Thankfully, I don’t have to. Her watery brown eyes widen even more, and then she gags.

“No. Hell no. Over my dead body—”

“If you don’t, it will be,” Callum says spitefully, and I try not to let it sting, but it does. Somewhere deep that I keep burying deeper. If I don’t let Father Aaron, I’ll die too.

I step closer to her. “Father Aaron had another girl right before he took me. She did something to…disobey him, and he murdered her. I saw her after. When she was dead. It was horrific…” I trail off, her blood-soaked body flashing in my thoughts.

“Death doesn’t scare me,” Maisie sneers at me. I don’t believe her, but if this is how she’s trying to cope, then I can’t disagree. “I’d rather be dead than let him rape me. If you want to lie there and take it, then you do that. But I won’t. He’ll be sorry he ever took me.”

Having gotten the idea from Callum, she runs into the bathroom and slams the door. Pushing my hair back from my face, I go over to the window and peer out of it. Stars litter the sky, and a lone cloud floats across the full moon. People change when there’s a full moon, Ava. It makes them crazy, Gran said one time. She was wrong about a lot of things, but not that.

Callum shuffles behind me, and my body shivers the moment he puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes them. Will it ever go away, the way he makes me feel?

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he whispers into my ear so that Maisie can’t hear from the bathroom. “I know it’s the wrong time—but I can’t help it.”

Leaning back into him, his warmth surrounds me. My chest squeezing, my body wanting more of what I can’t have. What we could only let happen once.

“You didn’t have to be mean to her.” I glance up at him. “She’s scared.”

“She’s reckless. She’s going to get us punished. The sooner she accepts it, the better it is for us.”

“Accept it how?” I turn in his arms to face him. “I still haven’t, and it’s going to happen to me too, or have you forgotten?”

His eyes darken. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then stop being flippant with her.”

“Ava.” He breathes out heavily through his nose. “Not everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. You’re too kind, too trusting. If you were dying in a burning house, she’d leave you to save herself. She wouldn’t look back.”

My forehead creases. “How can you know that? We don’t know her…and I could say the exact same thing about you.”

He turns me quickly to face him. “I’d be the one saving you, even if it meant I’d die, and you live.”

He would save me from a house in flames, but not from his father. I let out a long sigh. “Now that’s reckless.”

His mouth lifts into a small smile, and he rests his forehead against mine. His fingers grip me tightly like he’s holding himself back from doing so much more.

“What are you doing to me?” He’s staring into my eyes in a way that’s making me breathless.

My shoulders lift and fall. “I don’t know.”

And I don’t because I’m wondering the same thing. He’s done something to me. Like he’s punched a hole into my chest and grabbed my heart in a tight vice. And I’m waiting for him to let go. Just as everyone else did.

* * *

Callum’s right—Maisieis trouble, doing everything in her power to rile Father Aaron any chance she gets. At dinner the following evening, she refused to eat. Irritated, Father Aaron smacked the table with his palm, demanding she eat or he’d beat her black and blue. With a defiant glare shining in her dark eyes, she brought the fork to her mouth, but instead of swallowing, she spat it straight in Father Aaron’s face.

The fury was instant. Reaching for her, he grabbed her around the throat and flung her into the wall across the room. I couldn’t hear what he said to her as he pinned her against it, but whatever it was made her body physically shake. After smacking her across the face, he turned on Callum. “The next time she’s disobedient, you and Ava will be punished as well.”

When we got back to the bedroom, Callum was furious. “I swear if we’re punished because of you. You don’t know half of what he has put her through already.”

“Callum, stop,” I pleaded.

He didn’t listen, and Maisie seethed. “Leave me alone. You don’t scare me. How can you both just sit there and act like everything’s normal?”

“To survive!” he yelled at her. Stepping in front of him, I pushed his chest to move him back from her.

“Stop it. Both of you. This isn’t helping anyone.”

Scowling, she ran over to the bed and hid beneath the covers. Moments later, I heard her sobbing. She does that a lot, and I don’t blame her. How many times have I done it? Cried until I’ve soaked the sheets. When did I stop?

“She’s going to get you hurt,” Callum said in the bathroom after she fell asleep. “She’s fucking selfish.”

“What’s wrong with you? This isn’t you. You more than anyone should know what this is like.”

“I don’t trust her. I see the way she looks at you,” he said, which confused me even more. What way was she looking at me? “She’s scheming, Ava. Watching everything we do and say. I wouldn’t put it past her to try and murder us in our sleep to get out.”

“She’s not going to kill us.” I shook my head in exasperation. “And do you blame her? Can you seriously say you don’t understand that she’s doing everything in her power to get out?”

He ground his teeth together. “Not if it affects you.”

My heart sunk when his anger faded, replaced with something else that he tried to hide when he turned away from me.

Walking over to him, I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind and held him tightly. Pressing my face into his back, I breathed him in until I ached all over.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said to him. “I’ll try and get her to stop.”

The next day, I watch Maisie from the corner of my eye as we get ready in the bathroom. Since she got here, she’s been coming in with me, not wanting to be left alone with Callum in the bedroom.

“He’s not going to hurt you, you know?” I’d tried to reassure her once, but she refused to listen to me.

Now, it’s my only chance to talk to her. “Maisie?”

“What?” She’s combing her lengthy hair, cursing when it snags at a few knots.

“Can we talk?”

She keeps her back to me. “If this is about yesterday, don’t bother. My face hurts, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry about Callum. About what he said to you—”

“Why do you defend him?” She turns to me then, cheek red and bruising from Father Aaron’s assault. “Are you in love with him or something?”

“W-What?” I blanch, face searing hot. “No! What makes you think that?”

She shrugs. “The way he looks at you, and you at him. You shouldn’t defend him. The night I came here, he helped them. He restrained me when Matthew tried to force me to wear these stupid dresses, and when I refused, Callum stripped me and put it on himself. When I ran, he chased me. He’s a freak—just like they all are.”

I try to ban the image of Callum removing Maisie’s clothes, but it’s too late. I can’t get it out of my head. “They make him do those things.”

She scoffs. “If you want to believe that, then go for it. Be stupid. I don’t care.”

“Maisie,” I say, trying to stay calm, but she’s draining. “I’m not your enemy—you don’t have to be like this. I want to get out of here as much as you do.”

“But you’ve given up,” she interrupts. “You’ve given up and just accepted this.”

“I haven’t.”

“Ava,” she sighs, stepping forward. “I know we don’t know each other, but it’s obvious we both come from different worlds. People are relying on me. I’m getting out of here with or without you.”

“I want to get out too.”

She tilts her head to the side. “Why don’t I believe that?”