His to Keep by Lydia Goodfellow

Chapter Thirty-Two

With tears flowing out of my eyes, I run out of the room. Leaving Maisie and the letter of betrayal behind, I go to the other side of the house, back to Callum’s bedroom in hopes that he’s there.

Our Lord, Father Aaron.

Oh, Gran. What did you do?

Throwing the door open, disappointment smothers me that the room is empty, which means Callum must still be in the horror room being punished. But just as I’m about to turn to go there, a noise from the bathroom makes me stop.

“Callum?” There’s no answer. “Are you here?”

I edge forward. The door’s ajar, and I apprehensively push it open. And there’s Callum. He’s by the sink, razor blade in hand that he’s slicing into his skin.

“Callum, no!” He doesn’t even turn in my direction when I rush over to him and grab his hand. “What are you doing?”

“Let go,” he says coldly. Looking up at his face, his cheek is red and grazed, and his right eye is already blackening around the swelling. “I said, let go!”

He pushes me so hard that my spine jams into the sink. Gasping with the pain, I stare at him in shock, my heart fiercely pounding. He looks like stone, eyes like a storm. He’s not even looking at me as he throws the blade to the floor and stares down at the many cuts he’s left on his skin.

“Callum?”

“Go away, Ava.”

My heart stops. “What?”

“Go away.” His eyes lift to mine, and it’s as if I’ve never seen him before. This expression belongs to a stranger. What does he mean, go away? Does he not know what I’ve been through?

“Why?”

His jaw pulses as he glares at me. “Because I don’t want you here.”

My bottom lip wobbles, and I step back from him. “Why are you like this?”

He stares at me still, but it’s like he’s not looking at me. “Go back to your room and don’t come here again.” My room. My new room—his father’s. That means he knows what happened. “I don’t want to see you in here again.” Putting my hand over my mouth, I heave a sob. He looks disgusted, even though it wasn’t my fault what happened. “Stop crying and get out.”

Growling out, I slam my hands into his chest and push him. “You horrible jerk! You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

My sobs come out harder, uncontrollable. I’m falling apart. But no. He can’t do this. Seeing red, I punch his chest again. He doesn’t move. He’s like an ice statue of no remorse or guilt. “Ava—”

“You don’t get to treat me this way. Are you so disgusted by me that you can’t be anywhere near me? After everything? I should be mad at you. You had sex with Orla, and then me, and you tried to with Maisie.”

“You fucked my father.” Lifting my hand, I slap his face, anger like I’ve never felt raging through me. He turns back to me, wrath and hurt twisted into his own fury. “Get. Out.”

“Fuck you!” I yell, not caring who hears or comes. “I can’t believe you. Did you pretend all this time, so I’d feel sorry for you? So that I’d drop my guard enough for you to get what you want?”

“Sure, I did.”

“You took advantage of me.”

His fists clench. “If it’s what you want to hear.”

“Who are you? To think I was falling in love with you.”

“Love?” he splutters in shock, and humiliation stings my face by the callousness. “Fuck’s sake, Ava. I knew your head was living in a fantasy, but I didn’t realize how much. This isn’t a fairy tale. Did you think I’d be your knight in shining armor come to save you from him?”

“Never. Because you’re a coward, and I’ve always known it.You say you know life isn’t meant to be this way, and yet you live and breathe it. You partake in it, and I’m beginning to think that’s worse. Be disgusted with me. Think what you want to think. But at least I know I had no choice. You, on the other hand, do. But that’s on me. That I thought you’d be man enough to choose me.”

Maisie was right—he did use me. He played with me like a toy and spat me back out now that I’m damaged. Now that his father has completed the ceremony. How stupid I’ve been.

Turning away from him, I walk away, leaving behind the man who told me that he’d hurt me. And he has. And the world gets a bit darker around me.

* * *

Returning to the room,I find Maisie passed out on the bed with tear stains down her cheeks. The letter she received is scrunched in her fist, and while the content is different, the message reads the same as mine. Father Aaron did get to our families to get us. Her dad and my gran, which means no one is looking for us. We’re nothing but speckles of dust on the back of a forgotten shelf.

Crawling into bed beside her, I face the other way so that I don’t wake her. Not wanting to wake the person who revealed the cracks I didn’t want to see. The realist to a dream that I now believe I conjured out of thin air. Did I imagine everything with Callum? Did I fall for someone who feels nothing for me?

Every word and touch and kiss a lie. Stupid, pathetic me.

Breathing out heavily, it physically hurts as I cry into the pillow. That is until the door opens, and Father Aaron comes into the room. I lie painfully still as he tugs the white collar off his shirt and undoes the buttons of his shirt one by one. Staring down at the angels on his bed who hate him.

Removing his shirt, he comes over to the bed and leans over me. Cologne and musk hit my senses. The clogging kind, wrapping around my neck and staying there. My muscles lock as he puts his lips on the side of my face. “Don’t fret over your grandmother, my angel. She died peacefully many months ago.”

Turning my head to face him, I stare up at him leaning over me. Close. Too close. Maisie’s soft snores fill the silence. She’s too exhausted from grief to wake up. Hate burns hot and violent through me, but I suppress the need to scream and rip him apart. “What about her funeral?”

“It was small. Your father was there.” I blink tears away. Dad was at her funeral? Did he question where I was? As if reading my mind, Father Aaron reveals, “He wished you well on your new journey to join the convent. Outside contact at St. Bridget’s is forbidden, you see. He understood your need to grieve with your sisters instead of attending another funeral of the people who raised you.”

“Why?” my voice wavers as I ask the question I’ve wanted to know all along. A question every victim of a crime wants to know. “Why me?”

“Because I wanted you. And when I want something, I get.”

“Like your sister?” It slips from my mouth like a breath. He isn’t aware that I know the truth about Callum’s heritage, and the adoration melts from his face. He grabs my face, and I gasp.

“Yes.” His grip tightens. “A mistake I will never make again.”

I shudder. “I’m s-sorry, my Lord.”

“I suppose I don’t have to ask who told you, the deviant fucker that my son is. I have repented for that mistake. The morning-after-pill is in the cabinet in the bathroom for you both to take. Birth control will be administered. His Greatness understands me preventing reproduction given the demon I produced last time.”

And a demon he is. The man I’m in love with on the other side of the house, who has just stamped on my heart that I gave him willingly without any thought of the consequences.The loss of Callum, Gran’s betrayal, and her death are suddenly too much to bear.

I don’t want this life—I want to die.

“My Ava,” Father Aaron whispers, his grip loosening on my face. “Don’t cry. I shouldn’t say this, but you are my favorite.” I feel my stomach twist in the cloud of anguish. If I was his favorite, then why take Maisie? “You fit into this family as if you were always meant to. And now you’re mine, as his Greatness willed it to be. You’re so special. My chosen one.”

His mouth suddenly falls against my lips.

My first kiss flashes before my eyes, and right there, in the corner of my eye, the distinctive shadow of Father Aaron watching it from across the court. Fury smoldering in his blue eyes. Watching a boy kiss the girl he wanted for himself, and probably did the moment he stepped foot into Little Willow and saw me attending church with Gran. And like the cold operator that he is, he twisted the mind of a sick, grief-stricken woman and turned her against her own blood. Using Gran to mold me into the weak little victim that I am right now. Allowing this madman to put his lips on mine and not fighting.

The truth was there all along. Somewhere, somehow, in my mind. But the truth isn’t easy to face. That’s why we always abandon it and dance in the light of lies. It’s why I do.

The chosen one? Then why did he choose another? He’s full of shit, and I hate him.

Father Aaron’s tongue slips into my mouth. Callum doesn’t want me, neither do my parents. Maisie hates me. The one who does want anything to do with me gropes my breasts over my dress and moans softly into my mouth. It repulses me so much that I turn my head and break the kiss with a breath of shame. His chuckle is breathy against the side of my face, and I’m sickened. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

I can’t stop thinking about you, Callum said to me once. For two people so different, they’re alike at this moment. Both wanting me in sexual ways, but not me. Not the person behind the carcass that is my face and body.

And it makes me so fucking angry. At Father Aaron, and especially at Callum.

“We will continue this later after dinner. Don’t think I can’t feel it, Ava. How much you want me.” His hand that I’m painfully aware of grazes off my thigh, and my insides clench as he forces my panties aside and sinks his fingers deep inside of me. He breathes out heavy and hot, and I close my eyes, stomach twisting even tighter into a knot. “Hot and wet. Just like last night.”

I almost vomit. No. He’s delusional. I’m not wet—I could never be anything other than bone dry from his sick touch. The only reason I was last night was because of Callum.

“If you want, it can just be us. I can send Maisie to John. He has, after all, waited so long and patiently for a girl of his own. I’ll make love to you in a way a man and woman should. Naked, under these covers. You’ll enjoy it more than you think.” Removing his finger, I watch in my peripheral vision as he puts it into his mouth. “So sweet.”

I want to taste you. I gasp out as Father Aaron’s face morphs into Callum’s when we were in the woods.

Am I losing my mind?

Finally getting off me, I let out a breath I’d been holding in as Father Aaron goes over to the wardrobe to fetch a new black shirt. He says nothing as he puts it on, and I’m relieved that Maisie’s still passed out beside me and heard nothing of what just happened. For I’m sure if she were awake, she’d have something to say.

Like maybe I am a slut. A whore. A temptress. A seductress.