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36

Calista

After

“Up we get.” Declan used the knife at my throat to get me to rise from where I’d been crouched next to Jerry.

My body was on autopilot, which was working just fine for me right now because every signal I was demanding my brain to send out wasn’t computing. My tongue refused to work, my arms refused to move. To lash out.

I was picturing it on repeat in my head—the different ways that I would be able to disarm him. None of the moves I’d done before, but that didn’t matter. If I could just get myself to do something, it would be better than what was happening right now, which was me, alone in my house, and a psychopath holding a knife to my throat.

Jerry was lying still on the floor, the silence around him so deafening it was like the entire world had disappeared. I focused on his chest, trying to catch the faintest rise and fall. If I focused on that, I wouldn’t crumble. Not yet.

“You’re awfully quiet, Calista.” Declan leaned into the space between us, his face morphing into a mocking pout. “From everything I’ve gathered, this house is usually quite loud.” He leaned back, his smile turning feral as he used his gun to gesture to the bedroom. “Especially in there.”

His insinuation made my stomach churn, the violation sharp and personal. Rage flared in me, hot and quick, but it didn’t burn away the fear. He’d watched us. Fane and me. That realization made my blood boil, but the knife against my throat reminded me how easily he could cut me down. My weapon—the one that should have been at my side—lay unconscious at my feet.

“I thought you said not to make a sound.”

Declan’s smile faltered for a moment before twisting into something feral, dangerous. “No one likes a fucking smart ass, Calista,” he hissed, and I swear to God, I saw his black eyes swirl like something foul lurked underneath.

I swallowed four times before I managed to open my mouth and push out any more words. Half because I was doing my best not to tell him to go and fuck himself and half because my anger was definitely a coping mechanism to mediate the tremor I felt starting in my hands at the very real fact that I was here, alone, and had for the first time in my entire life had a gun pointed to my head.

“You’re supposed to be in Artington.” My voice came out strong. Calm and steady, and I was so fucking impressed with myself, particularly when I caught the tiny blink of surprise from this asshole when I didn’t start blubbering. Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty sure if I could’ve, I would have already pissed myself, but it turned out I was made from a lot stronger stuff. I just really needed to catch up with the fact that maybe I wasn’t innately soft.

Maybe I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

The thought gave me something else to hold onto, something to focus on.

“Ah, right. Well, you see, I am intimately aware of Ashton and all his little connections, not to mention their lacking legality.” He started to wave his gun around while he spoke. “I did go back, just for a few days. Just to set a few things into motion. Swapped my cards with a buddy of mine. He didn’t even know!” Declan raised his eyebrows at me in some weird, silent way of letting me know he thought that would impress me. A brilliant move in…whatever this was.

A game. That’s all this was to him, and he’d decided to make me an unwilling player.

“But, and this is where it gets really fun, I’ve been right here!” He whispered the last bit like a secret, and all the food I’d crammed down my throat with Delilah threatened to come back up. “Actually, that’s not true. I’ve been out there ”—Declan gestured his gun toward the front door—“while he was in here . With you. ” The barrel of his gun swung back to rest right in the middle of my forehead. It was no easier to live through it the second time, especially with a knife at my throat.

“Fane?” I just wanted to keep him talking. It was the only thing running through my mind. If he was talking to me, then I was alive. “Is this like some unrequited love thing?” I swallowed and tried not to wince at the way the knife shifted where he held it.

Declan’s smile dropped instantly, and it was like looking at a completely different person. No less fucking rotten, but a different kind of rotten. It pulsed from him now, and it was very clear that I had not only missed the mark, but I’d sent my assumption out so wide that I felt the way his hand twitched at my throat. How easy it would be for him to flick his wrist all because I couldn’t hold my tongue.

In my defense, I’d never been in this position before, so I had no idea that my defense mechanism was me turning into a fucking dumbass with zero concern for her own well-being.

“I watched you,” he hissed. “Night after night. I was curious to see how broken you were after I hit you with my car. Did you like how I had a little fun with your brakes?”

“You tried to kill me.”

He waved his gun, dismissing my statement before dropping it down to his side. “Don’t be so dramatic, Rosie. Can I call you Rosie? I like it.”

“No, you fucking ca— ah, ” I gasped, grinding my teeth together when he pressed the knife further into the side of my throat. The sting of it made my jaw cramp, and I felt the tickle of something dripping down my neck, soaking my shirt.

“Shh, shh, shh.” Declan tucked the gun into the back of his jeans with a casual ease that spoke to how comfortable he was in this moment. His free hand rose, fingers trailing along my cheek with a feather-light touch that felt grotesquely intimate. I forced myself to keep swallowing, my throat constricting against the rising bile.

I didn’t see it coming.

One second, the knife was there, sharp and cold against my neck. The next, it was gone, his hand swinging back in a blur.

The slap landed with a crack so loud it reverberated in my skull. Pain didn’t register at first—it was just sound and shock. And then it hit me. My skin ignited, a searing blaze consuming the entire left side of my face. It felt like a swarm of fire ants were crawling under my skin, biting and stinging as they spread across my cheek, my lips, beneath my eyelid.

My nose throbbed, sharp and hot, and the vision in my left eye blurred, leaving me momentarily disoriented.

I couldn’t stop the yelp of surprise that escaped me—a small, involuntary sound that felt like a betrayal. I wished with every ounce of strength I had that I’d swallowed it down, buried it deep where he couldn’t find it.

But the damage was done.

That horrifying giddiness flickered back into his expression, spreading like oil across an ocean, slick and sinister. His knife was back at my throat in an instant, the cold press of it rooting me to the spot. The quips I’d been clinging to—the fleeting scraps of defiance that had kept me upright—died in my throat, leaving only the sound of my shallow breaths to fill the silence.

I wasn’t running outside.

I didn’t have Jerry.

And there would be no Fane at the end of this to catch me.

There was only me and the terrifying likelihood that I might not be enough.

“Rosie suits you. So soft, delicate. I think I’ll call you Rosie. I mean, of course, if that’s okay with you?”

I nodded my head stiffly, my neck pinching a little at the way my head had so aggressively wrenched to the side.

Declan dragged the back of his knuckles across the cheek he’d just hit, his touch mockingly tender. I couldn’t feel it, just the dull, stinging heat radiating from the skin that I knew was already swelling.

“So pretty, Rosie. How you’re changing color right before my eyes.” His voice was low and conversational, like we were discussing fucking paint samples. His smile twisted, warping into something manic. “I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if this was going to be as fun as some of my other ideas, but…I really am having a great time. Are you?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I watched, terror coursing through me, locking my bones and squeezing at my rib cage, while his face started to drop.

“Yes,” I forced the word past my trembling lips.

Declan’s smile returned, wide and gleeful. “Oh, good. Good. ”

He nodded, leaning forward to press a kiss to the side of my face. Lingering in a way that felt suffocating. I was grateful—pathetically, desperately grateful—that I couldn’t feel much. Just the small, sharp sting near my eyebrow and the growing pressure that made it clear it was puffing and swelling.

Before I had time to react, Declan’s knife disappeared from my throat, his hand snapping out to grab my ponytail. The yank was so sudden, so violent, my head jerked back with a cry that broke free before I could stop it. My eyes watered from the strain, and the angle made swallowing nearly impossible. I couldn’t see him anymore, but I felt him.

Felt the way he yanked me sideways so he could step around Jerry’s still body before pressing himself against me. Fully. Completely. There wasn’t an inch of space left between us, and the hard, horrifying evidence of what this was doing to him pressed against my stomach.

Bile rose in my throat, hot and acidic, threatening to spill out as the angle of my neck fought to keep it down. If the sheer knowledge of his arousal wasn’t enough to make me sick, the sensation of his tongue dragging up my throat—lapping at the blood that trickled from the cut he’d made—would have done it.

My whole body filled with dread. Like water pouring in, starting at my toes and slowly filling me up. Weighing me down. Drowning me in panic.

He was going to kill me.

I knew it. I felt his intention to do it in every word he spoke, every rise and fall of his shoulders. The grip he had on me, and how he dug his nails into the skin of my scalp like if he could rip it from my skull, he would.

The only real thing I knew at that moment was that I would be damned if I went down without trying my best to take him with me.

I just needed to be smart.

“You know what’s missing? Fane!” Declan said his name like it was vile. Like the very existence of it was something so desperately unwanted. Something he loathed.

I thought that maybe I’d been right from the start, when he approached me in the café, when he touched me at the bar, that he was only interested in me because of Fane.

But then…he’d never done anything directly to him. Because of that, my concern had morphed from being for Fane to being about what he’d do if he’d found out what was happening.

It all clicked together so clearly for me right then. I was nothing to Declan. A means to an end. A pawn to be used and shifted in his game.

He wanted to hurt Fane. I had no idea why, but he obviously thought the best way to do that was through me. My whole chest constricted at that thought. I’d only just gotten him back. We were meant to have more time than this. Our whole fucking lives— that’s what we were meant to have.

This piece of shit wasn’t going to take that. From me. From Fane. Who’d given up everything for me. Given up everything for everyone, his whole fucking life.

This man who always insisted on putting himself between me and the world.

Yeah, well, guess fucking what Declan? My turn.

“I think we should call him. Do you want to do the honors, or should I? Wait, I know!” Declan just kept talking, grabbing ahold of my upper arm and dragging me toward the bedroom. He shoved me down to sit on the edge of the bed before replacing his knife back at the same spot on my throat. The tip bit deeper than before as he rustled around in his pocket before presenting me with my phone. The lock screen illuminated to show a photo of Fane and Jerry when they’d fallen asleep together on the couch.

“I’ll call him using your phone, so we can share the honors. By the way, you dropped this, Rosie.” He gave a little shrug, his tone a mocking reprimand as he held it up to my face to unlock it. “You should really keep better track of your things.”

I was trying to think of every single scenario in my head. Trying to think about what I could do to get out of here. To not think about where he had brought me. Why he had brought me there and what he was going to do.

The phone rang only once before Fane picked up, and I knew it was because he’d been waiting for my call.

“Baby.” His voice rumbled through the line, warm and familiar, so solid it sent a tremor through me, like my soul was shifting. Reshaping. Preparing for impact.

That was all it took to push me over this line I’d been teetering on. Of numbness and feeling too much.

“I’m going to speak to Delilah about how long she kept you. I think we need a rule. No longer than an hour. Two, max.” I closed my eyes, the swelling making it hard to move my face, and felt a tear fall down the side of my face he hadn’t touched.

For this man who had always been my definition of safe, who’d given me the safety to be soft, just like a rose. Just like Declan had pointed out.

But roses weren’t just soft, were they?

They were also covered in fucking thorns.

“What about me?” Declan’s voice crawled over my body, the intent behind his words cold and heavy. “Does that time limit apply to the time that I get with her?”

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening, and I felt it then, like I had the first night I’d seen him. This string, tied to every rib in my body, going right through my phone to him on the other end.

“Calista?” I heard every ounce of terror, of fury, of blazing fucking anger in his voice brewing on the other end like a storm.

“Don’t be shy, Rosie.” Declan moved the knife just enough to dig a little deeper, making me wince. A fresh trickle of blood dripped down my neck. “Say hi to our Fane.”

“Fane,” I murmured, my voice strong. Sure. My eyes trained on the imaginary piece of string I pictured leading from me and into the phone. Light, luminescent. Something made of sunshine, and drew strength from it.

“Cali.” Fane’s voice broke on my name. It was a plea that time, a little piece of him breaking and slicing me wide open in the process. Declan’s smile widened at it.

“I wouldn’t leave your hotel room if I were you, boss. The moment you do, I’ll know, and if you happen to weasel yourself past my notice, then there’s a really good chance you won’t make it back to dear old Darling.”

“What do you want?” There was no emotion in Fane’s voice. It was flat and lifeless and sounded a whole lot like how he looked when he showed up at my café all those weeks ago.

“Finally what I’m fucking owed .” Declan bared his teeth at the phone. His face shifted from one mask to another so fast I thought I was losing my mind because in the very next second, his smile was back in place. He looked so relaxed he could have been sipping fucking cocktails on a beach somewhere. “First Rosie, then everything else will fall into place, and I will finally be the one he respects.” He took a deep breath, a sick, pleased smile on his face. “Well, we didn’t want you to miss the show, did we?”

“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Don’t you fucking touch her!” He practically roared the words into the phone. They were visceral, and that string that led from me to him pulled taut. Aching.

Declan’s hand shot out, making contact with the side of my face he’d already hit. The sound of it crackled through the room. It echoed off the walls and made the tips of my fingers tingle, but I didn’t make a sound.

One plan came into play, and for it to work, for me to have even a tiny shot, I needed Declan closer. I needed him out of his fucking mind.

“That’s okay. You will soon, boss.” Declan grinned, leaning down toward the phone, his voice smug and triumphant. “The important thing right now is for you to know that every time you tell me I can’t do something to her, Fane, I will absolutely do it.”

Declan set the phone down beside me, and then his hand trailed against the side of my face he hit. His tongue darted out, wetting his cracked lips sending a spike of nausea through me again.

“She is soft, Fane. I’ll give you that. I think I’ve learned what she likes from watching you both. I have to say, you did surprise me.” Declan laughed to himself. “You don’t talk much, but you sure have a lot to say to Rosie when you fuck her.” His fingers trailed over the shell of my ear and elicited an involuntary shiver from me, making my organs twist and roil.

It was like slugs in my stomach. Their fat, slimy bodies worming their way up and out of my throat. My body revolted. I didn’t have time to say anything before I lurched forward, the contents of my stomach emptying violently onto the floor of my bedroom. Declan’s knife had been at my throat still, and the slice nicked deeper and even wider. The flow of blood now felt slow and constant.

“You fucking bitch, ” Declan spat. A hand wrapped around my throat, squeezing until my air was cut off completely. The pressure of his hand on the cut on my neck made my eyes water. I felt the tip of his blade dig in just under my collarbone, sinking in with a stinging, burning pressure that made me feel stupid for thinking the burning on my face was anything to cry about.

This felt like fire was being poured into me. My hands gripped at the hand that wrapped around my throat, and I dug my nails in even when it tightened. Even when my world began to narrow, the edges of my vision darkening.

I could hear Fane on the phone, but the rushing in my ears was so loud I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and then Declan’s hand was gone as quickly as it had reached out for me. I pulled in a deep inhale of air, the burning in my lungs dissipating slowly as I pulled in breath and breath, reigniting when it was pushed back out in a fit of coughs.

“You’ve let me down, Fane,” Declan gritted through his teeth. “I studied you for days. Learned how you touched her.” His lips curled into a sneer. “I guess you were doing it wrong.”

“Cali, baby, talk to me.” Fane ignored Declan’s words completely, his voice breaking on my name again. “I’m right here, Rose. You talk to me.” My chest pinched at the way he used my nickname, how he was taking it back as something that would only ever belong to us. It settled over me then that we both knew what was going to happen. I knew it from the moment he pulled me into this room, but I’d been alone then.

I wasn’t alone now.

“Rosie,” Fane said again.

“Remember the night we met?” I whispered, my voice a little raspy, but the words were clear.

“Shut up!” Declan snarled, hands clenched at his sides, his chest starting to rise and fall rapidly. Featured twisted into a grotesque pout.

“I remember.” Fane’s strained voice reached me, and I imagined that string pulling taut again. Over and over, like I could feel his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest.

“I heard your laugh and couldn’t stop looking around until I found you. You were sitting at the bar.” Despite it all, a little hum escaped me at the memory of that moment. “I think I knew at that moment I loved you.”

“I said, shut up!” The back of Declan’s hand cracked across my face for the third time, but the skin was so numb that it hardly even registered. I just focused on Fane.

“Sunshine.” My words were a little wobbly, half of my mouth feeling numb and puffy, but I told him anyway. “That’s what your laugh felt like. Being covered in sunshine. I love— ”

The sound of my phone hitting the wall cut me off, its screen going black as it clattered to the floor. The call disconnected.

“You’ll learn to listen to me, you fucking cunt!” Declan grabbed both my wrists and pushed me back onto the bed. He held them tight in one hand above my head while his other moved down to hold my face, making sure I was looking at him.

“Say my name,” he demanded.

Over my dead fucking body.

My voice was muffled by the grip he had on my jaw, and he had to loosen it slightly before he repeated the demand. “Again.”

So I did exactly as I was asked. “Fane,” I said.

“ My name.” His face was starting to go red. The loss of control driving him feral. Unraveling him, thread by rotten thread.

“Fane,” I repeated, still seeing that string taut between us despite my phone being destroyed. Despite the distance between us.

“ Fane, Fane, Fane,” I chanted quietly, defiantly.

Declan’s head lowered, his face inches from mine, his twisted smile faltering for just a second. That’s all I needed.

I smashed my head into his with every ounce of force I could muster.

The impact sent a shockwave through my skull, and for one paralyzing moment, my entire world went black. My vision flickered in and out, and then–mercifully–it stuck. Declan stumbled back. Eyes unfocused, his blood streaming from his nose and painting his teeth red as it spilled over his lips.

He was stunned. I think I was fucking stunned too, because I wasted precious seconds just watching him come to the realization that I’d just headbutted him.

Our eyes locked, and then he was lunging for me. A rabid, furious growl tore from his throat that reminded me of all the worst things a person was capable of, and I rolled. The move sent my head spinning, and I landed on the floor, the impact causing a shooting pain to ricochet through the spot just under my collarbone, radiating from the spot where he’d sunk his knife, through to my chest and down my arm. But then I saw it—his knife. Right fucking next to me.

I didn’t hesitate. I picked it up, the blade already wet with my blood, held it tight, and started swinging it.

Somehow I managed to stab him in the back of the leg. Well, I thought it was the back of his leg, but when I got to my feet, still stumbling, I saw that I’d embedded the blade in the middle of his ass cheek.

His roar of pain was probably the best sound I’d ever heard in my life. I didn’t waste time then, I was moving. Bolting out of the bedroom door, knowing I needed to keep him away from Jerry. If he couldn’t get to me I was sure he’d try and hurt him more than he already had.

I headed right for the living room, and just like when he’d chased me on my run, I felt the breeze of phantom fingers reaching for me, but this time they were tangible things. They were real, and I hadn’t been fast enough.

Declan caught me and threw me to the floor of the living room before his body came down on top of mine with so much force it winded me.

The blood from his nose covered the bottom half of his face. His lips and teeth. When he smiled, he looked insane with the way his blood had settled into the dry, cracked skin of his lips. His tongue darted out, licking the blood like it was the best fucking thing he’d ever tasted.

“Oh, Rose!” he crooned with a deranged sort of laugh, his hands scrabbling to pin my arms as I fought like hell to keep them free. “You know exactly what I like.”

“Get your fucking hands off me!” I snarled, managing to get a knee free and drive it as hard as I could between his legs, but all he did was grunt. Not even an eye twitch.

It was enough to throw me off my focus, and I lost our frantic battle when he managed to get both my wrists pinned above my head.

A guttural, throat-ripping sound tore from me, raw and involuntary, as he ripped the buttons from my blood soaked shirt, exposing my breasts to him. When his gaze raked over me and a vile hunger flashed in his eyes, he placed his free hand over one and squeezed violently, his fingernails digging into my skin.

He let go only to grab my face, forcing my mouth open before he pressed his cracked, dry lips against mine. His tongue slithered forward like a worm, trying to burrow its way down my throat.

All I could taste was blood, and my body jolted with nausea. The swell of panic started to rise, and the realization that the one chance I gave myself to get the upper hand had slipped through my fingers.

I started bucking my hips, trying to displace him from where he was bearing all his weight down on top of me, but all he did was grip my face harder, my jaw aching painfully at the way his fingers were digging into the bone.

I didn’t stop. I kicked, I flailed, every part of me moving like I was possessed. His grip shifted slightly as he tried to balance himself against my relentless thrashing, and that was all I needed.

You didn’t grow up on land with Dallas Grey as your father and not learn how to fire a gun.

Declan assumed I’d aim for his face again or maybe try another wild kick to his balls. He adjusted, bracing for the wrong attack, and that gave me the opening I needed. My hand slipped free of his hold and darted around his body, reaching for the weapon I’d seen him tuck into the back of his jeans.

The moment the gun was pressed to his side, he stilled above me. The house around us went deathly quiet, broken only by my heavy gasping pants.

The adrenaline was coursing through me so rapidly that everything turned crystal clear. Hyper focused.

“Get the fuck off me,” I said, each word with precision and dug the gun into his side even deeper, enough to make him pull his hand from my face.

Declan laughed, slow and mocking. “You won’t shoot me.” He sounded so fucking sure of himself. I was about to tell him that I was absolutely going to shoot him when another voice pierced the air.

“Oh, I think she might.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Declan, but I watched him slowly lift his head to look up at the source of that voice. I didn’t need to see him to know who it was.

Ashton.

I listened to the heavy footfalls of his boots walk around us slowly, lazily, until he was standing behind Declan. Watched as the barrel of his own gun settled onto the back of Declan’s head.

“Get off her.” Ashton’s voice was sharp, deep, and nothing like the man I knew. The man who had been one of my closest friends. Someone who had come into my life fused himself to a part of me, made himself integral in memories and birthdays and life . Who’d only ever been kind and gentle to me, but was shaped by a past I’d never understand. A past that was dark and vicious and monstrous.

That was who was looking back at me now, and I was fucking relieved.

Declan kept his eyes on me the whole time, and I didn’t lower the gun for even a second, reaching for the ends of my ruined shirt with one hand and clutching it closed.

Ashton didn’t waver. “Looks like Cindy did some real damage, huh, Dec?”

“I stabbed him in the ass.” My chest was heaving, but my gun was steady, and for some reason, it was the first thing that came to mind.

Ashton’s laugh was so misplaced, so perfectly not appropriate, that by doing that one single thing he irrecoverably changed the entire situation for me. Because standing there, running through everything that had just happened, I still felt like me .

The terror that had been coursing through me, the life-ending panic—it had all vanished. I felt peace .

“I get to tell Fane.” He wagged his eyebrows at me, and I knew what he was doing. He was trying to keep me focused on whatever eye of the storm this was, where I could laugh while pointing a gun at a man I was pretty sure had come here to kill me. But… Fane.

“He’s going to hurt him.” I moved my eyes from Declan to Ashton’s icy-blue ones that flashed with fury at the very idea that something could happen to his friend. The same fury burned as he gave me a quick once-over, his gaze cataloging every bruise, every cut, every mark on my body.

Marks Declan had made. Against his own life, if I had to guess.

It was a strange concept to grasp that this had all happened in Darling. Sweet, safe Darling.

Love of my life spontaneously shows back up? Check.

Moves into my house because of a big fat lie I told for two straight years? Check.

Attacked by a psychopath who watched me have sex for an undisclosed number of days? Fucking check.

A shudder racked my body at the thought. “He said—”

“Fane’s fine. He’s on his way.” Ashton interrupted, his voice calm but laced with steel. He dug his gun further into the back of Declan’s head, his movements measured and deliberate.

“You lied,” Ash gritted the words out, his tone venomous. Declan flinched, his composure cracking, and I noticed for the first time the knife Ashton had also pressed into his side. “Didn’t you, you fucking pin-dick piece of shit?”

“What do you—”

“Cali,” Ash said sharply, eyes cutting back to me. “I need you to put the gun down and go check on Jerry. Dial 911 on your phone, but don’t call them yet.”

“When do I call them?”

“You’ll know.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Mine’s in my pocket.” His instructions were clear. Calculated.

I could start to feel the adrenaline was wearing off from my system, but I forced myself to hold Ashton’s eyes for a second longer.

“Between one and ten?” I asked him, ignoring the slight tremors starting to take over my body.

“I’m good. I’m a ten.” His voice was unshakable. “Everything will be okay. I just need you to sit with Jerry. Okay?” he asked again.

“Okay.” And I believed him.

“Remove the magazine, and leave the gun on the floor.”

I did as he asked, the weight of it hitting the floor like a punctuation mark to everything that had just happened. My fingers were stiff as I reached into Ashton’s pocket for his phone, but I managed.

I made my way to Jerry, my steps unbalanced but purposeful. I knelt beside him, checking him over, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Letting him know I was there, that he would be okay.

I stayed there, my hands resting on Jerry’s fur, and when the sound of the gunshot cracked through the house, reverberating off the walls, off the hardwood floors, I didn’t even jump.

As soon as the ringing in my ears began to dissipate, I hit call.