Page 333 of Hell Hath No Fury

Her hands, so soft and sure, clasped my cheeks to pull my head down. In her little brown boots, she’d lifted to her toes, her near black eyes absorbing every ounce of starlight outside of the shed. “Happy Birthday,” she’d whispered, a sweet warning I didn’t heed, and then she’d sealed our souls for all eternity.

She was jasmine-scented shampoo, vanilla lip balm, and blueberry gum, her lips a drugging concoction of searching, tentative confidence.

My arms unfolded to hold her to me, my beating heart roaring in my ears, and then I kissed her back.

We’d wound up against the wall, her head angled by my hand and her body pinned by mine, our tongues familiarizing themselves with one another. When we’d finally broken apart, breathless and smiling, she’d said, “I saved that for you.”

“What?” I said, drugged and wanting her mouth back on mine.

“My first kiss.”

Then she’d skipped away, grinning at me over her shoulder as she headed back inside to help my mom prepare dinner.

I should have done the same, but instead, I’d retreated farther into the shed to beat one out.

Rose hadn’t been my first kiss, but she’d never held that against me, considering it had been stolen by Cynthia Harold in the sixth grade without my consent. In any case, I didn’t think it counted since I hadn’t kissed her back, and I definitely hadn’t felt like the earth might shatter beneath my sneakers from the mere meeting of our skin.

Staring down at her now, I watched as those depthless eyes blinked open and flinched away from the sunlight coursing in through the window behind my bed and across the room. “We’re home?”

She’d slept during half the drive in the back of a Town Car, and I’d carried her inside.

Mom had been awake, the lamp on her nightstand illuminating my parents’ bedroom window, but she’d stayed in her room, thank fuck. There was no way in hell I could tell her what’d happened, what we’d been made to do.

And I was certain she knew better than to ask.

“We’re home,” I said, squeezing Rose to me.

At the warehouse, I’d had to help her dress and walk into the next room, she’d been so shaken up by the initiation.

And I was hard just thinking about how she would’ve looked pinned between me and some random guy, choking on each breath as she came.

I was a sick asshole, through and through, but I refused to let her know how awful I was. The same way I couldn’t bring myself to regret the night before even while hating that it’d happened.

Planting a swift kiss upon her forehead, I gently peeled her off my body before she could tell I was turned on and climbed out of bed. “Need to piss.”

“Get me some water on your way back?” she asked, then yawned.

She rolled her face into my pillow, her shoulder-length black hair a mess and her back exposed. It was now branded by three snakes with dollar signs for eyes.

Between her shoulder blades—and my own—they writhed upward, their maws open for three black nightingales to soar toward her neck. Blood dripped from their fangs, coalescing into barbed wire that appeared to be vines at first glance. The barbs crushed their scales, the snakes twisting away from them into the shape of a diamond.

I’d never been excited to initiate, not in the way Rose had. My little adventurer, I used to call her, for she was never one to turn a blind eye to the unknown. No, my Rose ran headfirst toward it with smiling eyes and a far too trusting heart—always too curious for her own good.

My mother used to say it was good for me, thatshewas good for me, even when I’d wound up grounded or in the emergency room. She’d say that I was too much like my father, and a little color added to my spirit would only make me more charming.

She’d be horrified if she knew just how un-charming her son truly was. If she knew what the assholes in charge at Nightingale had awoken within me.

If she knew how much I’d enjoyed the depravity, the sick abuse I’d warred and lost against that had now wrought havoc to my heart.

Rose Beckett was my breath, my every waking and final thought, and the reason I’d stayed to initiate rather than encourage her to run away with me and escape.

There is no escaping them, she’d said to me months ago in the dead of night atop the dunes of the beach. She’d said we’d initiate, we’d do what we had to, and that we’d survive it. Together.

I’d believed her, but perhaps I’d been wrong to. Maybe I shouldn’t have ignored the sense of foreboding that accompanied the island’s deadliest secret. For it wasn’t the fear for our lives that had made me suggest we run but rather, the fear for our hearts.

Staring for another moment that tightened my throat, I sighed and tugged on a clean pair of briefs before heading to the bathroom.

Dad was in the kitchen when I entered, and I froze for a second before continuing to the fridge.