Page 89 of The Souls We Claim

“You ever think about fighting back?”

She nods. “God, all the time. If I share this with you, you promise you’ll never tell anyone?”

I nod. “I’m a fucking vault, Arianne.”

She lifts onto the tip of her toes, puts her hand on my shoulder, and brings her lips close to my ear. I tip my head closer to hers. “One night, when he passed out drunk, I was lying on the bathroom floor, and I prayed for a knife so I could stab him through his heart.”

Her words, softly spoken with hints of embarrassment, remind me of how innocent my girl…Ari…is.

I turn, my lips so close to hers that I give her a sweet kiss. “Kick him,” I say.

“What?”

I tip my chin at Patrick, who is slumped on the ground. “Kick him. You have a chance to pay him back for every single blow. He’ll have no idea it was you. He wakes up, I’ll knock him out again.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t do that. Even if I want to.”

I cup her cheeks. “One day, you’re gonna need to make your peace with all this. He’s the aggressor; you’re the victim. Eventually you’ll be a survivor, but only once you’ve processed everything he ever did to you. And you’re gonna wish you’d had revenge. Take it now, sweetheart. He can’t hurt you.”

Patrick groans, and so I step back and kick the fucker under the chin, after which he passes right back out.

“It’s that easy, kitten.”

She looks around. “Everyone’s watching.”

“Yeah, because they’re here to cheer you on. Every one of them would swap places with you and finish him off.”

Arianne gasps. “You aren’t gonna kill him, are you?”

“Do you want me to? Because I’d kill him in a heartbeat for you if you asked.”

Her hair swings in her pigtails as she shakes her head. “I don’t want to kill him, because I wouldn’t want to put that on your conscience.”

I huff a laugh. “Kitten, it wouldn’t even register. There are deaths on my conscience, but he wouldn’t be one of them. In the pluses and minuses of my life, killing him would be a positive.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I think he perhaps needs to feel like I did.”

“Yeah?” I step back. “Have at him.”

Arianne takes a deep breath, then kicks him like she’s trying to kick a football down a field. Right in his ribs. There’s a cracking sound.

Then she hops around on one foot. “Motherfucker, that hurts.”

I grin at her choice of expletive as I grab her arm and hold her steady. “Feel better though?”

“Much.”

I take a knuckle duster out of my cut pocket and hand it to her. “Put this on.”

“What is it?”

My sweet little innocent. All doe-eyed, holding my knuckle duster as if it’s gonna bite her. I take it from her, then slide her fingers through it. “It’ll add to your punch. I think you should make his face look like yours.”

“I shouldn’t want to do this, but…”

“But what?”

“I hate him.”