Page 55 of The Villain's Beast

“We don’t do favors for people, Gideon,” I said. “They do thingsforus toearnfavors.”

“That’s the way it’s always been,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe I’m tired of it.”

“I’ve heard this from you before.”

He laughed, the sound catching in the back of his throat like it hadn’t been meant for me. The noise was so aborted, so bitter, there was no way it could have come from any iteration of the boy I’d fallen in love with at sixteen.

“Don’t worry, Sin. Those kinds of dreams haven’t been mine for years.”

His use of the old nickname landed like a knife in my chest. I was glad I’d spent so much time apart from Gideon because I don’t think I would have survived having to see him, having to watch him grow up and change into whatever he was now.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why ask me that if you don’t care about the answer?”

“If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t have asked.” I took another step toward him, and he stepped back.

That wasn’t going to stop me.

“After you failed me out of freshman year English, my father took me out of school,” he explained, which was already common knowledge, at least to me. I’d noticed his absence immediately. “He…punished me.”

“How?” I closed the space between us until Gideon’s back was against the wall. He’d grown so tall, so muscular, but up close I could see the same flecks in his green eyes that had been there before. Maybe he wasn’t lost for good.

MaybeIwasn’t lost for good.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me,” I whispered.

“It’s not your business.”

“Tell me,” I demanded again.

“He isolated me,” Gideon rasped, eyes narrowed as his earlier look of appreciation had turned to barely constrained hatred. “I’d go days without seeing another soul, without talking…”

He exhaled quietly, dropping his head against the wall. He wasn’t scared of me anymore, and I didn’t know why.

“Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he showed up in my room. It had been a couple of weeks by then, maybe a month. I don’t know.” He smiled sadly. “He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me through the house.”

“Where?” I asked.

He pressed his fingers against a spot on his scalp and I touched him there. I didn’t ask and he didn’t flinch. He didn’t push me away when I pressed my fingertips into the softness of his skin until I felt the raised ridges of a scar.

“He dragged me to the pool and threw me in. When I tried to climb out, he bent over the edge and wouldn’t let me out.” Gideon held my stare for the first time since that night in his bedroom. “I tried to fight him and he kept pushing me under, holding me down. He tried to drown me, Sin. Hediddrown me.”

“I’ll kill him.”

Gideon ignored me. “After that, after he pulled me out of the pool by my hair and I threw up all over his shoes, he brought in a tutor and started acting like everything was normal again.”

“He’s insane.” I pushed against the scar on Gideon’s scalp, feeling the way it was inconsistent in its shape, as if multiple chunks of hair had been torn out of his head at the same time.

“It was the last time he had the upper hand on me in the water,” Gideon said.

“The Beast, indeed,” I murmured, letting my hand fall away from his hair to the side of his neck.

“But what he did to me then, all the things he did, I’d bear them a thousand times over rather than relive what it felt likewhenyouhurt me.” Gideon stabbed his finger into the middle of my chest, using enough force that it knocked me back. He pushed off the wall, shoving me again. I stumbled over the low coffee table, catching myself on the couch. Even if he hadn’t touched me, his words would have been enough to throw me off balance, and he still hadn’t answered my question.

I had no idea why Gideon was here.