Page 104 of Warrior

Who?

He crowds me back against a wall, just as a group of men and women come rushing down the hall. Only one man does a double-take but quickly averts his eyes at Gabriel’s bared-teeth hiss. I force myself to meet Gabriel’s gaze when his attention returns to me.

The unfortunate part is that he’s attractive. Dark hair that’s starting to grow out a bit, so it falls into his piercing blue eyes. Pale skin with just a glimmer of a tan. My heart hurts, knowing what he went through.

Not just in Terror, but out of it. Because his trauma clearly didn’t end. Of course it didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him over the music. “It doesn’t make it better?—”

“It doesn’t.” He withdraws a syringe from his pocket. “This, though? It makes me feel a little better to watch you deconstruct.”

I’m not going to take it. I don’t even focus on it, the amber liquid somehow magnified and illuminated in the dark hallway—or maybe it’s just my imagination. And my fixation.

Shit.

“I’m going to get better,” I tell him. “And then what?”

“You’ll get better when you hit rock bottom. Which is what, exactly? What does rock bottom look like for the most independent, fearless woman I’ve ever met?” He reaches out and traces the capped point down the side of my face. “It looks like fear. It looks like loneliness. It looks like your lies isolating you to the point where you don’t think you can tell a single person the truth.”

He exhales.

“It looks,” he continues, “like shame. Your shame is so colorful, Artemis. You’ve overcome so much. You were sold to the highest bidder time and again. You were dressed in gold chains they called lingerie, and you don’t seem to care that one of your rapists has been living under your roof.”

I stiffen. “Reese?—”

“Say it with me.” Gabriel leans down. “Hefucked youand didn’t give you a choice.”

“He didn’t have one either.”

“That’s what I told myself, too. Those times when I just really wanted to disappear into the moment and pretend it was normal.” His eyes are cold. He’s so far removed from this conversation, I don’t think he even cares about the buttons he’s pressing. He just wants it to hurt in any way possible. “Did you fall for Reese as a fifteen-year-old? Develop an unhealthy attachment?”

“No—”

“No,” he repeats. “I don’t believe you, Artemis.”

Did I?

I press my hands to the wall to keep from snatching the syringe from his hand.

“He was the only one to offer you kindness, wasn’t he? Outstretched hand, a smile. And then, even if he said he didn’t want to, he fucked you.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been there, Artemis, remember? I know exactly what kind of sick games these people will play to get inside your head. Fucking a shell of a woman isn’t enough. Stealing our virginity wasn’t enough.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’mright,” he counters. “But you don’t have to let that betrayal crush you. It’s all stuck in your head now, isn’t it? Every time his parents brought him to Terror, every time they watched from the corner—how twisted was it that theywatchedtheir son fuck a girl they bought?”

“Stop saying that.” I inch past him.

“And now he’s getting the milk for free,” he says.

I freeze.

My relationship with Reese now has no bearing on our past.

The biggest lie I’ve ever told.

“He still calls his mother,” Gabriel adds.

I know that.

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