Chapter 10: Rough Sex

 

The end of the shift came at five.

Briar was still at the cutlery station when she saw them leave.

Killian came through the lobby at four fifty-three, jacket on, keys in hand. Vivienne was beside him , her platinum hair loose over her shoulders. Killian held the lobby door open for her.

Vivienne said something and Killian looked at her and almost smiled.

Briar stood at the end of the serving line with a rolled napkin in both hands and could not look away. She watched them walk out together and the door closed and they were gone and her chest felt like something had been wrung out of it.

_

The walk home took forever because of her ankle. It really hurt. She took the side street, quieter, and she was three blocks from the house when a car slowed beside her.

Liam rolled down the window. "Get in."

"I'm fine."

"You're limping badly."

"I said I'm fine!" But her voice cracked on the last word and she hated it.

"Briar. Get in the car."

She got in.

He did not say anything about the canteen. She was glad. She pressed her face toward the window and watched the streetlights come on and thought: don't cry. Briar, Don't cry again. You have already cried so many times today.

Killian's car was already in the drive when they pulled up.

He was standing at the front door, not yet inside. He watched Liam's car pull up. He watched Briar get out.

"Liam," he said. Just the one word.

Liam looked at him over the roof of the car. "Her ankle is bad. She shouldn't be walking on it."

"I'm aware," Killian said.

They looked at each other for a moment. Then Liam got back in the car and left.

Killian looked at Briar.

She tried to smile. It probably did not look like a smile. "I wasn't going to bother you. I was just walking home. I didn't ask him to stop, he just did."

Killian did not respond to this. He took her arm and walked her inside.

_

He made her sit on the bed.

He went to the kitchen himself and came back with an ice pack wrapped in a dishcloth and crouched down and pressed it to her ankle. She sucked in a breath.

"Keep it elevated," he said. "Twenty minutes."

He is being nice! He brought it himself! Briar stared at the top of his head while he adjusted the cloth and thought: he does care. He does. He just doesn't know how to show it properly.

She wanted to say thank you but she was scared of saying the wrong thing and making him leave. So she just sat very still and let him do it and tried not to look too happy about it.

He stood up.

"Killian," she said, very carefully. "Thank you. Really. I'm utterly flattered."

He looked at her for a second. Then he said, "Come to bed when the twenty minutes is up," and walked out.

She held the ice pack to her ankle and smiled at the empty doorway.

_

She went to him when the timer was done. She was nervous the whole way down the hall. What if he'd changed his mind? What if he was already asleep and she would wake him up and he'd be angry?

He wasn't asleep and offered no soft words. He grabbed her hand and dragged her into the bed.

He had no intention of waiting for her to adjust. He roughly tore aside her clothing, and without a second of foreplay, his cock violently impaled her body.

"Ah... it hurts..." Briar let out a short scream. Her body shook violently from the extreme dryness and the sensation of being torn apart. Tears instantly spilled from her eyes.

He seemed to be venting some internal rage; his heavy body pinned her down ruthlessly, every thrust feeling as though it might shatter her bones.

She held him as tight as she dared. She sensed that he was holding something in his hand—clutching it tightly, as if it were a treasure.

She definitely did not mean to cry. But somewhere in the middle something came loose in her chest and she held his head between her hands and thought: he loves me he loves me he has to love me why else would he keep coming back.

After, she lay against him and felt completely, stupidly happy.

He pushed her off.

Oh.

He shifted to the far side of the bed and stared at the ceiling and the warmth left her skin all at once.

Something had fallen off the nightstand. A photograph. It must have slipped from his hand during.

Briar reached down carefully so she wouldn't disturb him. She picked it up.

She thought she knew what it was. She had been pretty once, before Brenda's drugs. She had seen pictures of herself at sixteen, seventeen, and barely recognized herself. Maybe Killian had one. Maybe that was why sometimes he could stand to look at her. He was remembering.

She turned the photo over.

Platinum blonde hair. Ice-blue eyes. A smile that knew exactly what it was doing.

Vivienne.

Briar sat very still.

Wait. Wait wait wait. That was Vivienne. That was a photo of Vivienne in his hand. While they were. While he was.

She looked at the photo for a long time.

Then she thought about her own face before the drugs. The line of her jaw. She and Vivienne did not share blood but they had grown up in the same house and somewhere along the way something had started to converge.

He had not been with her.

She put the photo face-down and pressed her hand flat on top of it and sat there on the edge of the bed.

The crying came. The loud ugly kind she could never control.

Killian came out of the bathroom. He looked at her. He looked at the ceiling. He picked up his pillow.

"Killian, wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I know it's loud, please don't go, please just." She pressed her hand over her mouth. "Please."

He walked out. The door clicked.

She sat on the floor and pulled her storage box out from under the bed. Her things were in it. Candy wrappers in different colors. A ribbon she had found at a pack event. She put in the ruby ​​earrings Vivienne had just given her.

Everyone said Vivienne was kind. Beautiful. Patient. Even today with Mabel's handprint on her cheek she had said she didn't want anyone hurt.

And Briar was sitting on the floor by herself crying into a box of candy wrappers.

"She's better than me," Briar said out loud, to no one. "She's just better than me at everything and I don't know how to fix that."

She kept digging through the box.

Her hand closed around an old medicine packet at the bottom. Brown paper. Brenda's handwriting on the outside.

Brenda. The pack's former witch. She had been reported for reckless prescribing and unauthorized divination, and rather than face the tribunal she had simply disappeared overnight. The council's investigation afterward had been thorough and ugly. She had been quietly harming pack members for years, slipping things into treatments, adjusting doses, and nobody had known until she was already gone.

Briar had been on Brenda's medicine since she was sixteen. For the slowness in her thinking. For the skin and the weight and everything wrong with her.

She had stopped when Brenda left because there was no one to refill it.

The committee's report had listed everything Brenda had been putting in her treatments. One of the things was contraceptive compounds.

"Six years," she said out loud. "She was doing that for six years and I didn't know." She pressed the packet flat between her palms. "I'm so stupid. Just like everyone says."

She put the packet down and stared at the wall.

"Killian's prophecy," she said quietly. "I never got pregnant. Not once in three years. Was it always because of this? Was it always Brenda?"

She pressed her fist to her mouth.

"And now the medicine is gone. So what happens now? Do I get pregnant? Does he keep me if I do? Does he throw me out after? "

"Why am I so stupid," she said. "Why couldn't I figure it out earlier. If I'd known, maybe Brenda would have been caught sooner, maybe by now I would already have. But I messed everything up! "

She burst into loud sobs once again.