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A scar I remembered Levin giving me followed the contour of my cheekbone. Another glinted silver along my jaw. Mementos of a time when I was too weak to fight off those who would do me harm.
Once again, a flash of panic shot through my blood.
Gemma was right.
I looked good.
I looked enticing.
I looked like a perfect meal to be molested.
“Wow, he’s a stu
“Can’t wait to see those pretty lips around my cock, Kas.”
“So much fresh flesh to mark. Come here and let me autograph it.”
I bent over, clutching the sink, trying to banish the sick ghosts inside my head.
Hands landed on my back, soft and gentle.
Arms looped around my waist, kind and loving.
Parts of me wanted to throw them off me. I didn’t want to be touched. Never again did I want another person to touch me.
But then I opened my eyes and locked onto Gem, and the mania inside me, the headache threatening to break me, and the vertigo that made me wobble all receded.
Gem.
Her.
Home.
With a sigh, I slouched against the vanity.
She hugged me tighter, pressing her entire body against my back. Her breasts warmed my spine, and her breath tickled my shoulder blades as we stood silently, her eyes wide and worried, mine shadowed with history.
She hugged a man I didn’t recognize.
But I recognized her.
I loved her.
I trusted her when she said she would never let anyone touch me ever again.
Spi
“And I will cherish and protect you forever, Kas.”
“Fuck, I love you.”
Her response was to squeeze me until she shook in my embrace.
We swayed together, arms locked tight, cheek to cheek, heartbeat to heartbeat.
A simple embrace but it did something I never thought possible.
Her heat and affection seeped into me, wriggling past all the nightmares still inside me, and somehow erased the whispers of before. Her love for me hunted past monstrosities, deleting them, erasing them, granting me a pocket of silence and safety.
I sighed and relaxed.
The gala would push me to my limits.
A part of me would always be reactive, dangerous, and prone to self-preservation, no matter the cost. But no matter what happened, I would survive all thanks to this woman.
I would survive.
And I would fight the same battle Jareth was currently enduring.
However, I would fight in a different way.
He would use bloodshed, and I would use words, but together, we would enlist change that meant no one else would have to crawl from the darkness like us.
No other kid would be abandoned to evil.
No other boy, girl, man, or woman would be left to rot in a prison devoid of love and happiness.
I vow it.