Page 56 of Vandal Unbound

Daisy takes a deep breath but settles back against the pillow to listen. “Okay.”

“To get some information from the club, a group of men knocked me off my bike, and over the course of two hours, tortured me to get the intel they wanted.”

“Oh, God, Vandal.”

“I didn’t break.” That seems like an important detail to make clear. “I didn’t give them anything, even though they electrocuted me with multiple cattle prods.” I shake my head, finding the words harder than I ever imagined.

“It’s okay,” Daisy says. “You don’t need to tell me the details.”

“I do.” I play with her fingers, stroking them, folding them over mine. “Because I need this version of me to make sense to you. They broke me, Daze. And before this, I was infallible.”

Her eyes shine with tears, and I hate myself for causing them.

“I’m pretty sure that no one is infallible. Even Goliath fell to a rock from a slingshot.”

I let go of her hands.

“I’m sorry. I’m not suggesting?—”

“It’s okay. I’m just…I don’t really know how to put all this into focus for you, and it feels like a lot to dump on you.”

Daisy takes a breath. “You’d be surprised at what I’ve seen and what I can carry. Try me.”

“I thought my time was up. Thought I was gonna die before my brothers could get to me. I did all the things you’re meant to; trying to focus on the future, trying to block out the pain, trying to die with some dignity if this was it. But none of it worked. All I felt was a pure raging terror. They kept escalating.” I tap the scars over my eye. “This was the worst. Shattered orbital bone. Some break in my skull leaving an open pathway to my brain that had to be patched over. Bone taken from here to replace bone there. Metal mesh to replace bone gone forever. Problems with my vision in this eye that still aren’t right. And a surgery that makes me feel sick to my bones when I think about it. They pulled my face off my skull. Peeled it away to fix it.”

I put my hand over my mouth because I feel like I’m about to throw up. Like I always do when I think about the invasive nature of my surgeries.

Daisy leans forward and places a hand awkwardly on my back because of the angle we’re sitting. She rubs small circles, and I try to focus on them instead of the whooshing sound in my ears.

“Vandal, that sounds horrific. I’m sorry it happened to you, and it’s okay to have all these feelings about it. It’s traumatic on another level.”

“It wasn’t the worst of it. There were a hundred other things done to me. Some things I can’t even begin to comprehend or make peace with.”

Daisy kneels and comes closer to me. “Come here,” she says, crawling over my lap and putting her arms around me.

She holds me tight, and I grab hold of her like I’m gonna drown if I don’t. One hand around her back, my fingers spread wide over her skin. The other holding a fistful of hair at the back of her neck.

I let the soft scent of her, the warmth of her, the solid weight of her ease the panic train I was on. When I feel more stable, I nudge her back a little because there’s more I need to explain.

“I’m guessing the alcohol and painkillers are an escape,” I say. “Can’t sleep without them, otherwise the nightmares come. Need the pain meds because things still hurt. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.”

“Physically or mentally painful?”

I look up at her. “If I said both, would you be disappointed in me?”

She strokes a lick of hair back from my face. “Not at all. But what would disappoint me is if you don’t have a path to fix them. Because this”—she swirls her hand up and down me—“isn’t a solution. It’s a temporary patch.”

“I don’t want to be this mess, Daisy. Not for me, not for the club, not for my brothers. I know I’ve only known you five minutes, but you and Elsie have joined that list. Because once upon a time, I wasn’t this. I’d like to think I was funny. Charming even. Fierce when I needed to be. I’d defend the shit out of you and Elsie. Would probably have charmed you into bed by nowbut can’t guarantee the old me wouldn’t have left you in the morning.”

She smiles sadly at that. “Thank you for the heads-up.”

“But what happened has got me rethinking things. Up until getting that call from Elsie, I think my path to escape these feelings might have been a very different one. Now I’m scared it might still be. Even thought about killing myself.”

“Oh my gosh, no,” she says. Eyes wide, mouth slightly open, she looks devastated at the thought. “There are lots of ways of processing what happened to you, but only one of them is irreparably permanent. Don’t take that path, Vandal. The world is better with you in it.”

I press my forehead to her chest, and she clutches me there, pressing kisses to the top of my head. “I feel like such a coward. Always thought I was indestructible.”

When she cups my cheeks, I realize there are tears on them. “Then your expectation of yourself was always too high. No one is indestructible. You’re comparing yourself now to something that didn’t actually exist before.”