Page 66 of Lessons in Cruelty

He taught me a lot about the world. Some of it was bullshit.

…you don’t know what you don’t know…

When kids think they know something, even a little, suddenly, they’re wise.

He was the dreamer, Kai. He’d concoct the biggest load of bullshit as we played. I tried to get him to listen to reason, to ground him, but I guess at some stage even my five-year-old self realized he was trying to escape reality.

Me, on the other hand? I was trying to make sense of a world where the rules kept changing. Out there in the woods, we always stuck to the rules.

Our rules.

I wish I’d never left the woods.

Out there, we were untouchable.

Out there, we were loved.

Or maybe Kai taught me that pain and love were the same thing.

Bastian watches me over the rim of his mug, and I wonder who he sees.

Grant student Haven, the pluckiest gal ever to crawl out of Riverside’s gutters…

…or the girl who learned too young that love always leaves bruises.

Chapter 18

Bastian

The double shot of bourbon in Haven’s cocoa is starting to do its job. I can see it in the way her shoulders have relaxed, the way her guard has dropped just enough for me to catch glimpses of the vulnerable girl beneath all that brittle defiance.

She meets my gaze, chin lifted, like we’re equals.

Fucking adorable.

Drinking the booze I poured her without hesitation. Curling up on my couch like she’s safe.

Haven is a bird with a broken wing, and I’m the cat watching as she flaps uselessly on the ground to get away.

She has no idea how young she looks curled up like that. Nineteen years old, but the vulnerability in her eyes makes her seem even younger. The decade and a half between us should bother me.

It doesn’t.

It just makes my cock harder.

I study the faint bruise on her jaw, imagining the hand that put it there. So sloppy, emotional. Someone wanted to hurt her but couldn’t commit to causing any real damage.

The thought should disgust me. Should make me want to protect her, call the authorities, be the upstanding professor she needs. The good man she considers me to be.

But all I can think is what an amateur he is.

When I mark her, she’ll wear my bruises like jewelry.

I want to reach out and trace that bruise with my thumb. Want to press against it until she winces, until she remembers exactly how it felt when someone else’s hands were on her.

And then replace that memory…with something far more disturbing.

I take a slow sip of my spiked cocoa, letting the bourbon burn away what little’s left of my patience.