“The Cheska?” Betsy asked.
“The very one.” Charlie smirked as I shot him a death stare. My cousin and friends were the only people on the fucking planet who didn’t piss themselves in my presence.
“The Cheska. What the fuck is that meant to mean?” I snapped, getting more fucked off at my family by the second.
“Nothing,” Betsy said, shrugging, and got herself a drink too. I lit another cig and leaned against the fireplace, watching the flames dance up the chimney. I pictured Cheska as a kid at her dad’s house. Then at eighteen in her bikini on the yacht. Her pressed against me, then spread out on the dining table on our yacht as I fucked her, as I ploughed into her, needing to chase her away. Instead, afterwards, she only wanted me more.
Then years. Fucking years of taking her in every way imaginable. She liked it rough like I needed. Clawed and fought me and made me fucking addicted.
The room was quiet, and I couldn’t stand it. I knew they were all watching me. “What?” I shouted, turning with my arms out. “What’s with all the fucking silence?”
It was Betsy who spoke, unaffected by my outburst. “Just haven’t seen you like this since …” She trailed off, and we all knew what she meant. The night after I got back from Oxford, after our dads were done and I had to take the helm. The night I siphoned off any feelings and emotions I had for Cheska and became what I had to in order for this family to survive.
We’d fucking gone to war that night. And we’d been fighting on the front line ever since. “She means something to you,” Betsy added, clearly choosing her words carefully. “If you’re being honest with yourself, she always has.”
“I fucked her! That’s all,” I spat, and flicked my cig into the fire, done with this conversation and this dissection of my fucking life. I marched out of the room and straight into my bedroom. When I entered, the doctor was just moving his stuff. A bag of blood was being transfused into Cheska’s arm. But she was cleaned up, my sheet and duvet pulled up to her shoulders.
“She’s lost blood, but not as much as I’d feared.” He gestured to her face. Her fucking beaten face. My hands fisted at my sides. No one as perfect as her should ever look like this.
“I cleaned up her face, but they were surface injuries. I gave her an antibiotic injection and left medicine for her to take when she wakes—both for pain and to prevent infection. She’s to take them until the course has finished.” He pointed at the tablets on the bedside table. He went to walk past me. “She should wake after she’s rested. She got off relatively unscathed, considering what I imagine she went through tonight to even get in this state.”
“And her memory?” I asked. I needed to know what had fucking happened to her. I needed to know who the fuck had done this to her so I could kill the cunts.
“Should be unaffected. That’s physically, of course. That’s not taking trauma into consideration. That could be a potential problem for her.” The doctor left when I stayed silent, not asking him anything else. He shut the door behind him, and I stared down at Cheska.
My teeth ached from gritting them so hard. I thought back to the last day I went to her in Oxford. When I was fucked off my face on whisky and just needed her. Out of everyone, I fucking chose to turn to her. And not just to fuck, but to just be somewhere else that wasn’t this church or with my family, or with my old man lying in a bed that he would be in for months and months to come. And because I’d liked the feel of her in my fucking arms. In that moment, that fucked-up dark moment, she was the only one I’d wanted.
I shook my head when flashes of memory showed me crying on her like a pussy. Showed me that fucking ring on her finger, that bright diamond catching my drunken eye. She’d got engaged a couple of days before that night. One look at that motherfucking ring and I’d snapped. I’d needed her, needed to fucking own her, and here was another prick’s ring on her finger. A finger that had just been wrapped in my hair, holding my fucking face and wrapped around my dick.
I walked closer to the bed and saw her hand still wore that fucking ring.
She was getting married soon. Freddie’d told me that a while back, like I didn’t fucking know. I knew every detail. Married at St Paul’s Cathedral, then on to the Ritz afterwards. I fucking knew. I knew everything about this bird. She bloody clawed at my head daily, had done since the first time I met her.