Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz - The Flesh Cartel 11 - Permanent Record by Permanent Record B13B6432

Author:Permanent Record B13B6432 [B13B6432, Permanent Record]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter three

The pain in Mat’s foot pulsed with every beat of his heart. Had kept him up half the fucking night, weepy and exhausted and feeling filthy in his own skin, like ants crawling all over him, like invisible fingers touching uninvited, everywhere, all over, outside and in, and he couldn’t stop it anymore. Would never be able to stop it again.

Well. At least the horror was so huge he was just . . . numb with it. Everywhere but his fucking foot. He’d have hacked it off in a heartbeat if he’d had the right tools. Or even the wrong ones. Had come thisclose to digging his own fingers into the fresh wound and ripping it away. Only the knowledge that Nikolai would strap him down and do it to the other foot, then keep him strapped down until the wound had healed, had stayed his hand.

When he got out of here—not if, when—he’d cut the skin right off if he had to. For now, he’d just have to try to live in this skin without tearing himself out of it. Find a way not to let the despair beat him. He still had a brother to save, after all.

No matter how much contempt had been in Dougie’s eyes when Mat had fought to stop this.

Congratulations, Nikolai. Dougie hates me now as much as I hate him sometimes.

He wasn’t gonna let the bastard win in the end, though. He wasn’t.

He tried to hold on to that conviction for a while, let it calm him enough to sleep. There was no hiding how big of a setback this was, though. Permanent physical scarring to go with his permanent mental scarring.

At least it hadn’t crippled him.

That’s a low bar, Mat, Jesus.

But then, better to lower the bar and step over it than to keep it high and have no hope of crossing it at all. These were extreme circumstances. It wasn’t wrong to adjust his worldview, was it?

After all, before this he’d have never so much as contemplated a circumstance that would make him use the words “hate” and “Dougie” in the same sentence, unless it was something like “I hate seeing Dougie unhappy.” In the outside world, they were brothers, and you loved your brother and stood by him and forgave him no matter what. But this wasn’t the outside world anymore, it was Nikolai’s world. And soon it’d be even worse: it’d be Allen’s world, that’s-right-prettypup-ride-your-brother’s-cock world.

Nausea surged at the thought, spurred on by the throbbing in his foot, the relentless, painful beat of you’re marked now, you’re marked now, you’re marked now as steady as his pulse in his ears. He bit it back. Crutches were waiting for him by the bed, but he wasn’t ready to use them. That’d mean admitting he needed them. It’d mean admitting why. He couldn’t face that yet.

So he curled up tight beneath the covers and squeezed his eyes closed instead. Tried to shut off his brain. Tried to pay no attention to the pain in his foot, the fist around his heart, the jumbled fuckery in his head.

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