Chapter 18
Clocks are incessant. I’ve never really thought much about the way the tick-tock sound is likely created to drive even the most sane people towards the ‘in’ end of the sanity scale.
I grew up that way. Being told there was something wrong with me. Having parents like mine, a family corrupt, hands and forearms drenched in blood, not just splattered. I saw things from birth most would never even see in the most depraved of banned horror depictions. It’s why I’ve always been a little odd. Strange, perhaps. I was picked on mercilessly by my cousins when we were children, well, and teens, adults. Always, really. I suppose it’s because I never fought back. I never said anything. I didn’t defend myself.
It’s not because I couldn’t.
It’s because, deep down, I wanted them to like me.
Love me.
There’s also the possibility, had I actually fought back, I wouldn’t have stopped at a black eye or a banged head.
I see death.
Blood.
Red, red rivers of it, all of it ending with a smile, or two. A large one across the lips, mouth pinned and sewn upwards, dimpling in the cheeks when I tie off my stitch. Sometimes a second, larger, deeper, blacker cut across the neck. It’s messy, it doesn’t sit where I need it to. Smiles can only really be seen on the pout, felt in the chest cavity.
Flint smiles down at me as he squeezes my shoulder cap, his big hand warm over the thin cotton of my white t-shirt, his touch dragging me back into the now.
The living room dark, only a lamp on at our backs where we sit in the corner of the L-shaped sofa. Flint’s black socked feet kicked up on the corner of the glass coffee table, crossed at the ankles, his toes flicking back and forth.
“Where’d you go, Cherub?” his soft, pillowy lips brush my temple as he dips his chin, speaking quietly to only me.
My eyes flick across the space, the large TV off, Cole in an armchair angled to face away from the TV but towards the oddly shaped cluster of sofas and chairs so everyone can see each other across the coffee table in the centre. Cole is looking at me, but his expression is blank. I wonder if he were speaking to me, and I just didn’t hear. It happens sometimes. I’ve had a lot of knocks to the skull.
Averting my gaze, I crane my head, angling it back so I can see Flint clearly, without blurred vision at his nearness, to see his smile. Feel it. The warmth it radiates. Just for me. Inflating my chest, pumping my heart, pushing my blood harder and harder through me, letting it heat my lower belly, harden my cock. Flint will never need a permanent smile.
“Do you think she will need a smile?” I ask quietly, blinking up at Flint’s big blue eyes, they’re so bright, I feel as though if I stare into them hard enough, I might be able to see all the way through them. Into his head, peel back all of the shadows.
Flint licks his lips, his tongue bar clacking against his teeth, the sound making me blink. He isn’t smiling anymore, and it makes my heart clench. He sees it, like he sees everything, and his hand leaves my shoulder to cup the side of my neck, the way we’re sitting, I’m sure it makes his wrist ache with the angle, but he holds me tenderly all the same.
“I don’t think so,” he replies lowly, it’s something about him I’ve always appreciated, the low volume he speaks to me in.
I often need the quiet, loud noises are a bit too much for my brain. Memories rush back and cloud the present. I know I mustn’t let them.
“No,” Cole grunts from his chair, both Flint’s and my eyes slow to roll in his direction.
He shifts, as though uncomfortable under our gaze, but that isn’t it at all, we’re brothers, and he loves us like we love him. None of us are uncomfortable in each other’s presence.
“She doesn’t need any fixing.” Cole looks at me as he says it. “She isn’t broken. She just doesn’t have anything to be happy about right now.”
Cole shifts again, my gaze dropping to his fingers curled over the arms of the chair, his rich brown skin blanching around his knuckles, the tips of his fingers, with his tightening grip.
“Yeah?” Flint asks, and I can hear the smirk in his question.
“Yeah,” Cole replies, his voice like black silk, this dark, decadently misleading smoothness, it almost makes him sound soft, he isn’t.
“Yeah?” Flint repeats mockingly.
“Yes, Flint,” Cole hisses, irritation thick in his tone.
“Oh, and how d’you know that?” Flint cocks his head, his straight black hair drifting across his face, the sides of his head shaved almost bare, the centre a long length of ink.
“Because I spoke to her, dipshit,” Cole drops his head to the back of the chair as he says it, staring up at the ceiling, his grip loosening on the leather of the armchair.
“You mean because you bribed her with a dog?”
“I didn’t bribe her with anything,” he fires back quickly, head jerking up to narrow his eyes on Flint, both of them stiffening in posture, I feel and see it, and it makes my skin crawl.
“Don’t fight,” I whisper between them, dropping my eyes to the cardboard box beside Cole’s chair, a little ginger Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy sleeping on its back inside of it, pink tummy exposed.
Flint’s fingers fall from the side of my throat, his hand clamping over the space between my neck and shoulder, his fingers loose over my collarbone, thumb resting at the top of my shoulder blade. He squeezes my trapezius muscle, a gentle massage in comfort.
“We’re not fighting,” he tells me calmly, his breath ruffling the blonde ringlets hanging across my forehead. “I’m just teasing.”
“Being a wind up,” Cole adds from his chair, giving me a very rare, very slight curl of his lips to reassure me. “It’s okay, Nix.”
I breathe out deeply, humming quietly as I inhale a breath just as deep as the one I expelled.
“Do you think he’s going to come back?” I can’t help but ask it, Blaze is not usually one to lose his cool, and I don’t like it when we’re apart and one of us isn’t okay.
“Yes,” both Cole and Flint echo in unison.
“We’re going to wait,” I state, a slight question curling my softly spoken words.
“Yes,” they both answer.
I nod, not feeling any better, not feeling relaxed. Restless. That’s how I feel. Like when you lie in bed at night and even though you’re really, really tired, your legs ache and you can’t keep them still, they have to fidget and jerk and move and you almost want to cut them off in frustration, throw the severed limbs out of the covers so you can finally get some rest.
“I’m going to check on her,” Cole states, just about to push to his feet, his elbows bent, his upper body bending forwards to move out of the chair, but the front door opening stops him in the half-seated half-standing position, his head snapping to the entrance.
Blaze closes the door at his back, his loose brown curls plastered to his olive-tanned face, dark eyes like burnt coals in the base of an extinguished fire peering out between the dripping strands. Head low, he shoves a hand in his pocket, rummaging around until he plucks out a damp cigarette box, switches it to his other hand to dig a lighter from the other.
Lips pinching the slightly crumpled orange-white stick, he flicks the wheel of his silver lighter, engraved with flames, filigree and Ashes etched into the shiny metal, the same one we all have. He breathes deep, once, then deeper with the same breath before dropping his head back like it weighs a million pounds on his shoulders, his chest inflated as he holds the smoke inside his lungs, and then slowly, tension releasing from all over his body, he exhales, the thick white-grey smoke drifting in a swirl to the ceiling.
Cigarette still gently held between his teeth, he straightens, reaching towards his hips. Strong fingers curl beneath the hem of his top and he peels both his wet t-shirt and drenched hoodie off in one, revealing his inked skin and muscular torso.
“We need to talk,” he sighs as he says it, smoke curling out through his nostrils like a fire breathing dragon.
“Damn right we do,” Cole grunts, slumping back down in his chair.
It surprises me, the way he is the first to speak, it is out of character for him when we have family discussions, even I tend to be more vocal than Cole.
“You can start with explaining why we’ve had this girl in our…” he pauses, swallowing like the word leaves a bad taste in his mouth, “captivity.” I glance at Blaze, who does nothing, staring at Cole with an unreadable expression on his face. “For three weeks, and she hasn’t had any heart medication.”
Both my and Flint’s heads snap up at that, our attention on Blaze standing in the entrance to the flat, a little closer to the living room now, but still just outside of it. He exhales a cloud of smoke, rolling the cigarette across his bottom lip with his tongue.
“She tell you why she needs it?” Blaze asks, calm, slow, casual, there’s some sort of eerie twist to his question though.
Defeat.
“She told me she has high blood pressure, it’s why she fucking fainted in my office at the gym. You would ‘ave let me put a severely unmedicated person in the fucking ring without even telling me. What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cole doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t even sound mad, that’s when he’s the most frightening.
“She tell you the story behind it though? How many healthy twenty-two year olds do you know that need a fucking heart pill, huh?” it’s like a taunt, like a mocking, I know something you don”t know.
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t pry, but circling back, why doesn’t she have any fucking pills?” Cole still doesn’t shout, but he leans forward in his chair, clasping his big, scarred hands together, lacing his fingers, elbows on his knees.
“Because I said so,” Blaze shrugs, pinching his cigarette between two fingers.
“So we abduct her for you to do what exactly? Let her go into cardiac arrest? Very smart, good plan, brother.” Cole huffs out an unamused laugh, shaking his head, his gaze dropping to the floor between his spread feet.
Blaze clenches his jaw, the bone popping audibly as he does so, but he doesn’t say anything to that.
“Who is she?” Flint’s chest rumbles beneath my ear where I’m pressed against the side of his chest, tucked beneath his long arm.
I tilt my chin to look up at him, the square cut of his jaw casting shadow down the demonic open maw tattoo on his throat. Blue eyes on his brother, a frown on his perfect mouth, I have the urge to reach up, press my fingertip to the corner of his pink lips, pull them up higher, curved. A smile.
My fingers curl anxiously in the front of his t-shirt, but he doesn’t look down at me, instead, he lifts his hand from his thick thigh, closes it over my knuckles. His warmth soothes me instantly, and my focus drifts back to the conversation at hand.
“You know her, from before, she-” Flint shakes his head, licking his lips, “she’s just like you, ya know,” he says instead of whatever he started with. “Stubborn, secretive.”
Blaze’s lips twitch as he pinches out the cherry of his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, stepping fully into the living room to drop it into the ashtray on the table beside the chair Cole occupies.
“She said when she knew you, you didn’t have a brother,” Flint says quietly, swallowing, probably thinking about his dad, someone who did actually give a shit about his kid before he died.
“I want us to be a family,” Blaze declares it lowly, ignoring everything that came before his statement, as though he weren’t really, truly paying attention because his mind was stuck on this. “All of us,” he finishes, in a way it’s almost like he wishes he didn’t have to say it at all.
He lifts his head, straightens his spine, slips into the familiar skin of our fearless leader.
Looking each of us in the eye, he lifts his chin, “I want her to be ours.”
There’s quiet, but I don’t feel uneasy with it. Instead, there’s something like excitement thrumming beneath my skin, a buzzing inside my head that I don’t want to silence.
Nobody says anything for long moments, not until I do, “I think you should tell us the whole story Blaze,” I say softly, locking eyes with his ebony ones. “Start at the very beginning, brother.”