Chapter 25 #2
I swear, I can see his furrowed brow even through his mask. Then he shakes his head. “Eh…nah.”
“Is it just me, or have these pre-trial parties become a bit of a bore?”
The Wolf plops down on the couch next to me, kicking his long legs out and draping an arm across the back.
“I mean, what is the point with all these girls, if none of us is going to…you know…”
“No one’s stopping you,” The Stag shrugs.
“I’m not talking about me, fucker,” The Wolf growls. “I happen to be extremely happy with my situation, thank you very much.”
The Stag shakes his head. “I seriously can’t believe you ended up with a Russian girl.”
The Wolf snickers. “Jealous?”
“More just impressed that you still have a head or a dick attached to your body.” The Stag smirks. “Unless Milena does have your balls in a jar somewhere?”
“Keep talking shit about my fiancée,” The Wolf mutters, “and we’ll see whose balls aren’t attached to their body.”
The Stag and I both chuckle, and the former reaches over and pats The Wolf on the knee. “Relax, psycho.”
The Wolf sighs and leans back into the couch, bringing his glass of whiskey under the edge of his mask to sip. “So, what are you emo fucks sulking about here in the corner?”
“I was asking The Stag about his mystery girl—or guy.”
The Wolf perks up. “Hold up. Mystery guy?”
“There’s no mystery guy,” The Stag grunts.
“Yeah, but…” The Wolf leans forward, his ears pricking with interest. “Could there be?”
“There is no guy,” The Stag repeats.
Wolf turns to me. “Well, there you go. There’s no guy. I mean, he’s not gay…” He turns back to The Stag. “Wait, are you?”
“No.”
“Bi?”
The Stag shrugs. “We’re all bi.”
The Wolf chuckles. “Hard disagree, pun totally intended. It’s actually quite disturbing how much I love pussy. Well, one in particular. I mean, it's seriously fucked up how much I love it.”
The Stag nods. “Yeah, because it’s Milena’s pussy.”
“Yeah, you could go ahead and not talk about my fiancée’s sexual organs ever again, fucker,” The Wolf snarls.
“Hey, you brought it up,” I grunt.
“You also underscored my point, though,” The Stag adds. “You’re obsessed with her sexual organs, because they’re her sexual organs.”
The Wolf exhales heavily. “Are you trying to say that if Milena had a dick, I’d be as obsessed with that? I doubt it.”
“I doubt it too,” The Stag sighs. “That’s not what I’m saying, anyway.”
“Well, what the fuck are you saying?” The Wolf grumbles. He turns to me, jabbing a finger at The Stag. “The fuck is he always talking in riddles for?”
“I’m saying sexuality, for everyone,” The Stag growls, “is fluid to some degree.”
“This is the weirdest coming-out speech I’ve ever heard,” The Wolf sighs.
The Stag rolls his neck. “I’m not coming out. I’m saying we’re all—”
“Kinda gay?”
“Were you dropped as a fucking child?” The Stag mutters at The Wolf. “I’m saying there’s a spectrum. Some people are very far to one side, some are in the middle, and others lean hard to the other side. I get that you’re straight, relax.”
“And you?” The Wolf throws back.
“Mostly,” The Stag shrugs.
The Wolf glances quickly at me, then back to The Stag. “Mostly? You’re saying you’re bi?”
“No, dipshit. I’m saying that even though I’m straight I can still appreciate the attractiveness of men, at least on some level. It doesn’t mean I want to fuck them, but I can look at someone like…I don’t know, Brad Pitt…and appreciate that he’s an attractive dude.”
The Wolf takes another sip of his drink. “You know how I know you’re gay?”
“Jesus Christ,” The Stag mutters under his breath.
“Because you just said you were gay for Brad Pitt.”
“I can’t with him,” The Stag growls, looking at me and jerking a thumb at The Wolf.
“The hell are you three talking about?”
The Hound walks over, his perennial dark, psycho energy swirling around him like smoke.
“Sexuality being a spectrum,” I tell him.
The Hound stares at us blankly and then shrugs. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Stag here was telling us how he’s bi for Brad Pitt.”
The Hound shrugs again. “I mean, he’s a good-looking guy…”
The Wolf looks up at him. “Well, fuck. Now I’m curious.”
“Excellent choice of words,” The Stag mutters.
The Wolf flips him off and then looks back to The Hound. “Hang on. Are you saying you’re on that spectrum too?”
“I think his point is we’re all on that spectrum,” The Hound growls.
“So… You’d fuck a guy.”
The Hound’s head tips slightly to the side. “Probably not.”
The Stag nods at him. “Okay, what if Lyra was a guy? Would you still feel the same way about her?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation.
The Wolf eases back in his seat, raking his fingers up and down his neck. “Huh. Sex, too? Like, if Lyra was a dude, you'd still fuck her?”
“I love my wife on a level that goes beyond appearance,” The Hound growls. “I wouldn’t care if she had two heads, or no legs, or—”
“Or a penis?” The Wolf interjects.
The Hound sighs. “Even a penis. I mean, my preference is exactly how she’s currently built. But if that suddenly changed?” He lifts a shoulder. “Nothing about what I feel for her would.”
The Wolf taps his chin before he suddenly glances at me. “Okay, now I wanna know. Where do you fall on this spectrum?”
My chest tightens.
Where do I outwardly appear to fall? Or where do I know in my heart that I actually fall?
Before I have time for the question to give me a fucking panic attack, The Hound glances at his watch as The Raven walks up.
“As thrilling as this conversation is,” he growls, “it’s time.”
You can feel the shift in the air when he says it. The pre-trial parties are always a certain vibe, even if none of us is participating in the…festivities like we used to. But when the clock ticks over, and it goes from party mode to trial mode, the whole atmosphere changes dramatically.
The rest of them start moving across the big underground cathedral toward the stone circular floor with the dais looming over it.
I hang back for a second, pulling out my phone to check a message from Evie about helping her move something in her room tomorrow.
Just as I’m silencing my phone, an Instagram notification pops up alerting me that one of my friends has been tagged in a photo by someone I might know and might want to follow.
The friend who’s been tagged is Val.
Of course, I click it, glaring at the screen when the post pops up. Instantly, my entire body tenses.
The guy who tagged Val is the same guy who was draped all over him that night I sort of stalked him…okay, did stalk him…at Doomsday. The night we tumbled into the men’s room together and…
Yeah.
My face heats beneath my mask, my dick twitching as I glance at the photo that’s just been posted by Gerard, I gather from the account info.
The picture is of him and some blonde skank on either side of Val, their arms around his shoulders. Val’s blue eyes pierce into the camera, a dark, commanding look on his face as Gerard and that slag kiss him on either cheek.
The caption reads “@Chrissygirl19 and I went out a-ho-ing and bumped into our favorite!!” That’s followed by about a thousand fucking eggplant emojis and then “RIP our holes LOLOLOL!”
My vision goes red. And that’s before I see the hashtags the little fuck has ended his post with: #threeway #biguysfuckbetter #gettinglaidtonight #biparty.
“Bull?”
I flinch, ripping my glare from the phone in my hand and up to The Hound, who’s watching me.
“We’re about to start,” he growls. “All good?”
“Yup,” I seethe, shoving the phone into my pocket.
My pulse twitches violently. My nostrils flare and my jaw grinds. A cold fury I don’t even understand seeps into my veins, until my heart is churning black ink.
I’m barely aware of walking onto the dais and taking my seat along with my friends. Of the crowd stopping their orgies and partying to become the audience, sitting across from the dais, a big stone circular floor between us.
I hardly look up when the guards drag in the accused—Bobby Rizzo, an underboss in the Farina Mafia family accused of attempting to kill another underboss in order to evade a blood marker this other guy had on him.
All I’m doing is breathing hot, black fire, my skin charring and blistering as visions of Val moaning with Gerard and that Chrissy skank parade through my psyche.
“Guilty,” I say, same as my four friends.
Bobby Rizzo is given the choice by The Raven: fight, or flight.
He picks fight and confidently claims knives as his weapon. It takes me a second to drag myself out of the oozing black tar that my subconscious is drowning in when The Stag elbows me.
“Your turn, brother,” he murmurs.
I look up, my eyes stabbing mercilessly into Rizzo down on the floor.
So fucking be it.
Bobby steels himself, rolling his neck, his hand gripping his hunting knife tightly as he sizes me up. He’s roughly as big as me, and he’s clearly handled a blade before, so he thinks he has a chance here.
Spoiler: he doesn’t.
He didn’t even before I pictured Val about to go off and have a wild, debauched threesome with those two fucks.
But now?
May God have mercy on Bobby Rizzo. Cause I won’t.
He gets one good jab in, which misses me. That’s his peak.
I disarm him right after that, and watch the color drain from his face. Then I toss my own knife aside, slam him to the ground, and start to lay into him.
Over and over and over.
…and fucking over.
His face turns to pulp. His body crumples. Blood spreads like a fucking ocean around me and wet sounds of my fists pummeling his flesh fill the cathedral until a hand lands heavily on my shoulder.
“Bull. BULL.”
I hesitate, my blood-soaked fist freezing in a drawn back position. I blink, turning to see The Stag standing beside where I’m knelt over Bobby’s body.
“Enough,” The Stag growls quietly. “He’s dead, okay?”
I glance back down at the bloodied puddle that used to be Bobby.
“Enough, brother,” The Stag murmurs again. “It’s done.”
I have no idea what time it is when I'm shuffling toward my building.
After the trial I went to Reaper, because I fucking needed it.
But even that place said no to me at the door—maybe partly for the manic look on my face, but almost certainly because of the fucking blood coating my shirt and still staining my hands.
So I grabbed a few drinks to numb it all in various dive bars on the way here.
I'm fishing in my pocket for my phone when I realize there’s a figure leaning against the side of my building.
A figure in jeans and a leather jacket, his messy, mid-length hair shoved back from his face, his haunting blue eyes piercing through the darkness into me.
I stumble to a stop a few feet from Val, my skin tingling as we lock eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here,” I mumble, glaring at him.
Val clears his throat and takes a slow breath. “It…occurred to me, that what I did the other day, with Dasha—”
“Could have gotten me killed?” I snap.
He shakes his head. “I clocked her. She wasn’t going to—”
“You gambled with my fucking life!” I roar.
Val frowns. “I get that what I did was fucked up. But you’re being dramatic—”
I surge into him, grabbing his collar and slamming him to the wall.
“You don’t get to make that fucking call!” I roar at him. “What you did—”
“Got you off the hook!” he snaps. “I told you I was going to take care of it for you, that I was going to fix it! The fuck did you think that meant?!” he yells, grabbing my collar right back.
I stare at him, fury surging behind my eyes. But instead of exploding, I take a slow breath and level a cold glare at him.
“I think maybe…I don't know,” I mumble, defeated.
“Then stop,” Val groans, his eyes flashing ice-blue fire at me. His hand tightens on my shirt, and I feel my breath catch and my pulse thud wildly. My eyes drop to his lips, and heat tingles across my skin.
“Stop thinking, and just shut up.”
His mouth crashes to mine, and I swear, I fucking melt. I groan when his hand grabs my hip, the other one sliding over my jaw to cup my face. Our tongues dance and I whimper as he tugs me against his body, kissing me harder and deeper as I moan into his lips. Wanting to just let go.
But I can’t.
“No.”
With a groan, I plant my hands on his firm chest and shove him violently back from me, my eyes narrowing.
“NO,” I growl again, my teeth flashing as I jab a shaky finger at him. “Stay the fuck away from me.”
Val stares at me, his face grim.
“No promises,” he mutters under his breath, still glaring at me.
“I have to go.”
I shove past him to walk toward the door to my building.
“Yeah, walk away,” Val spits at my back. “So much easier than actually having a conversation, or thinking about your own sexuality!”
“Go to hell,” I snap over my shoulder. “This is me walking the fuck away.”
“Yeah, I'm sure there’s a closet somewhere screaming your name!”
“Fuck you!”
“Not even if you begged me, motherfucker,” Val spits. I whirl just in time to see him turn and start storming away. “And you’re right!” he yells over his shoulder as he jams a cigarette between his lips. “We’re fucking done.”