Chapter 30 Hard Read
Hard Read
Mads
Iseem to be experiencing some sort of time shift, alternative reality. Everything feels hyper-colored and amped up. Mickey has been blackmailing Locke for sex, so it’s not exactly a situation that would call for calm.
I’m struggling to keep up with Oscar. His strides are long and sure. Mine are clunky. But I have to keep up. I observed every emotion known to me and mankind flit through Oscar’s face as it dawned on him his pack mate was being taken advantage of.
Suddenly, he’s gone and so is Mickey.
I rush up to where I last saw them, far up ahead of me.
There’s a small passageway between buildings, barely wide enough for a person to fit through, but I have a feeling this is where they went into.
I push in and find myself in a small court, shadowed by the buildings.
Oscar has his gun drawn on Mickey, who’s on the ground with a bloody lip.
“Oscar!” I call out so he knows it’s me. He turns for a brief second, and I see only my reflection in his sunglasses. He’s going to kill Mickey. I just know it.
Mickey’s hands are up in front of him, protecting his face. “Oscar, calm down! Come on man. You don’t have any idea what’s going on!”
“Don’t fuck with me! I know exactly what’s going on. You didn’t get to fuck him when he was at the O’Bannon pack house, so you found a way to do it here. Did you not think I was as powerful an alpha as Legs? That I wouldn’t delete you if you so much as batted your eyes at my alpha!”
Unfuckwithable.
That’s the word to describe Oscar.
If I thought he was a powerful alpha before, I know it now. He’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.
Mickey doesn’t seem to get it, because he says, “He’s been drooling over me for years! Ok? He approached me with his little crush. It’s not my fault I indulge him every once in a while.”
I shake my head, and even though I’m silent, it gets both their attention.
“What?” Oscar asks me.
“It’s bullshit. Mickey is obsessed with Locke. He came at him the other day like a jealous lover. Locke is disgusted by him.”
Oscar turns to Mickey.
“The beta doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“You are taking advantage of Locke, and you know it! You’re a fucking creep,” I say back.
Oscar realigns the barrel of his gun, deciding between his head or his heart.
“Are you really going to kill him?” I ask.
“Yes,” he answers soberly.
“No. No. No. You can’t kill me! Legs will come after you!”
“He’s already after us! You stupid fucker. If you just sat in your car and did your job, we wouldn’t have a problem. But you decided to throw your weight around.”
“Fuck you! Locke came to me! He was a blubbering little mess, as always. That emotional fucker. No wonder they’d call him a puppy and kept him in a kennel, he whined like one.
Oh, don’t tell Alpha O’Bannon that my pack is going to the Institute.
Please, Mickey, I’ll do anything. I’ll suck your cock if you’ll just keep this between us.
It’s not my fault I never got a turn on the community bicycle before coming to Cash City… ”
Wrong thing to say, Oscar aims between his eyes. But I do something even more insane, I push Oscar to the side and swing my fist into Mickey’s smug, stupid, ugly face.
A rush of endorphins so great I suddenly feel two feet taller and stronger than an ox rushes through me. My injury is forgotten. The sting of the hit on my knuckles feels incredible. So I grab him by the front of his shirt and hit him again.
And again.
And again.
I ram my knee into the soft tissue of his belly. Over and over until I lose my footing and have to back up and stand to regain it.
Mickey is curled over himself against the brick building, the dripping of his blood splashes on the cement under our feet.
A fire burns through me.
I haven’t felt this alive in so long.
I go to kick him with my bad leg, but Oscar stops me.
“You’ll feel it later. Best to stop now.”
I meet his eyes and they see right into me. He sees what this is doing to me.
He accepts it, too. No judgement.
His eyes dart to both my fists, where the skin has been torn open. I shake my arms. I don’t feel any pain.
Oscar turns back to Mickey, who is doing his best to sit back up. His face is covered in blood. Mine and his. Oscar aims his gun for a third time and this time shoots him right between the eyes in two quick shots.
The wall behind his head explodes with red, and a chunk of the brick comes flying off. The bullets fall somewhere on the ground with a soft clink, like they weren’t just careening straight through Mickey’s skull.
The body crumples lifelessly on the ground.
Without taking a second to assess what he’s done, Oscar simply holsters his gun in his pants behind his back, scoops up the bullet casings and my cane from the ground, takes my hand, and we walk out of there.
He pulls me along at a brisk pace. I can hear everything.
Like I had cotton removed from my ears. Doves, robins, and chickadees sing and flit around the treelined street.
The sun shines through the leaves of the silver leaf lindens, dancing their triangular green leaves all over.
I can feel the texture of the cement under my shoes.
And I can smell everything: good or bad.
The garbage piled up on the street. The fumes from the sewer grates.
The flowers in the plants on the windows nearby.
Car exhaust. Chicken frying inside the restaurants.
And I can smell Oscar. He smells like brewing coffee on a cool morning. Goddamn.
I’m taking deeper breaths than I’ve ever taken before. I’m drunk off the oxygen.
We aren’t going back to the car. We’ve been weaving through streets and find ourselves at an apartment complex. Oscar pulls me into their unit. A small two bedroom apartment. It doesn’t remind me of them in any way. Why would they live here?
Oscar makes me sit at the kitchen table. Kol’s laptop is open, and my packet I gave him the other day is next to it, along with two mugs of coffee and a Diet Dr. Pepper.
Oscar leaves the room and returns with a first aid kit. He pulls a chair next to me.
“Give me your hands—“ he barks. It’s probably an alpha bark. Those don’t work on betas.
I still give him my hands. He makes a very disappointed and irritated sound.
“It’s fine, Oscar. It doesn’t even hurt,” I say with a smile on my face. The muscles are untrained, and it stretches my skin past the point of comfort. I’m smiling! I’m really smiling!
Kol comes in from what was probably the bathroom. He stops short at my smile. His head tilts to the side.
“Mads? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I answer, a smile still plastered on my face.
“Come here, Kol, I need your help. He needs ice. Bag some up and bring it over.”
Kol just stands there.
Oscar hops up and fills a bowl with water, and then he comes back, holding the bowl and a rag. He starts to clean my hands up.
“What happened?”
Instead of answering, Oscar says, “Actually, take all the ice we have and fill the bathtub. Run down to the corner store and get more. We’re going to put him in it.”
Kol does as he says. A dutiful alpha. I sit and enjoy the feeling of being this fucking happy. God. Everything is ok. I can’t remember the last time everything felt so damned ok.
This concept that I never needed hope at all, that things would be ok whether or not I believed in it, hits me.
Were things always going to be ok, and I just needed to wait? People always say that things get better, but I thought it was empty words, but now I wonder if people are right.
“Oscar, that was amazing. The way you…”
“Let’s talk about it later, cielito.”
I nod excitedly.
“Should we go get some food? I know a place that sells those really tall beers. They are so clear they taste like champagne. Or! There’s a food truck that sells fry bread.
It’s close by. They put seasoned beef on it and iceberg lettuce.
Which, I know, iceberg lettuce? That can’t be good. But I swear it’s the only way.”
Kol comes back holding two bags of ice. Oscar and he dump them into the bath and fill the rest with water. Oscar directs me to stand up and takes me into the bathroom.
“I’m going to need you to get naked.”
“No problem!” I take off my shirt and pants. God, I feel so tight and strong. I feel taller than I’ve ever been. Did I get taller?
I take off my briefs and stand in the small bathroom with Oscar.
Kol is at the doorway, and he looks right at my dick.
They are both fully clothed. I kind of want to show off my body to them.
Show them how strong I am. Nothing hurts!
I could probably go for a run right now.
Climb a mountain. Ride down it on my old bike.
“Into the tub,” Oscar says to me.
“I should call Cadi. She’d love to see me like this. We could probably take her to the place with the tall beers.”
Kol pushes into the bathroom and holds my shoulders for some reason. I push back on him.
“Ok, come on, my sweet prince, into the tub,” Kol says. I preen under his nickname.
I don’t move. I have more I need to say. Kol’s face is close to mine, but not close enough, so I touch our noses together.
“Kol, it was crazy! That ugly motherfucker first called Locke a puppy, which pissed me off to no end. It seemed so derogatory.”
“What?” Kol says and then turns to Oscar.
“And then when he called him a community bicycle…”
For a second, I think Kol is going to shake me, but he lets me go to grab onto Oscar.
“What the fuck is he talking about? His pupils are huge! Is he on drugs!?”
I scoff. I’ve never been more fucking sober in my life.
“He’s high on adrenaline and possibly having a nervous breakdown. Mads, into the tub!” Oscar raises his voice at me. I frown. Fine. God. He didn’t have to yell.
I put one foot into the freezing water, and instantly my body gives something up. Something vital. Oscar practically pushes me the rest of the way in.
“Now, your arms.”
I sink my arms into the water.
My whole body relaxes. Everything normalizes.
Oh my god. I saw a man get killed today.
I look up at Oscar and Kol, a question on my lips, I don’t know how to ask.
Oscar nods in understanding.
“We discovered that Locke has been exchanging sexual favors to Mickey to keep our secrets from getting back to Legs. I approached Mickey on the subject. Mads decided to beat the pulp out of him. And then I shot Mickey between the eyes. I left his body there. The bullet casings are in my pocket.”
My leg awakens at that moment, and the most horrendous pain registers. I turn my head out of the tub and vomit on the floor.
Oscar rubs the back of my neck. I’m staring at his shoes, covered in the mess.
“Kol, can you get Mads’s pain meds? And a glass or two of water?”
“‘Course. Goddamn. You guys had a day.”
Oscar continues to rub my neck and shoulders. “Sorry, I had to kick you out of it. It’s called a dive response. I was worried you’d continue to hurt yourself. You were putting your weight on your bad leg. I know it sucks to feel pain, but it’s our body’s way of keeping us safe.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until the taste of salt bleeds over my lips.
“The water will help with the swelling.”
Kol comes back with meds. He also asks where Locke is. Oscar has to tell him he sent him to a random street corner. But there’s no way to know where he is because he turned off his location.
Reality comes to me like it never left.
I’ve never been violent. I’ve never hit someone like that in my life. Just the way he was talking about Locke was so upsetting. Locke has been nothing but kind to me. I couldn’t help but see his face when he asked me not to tell Oscar.
I knew even then, his secret wasn’t going to be a secret for long.
I debated keeping it from Oscar. But I knew that Locke was in danger, and that was more important. If Locke hates me forever for telling his secret, so be it.
My whole body is shaking. My teeth chatter.
“Here, take your meds and then I’ll help you out,” Oscar hands me a glass of water and five pills. I neck them without a thought. I reject the water.
He and Kol both help me out of the bath, and my shame still hasn’t quite returned, so it’s quick and no-nonsense. Oscar wraps me in a towel, and they take me to his bedroom.
I’m just trying to think one thought at a time as they dress me in their clothes.
“Whose clothes am I wearing?”
“My underwear. Locke’s shorts. Oscar’s shirt. Now lie down.” I lay down on Oscar’s bed.
“Why?”
“Your leg looks really shitty. Oscar wants to look at it.”
“Hm,” I say.
They fuss over me and chatter about whatever. They prop my leg up over some pillows. It’s so relaxing I fall asleep almost immediately.