Chapter 4
Four
Hella
Travis, the local Woodsman's Westbeach bitch boy, won't stop grinding on some club bitch. He's desperate. Too desperate.
My beer hits the table with a sharp clack. The legs of my chair scrape the floor as I rise and stalk toward the spectacle.
I hook my fingers around the woman's wrist, yanking her from Travis's grip and flush against my body.
In a cloud of cheap perfume and stale tobacco wafting off her, I lean in, pushing platinum blonde hair from her ear.
My palm splays across her stomach, my gaze locked on Travis as the hope drains from his face.
“You wanna fuck a real man?” My voice is low, deliberate. This isn't about her. This is about watching little Travis crumble.
Her cheek curves against my jaw and Travis folds his arms, early Justin Bieber hair flopping over his forehead like a surrender flag. “Fuck you.”
My eyebrows shoot up as a chuckle rumbles through my chest. I grip her shoulders, spinning her to face me. “Fuck me? Don't mind if she does.”
I lift her by the back of her thighs, watching over her shoulder as Travis yanks at his hair in frustration before storming out, slamming his palm against the drywall on his way. The hollow thud echoes his hollow pride.
“Come on,” she purrs, “I have a room here that the boys let me use.”
I laugh. Bitch can’t be serious.
“Aye!” Travis's voice cuts across the room as he barrels back in. Maybe I've underestimated the little shit.
I scan his body.
Or not.
He flashes a smirk I’m sure wins him lots of time in the honey pot. “Didn’t I see you with someone last night?” Travis. Travis. Travis.
I throw my head back, running my tongue piercing over my bottom lip. “Don’t know, young buck. But if you find her, I’m sure you’ll still be able to taste me all over that shit.”
He backs up as laughter barks out around him.
Game over. I release the woman, and she stumbles to the ground with a thud.
“Ouch!” She scrambles to her feet, eyes narrowed on me.
“Fuck off.” I gesture toward the door.
“You sure?” Give it to her. She’s persistent. She places her hand on my chest, running her tongue across her lip in that awkward way desperation likes to show its whole ass.
With my beer mid-air, my other hand flies to her throat, forcing her face close enough to see the flecks of mascara beneath her eyes.
“One,” I whisper harshly, “don't ever touch me again.” I shove her backward, sending her sprawling once more before turning back to my brothers.
Frost, Nyx, and Ripper watch from our table, all doing equally shit jobs at trying to hide their amusement.
“Shut up, motherfuckers.”
Frost barks out a laugh loud enough to fucking raise Candle from the dead. Smug bastard.
Taking my phone out my pocket, my thumbs fly over the screen.
Could it be that little Travis has a stiff cock for the girl I had wrapped around my shit last night?
What's that girl's name again?
Who are you talking about?
the girl from the bakery.
Her name is a fuck no.
So funny. I'll ask Yana.
Why
Because I got a prospect to play with
Melissa. And good luck.
I stare at my screen, brows drawing together. “Melissa,” I murmur, the name triggering something in my alcohol-soaked brain. My vision blurs momentarily as I pull my wallet from my pocket, flipping it open. A slow smirk crawls across my lips as realization dawns.
“Well, I'll be damned.”
I played it off like I didn't remember her, watched that flash of hurt cross her features before hardening into something sharper.
Travis can dream all he wants. Some women are made for men like him. Soft, predictable, easy. But women like Melissa? They're made for chaos. For destruction. For men who know how to fuck and protect with the same hand they can be gentle with.
Men like me.
Past
Two months. Two months since waking up to my mum dead in her own vomit and my father with a sawn-off shotgun between his legs. Took me three seconds to notice his brains painted over our run-down living room.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t get scared. I rolled up the leftover weed that was dusted over the coffee table, doing my best to pluck out brain matter and bone.
Hard to tell when it’s mixed in with Mary Jane.
Eventually, I gave up trying and rolled whatever else up with it and smoked that shit like I was Snoop Dogg.
Cops never came. Knew when they did, they’d just throw my ass into a group home as if anyone wants a fourteen-year-old boy who’d either fuck their wife or their daughter.
In no particular order. Shit, no one is really off the table if it comes down to it.
Grandma? Take the dentures out, baby, we can make it work.
I’m disgusting like that.
Cars fly over the city bridge. Close enough to the city but far enough away that it doesn’t disrupt the general public. Christchurch could be beautiful if it’s looked at through a different set of eyes. Unfortunately, all mine have seen is gore, violence, and sex.
Living on the street isn’t so bad. Beats hearing my parents fuck all day every day and burn their meth pipe like it’s gonna fix their lives.
I don’t even remember what they were like before meth took them.
It was the only version of them I ever knew.
It did me good. I taught myself how to fight pretty early on, thank fuck, since these streets would eat me up if I didn’t.
“Hey, shithead!” Tippy calls out from his tent, right beneath the bottom pillar of the bridge. “What you thinking about?”
I pull my hood up and reach for my cigarettes as Tippy approaches, his trench coat reeking of sewer and stale whiskey. His unruly beard cascades down his chest, gray hair tied back in a knot.
“Didn't I say you should start washing your clothes, old man? There's detergent under my sleeping bag. No need to smell like that.” A flame flickers from my lighter. It’s getting colder now as we edge toward May. Fuck. We’re gonna freeze when the snow starts to drop. Might have to find a different place.
“Shut up, boy,” he laughs, settling beside me as we watch the water. “You don't have to live out here. You're young. Are you going to take my advice and get your shit sorted?”
Fourteen isn’t exactly young. Am I bigger than most my age?
Yeah, but these muscles aren’t gym-made; they’re from carrying the weight of my shitty childhood.
But even at my age, I know I’d be no good pushed into the life that Tippy wishes for me.
You either got that white picket fence thing going, or you don’t.
My fence is looking more like barbed-wire in front of a prison.
Tippy doesn’t talk much about his family, but if it wasn’t for him, I would have been beaten and left for dead the first night I stumbled out onto the streets, high on weed and my father’s brains. Learned pretty quickly just how respected the old fuck is on these streets.
I shake my head, inhaling nicotine. “I just need to stay under the radar until I'm eighteen. Then I'll get my shit together enough to find a place. For now, I'm saving what I can.”
His eyes narrow, weathered skin crinkling. I know what he’s thinking. Selling drugs for this small gang won’t give me the life I want. He just doesn’t know that I don’t care.
He whistles, tossing loose bark into a large rubbish bin. “I wish I had a son. Could have helped me out with protecting my girls.”
I pause, cigarette just shy of my mouth. He doesn’t talk shit about shit, so any time he does I make sure I’m listening.
He reaches for his worn leather wallet, pausing slightly.
A branch snaps, and ice slides down my spine. “Shh.”
His eyebrow lifts, wallet open. “What is it?”
I wait, listening. Nothing. Probably a fucking stray dog. “Never mind, keep going,” I say, flicking ash from my cigarette.
He tosses his wallet onto my chest. Before the ember can hit the ground, a spotlight burns through my eyes.
I raise my arm to shield it. “What the fuck?”
Rough hands grip my upper arms, and someone shoves something rough over my head. It smells of hay and horseshit.
“Let me go!” I kick and scream, fighting against something fucking unmoveable. “Tippy!”
I thrash until the sack falls away.
“Fuck!” one of my captors grunts.
I twist toward where Tippy had been sitting to find his lifeless body sprawled on the sand, a knife sticking out of his gut.
I shove his wallet into my pocket and scream, “Tippy!” Something hard cracks into my face and everything goes black.