Chapter 31
Bastian
“Ezra.” I keep my voice neutral, though my pulse is racing for entirely different reasons now.
His eyes rake over my robe, and his scarred mouth twists into a grimace. “Expecting someone else?”
“What are you doing here? I thought I was clear when—”
“Oh, you made it pretty fucking clear when you left me on read for a month.” He steps closer, and I have to force myself to lean against the doorframe instead of retreating.
Dread settles in my stomach.
It’s the fury in his eyes—so much colder, purposeful, compared to the white-hot rage I expected. Like he’s rehearsed this confrontation a hundred times.
I cross my arms over my chest, my thin robe doing nothing to ward off the chilly gusts of wind.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” He glances away to let out an incredulous laugh. “I want to know why you paid for Kai’s lawyer when he’s not your TA anymore. Why I keep seeing him and his trailer trash girlfriend sniffing around you like dogs all the time.”
I tilt my head, studying him. The scars are worse than I expected—a gnarled mess of tissue that pulls at his left eye, more disfiguring the corner of his mouth and jaw.
My Kai did that. I thought I knew why, but I’m reconsidering that initial theory.
Surely the Jordans could afford a better plastic surgeon than the hack Ezra got. Even if his face is still healing, I’d never have thought he’d been left this wrecked after Kai’s beating.
Unless the assault was much worse than I’d thought. I had been preoccupied that night, what with Haven having a psychotic break and all.
“I don’t know what’s more alarming,” I say dryly. “That you’ve been paying such close attention to me, or that you felt compelled to come to my house to tell me this.”
“You weren’t answering my texts.”
“Because I told you we’re done, Ezra.” I push away from the doorframe, going to close the door. “If you spent more time catching a hint, you wouldn’t have time to stalk anyone.”
“If you weren’t such an arrogant fuck, you’d reply to my messages!” Ezra’s voice is rising. “But soon as you got bored of abusing me, you threw me away like a piece of trash.”
“Abusing you?” I repeat slowly as I turn back to him. “As I recall, you begged for it.”
His face flushes with anger and shame. He opens his mouth, but I don’t let him speak.
“You came to me, Ezra. You showed up at my office, desperate for someone to see you, begging me to tutor you when we both knew all along what you wanted was some more of whatever your family was dishing out—”
His fist connects with my jaw.
The pain cuts straight through the fog of exhaustion and withdrawal that had been clouding my mind.
“Put him in the ground,” Bad Wolf growls. “Show him what happens to prey that forgets its place.”
But I just stand there, tasting blood, watching Ezra’s chest heave with ragged breaths.
“That make you feel better?” I ask, tugging my robe tighter around myself and tying off the belt.
“No.” His voice cracks. “I won’t feel better until you’re gone.”
Gone.
I study him again, even more carefully now that my head is clear. His hair is mussed. He has his puffer jacket zipped up to his throat, but his nose and cheeks are red from the cold. When I see the dirt and leaves caking his once-pristine white sneakers, my earlier misgivings return a thousandfold.
“Did you walk here?”
The Jordan house is lower down Earl Avenue—a near-hour long trek from mine, if you cut through the dense woodland separating the stretch of properties.
He doesn’t acknowledge the question, but his hand drifts to the right-hand pocket of his puffer jacket. There’s a bulge in there that seems too large for a phone or a wallet.
“Where would you like me to go, Ezra?” I ask, trying to keep my voice as monotonous as possible. “Should I leave town?”
“For a start,” he murmurs. It’s like he’s reciting from memory, his eyes staring through me, not at me.
“What’s in your pocket, Ezra?”
His hand slips inside. He blinks, eyes slowly focusing on mine. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” But there’s not a trace of mirth in his voice—it’s as flat as mine.
We’re a fine pair, Ezra and I. Two sociopaths with our masks off.
Truth is, I feel nothing.
If there’s something in Ezra’s pocket he wants to show me—a knife, a gun—he’d better take it out before I add him to my collection. But he just stands there with his hand in his pocket, staring at me with glassy eyes through a misshapen face that was once as beautiful as Kai’s.
“You want to know why I paid for Kai’s lawyer?” I say, stepping forward. The cold air gusts against my robe and damp hair, causing goosebumps over my skin.
“Yeah,” Ezra murmurs. His hand shifts inside his pocket, and he blinks rapidly, repeating himself in a stronger voice. “Yeah.”
I lift my chin, every inch the arrogant fuck Ezra says I am as I stare into his mangled face.
“It was the least I could do,” I say slowly, relishing every word as it leaves my mouth. “After he got on his knees for me and showed me what his pretty mouth could do.”
Ezra goes still.
Completely, utterly still.
I watch Ezra’s face cycle through shock and disgust, and what might even be grief, and I genuinely don’t care.
“You’re lying,” he whispers.
I step close enough to see the pulse in his throat. “Your baby brother came to my office on Thursday. I sucked his cock until he came down my throat. And he loved it. In fact, he would have let me fuck him right there on my desk if we hadn’t been interrupted.”
“Stop,” Ezra spits out with a pained breath.
“He tastes like Haven, you know. They must fuck constantly. It’s like getting both of them at once every time I—“
Ezra’s fist flies for my face again, but this time I’m ready.
I grab him, but put enough force behind the blow to send me stumbling back into the doorframe.
“You twisted fuck!” Ezra screams, all pretense of control gone. “You fucking predator! My brother isn’t—he would never—“
“Never what? Want a man?” I shove his hand away, tug my robe straight. “Or is it just that he’d never want you?”
The shock on Ezra’s face is clear from the way his skin pales. “I’ll kill you.”
“You’re not a killer, Ezra.” I straighten, squaring my shoulders. “You’re a victim.”
He lunges at me again.
I sidestep, catch his arm, and use his momentum to slam him against the doorframe. He struggles, but he’s let himself go since his stay in the hospital, too weak to fight back.
“Listen carefully,” I say against his ear. “You’re going to stop messaging me. Forget I exist. Forget your brother exists. Forget his trailer trash girlfriend exists. And if you ever try to speak to me again—“
“What?” he pants, still fighting my grip. “You’ll kill me?”
“Why wait,” Bad Wolf whispers. “Do it now. Wrap your hands around his throat and squeeze. Take your photo and share it with your friends. It’s been so long since you’ve spoken to them…”
The temptation is nearly overwhelming. But honestly, I’d just prefer not to have to deal with cleaning up all that blood right now.
I release him with a shove that sends him stumbling.
“Why would I kill you when I can have so much more fun destroying you?”
“You piece of shit,” he spits out. “I’ll—“
I point a finger at him, my voice shuddering as I struggle against the urge to drag him inside the house and splash his blood all over my fucking carpets.
“Threaten me again, and I’ll burn your life to the ground.”
Ezra stares at me from a few feet away, his hand drifting to his pocket.
I sneer at him. “Try it, you fucking coward. See how far you get.”
He hesitates, then turns on his heel and stomps away like a child throwing a tantrum. His silhouette grows smaller against the fading light until he disappears into the darkness between the trees.
I stand on the porch for a long time after he’s gone, feeling my adrenaline fading. It leaves behind a hollow, oily feeling. Only when I can’t take the sickly sensation anymore, I close the door and head back into the bathroom.
I stare at the lines I’d tapped out on the counter—still pristine—and I think about luring Ezra back to my house when I’m more prepared. Inviting him inside, drugging him…and adding him to my collection of broken things.
Because he’s well and truly fucking broken, that kid.
I’d be doing the world a motherfucking favor.
I bend to snort up a line, but end up blowing it off the counter like the Big Bad Wolf taking down a straw house.
Then I laugh, and I can’t stop, because Christ…that’s exactly what this is, isn’t it?
My entire life is nothing but fucking straw.
All it’ll take is one huff and one puff…and I’m done.
Fucking done.
I drag my hand over the white countertop, staring at the coke dust on my palm. Even now, I want to lick it off—feel the numbness on my tongue, on my gums, down my throat.
I want it so fucking bad, my mouth is watering.
When I squeeze my eyes shut, a flicker of an image pops up.
Ezra’s slack face. Eyes dull, a burst blood vessel blooming against bloodshot white. Skin splattered with more blood. Throat gaping like a second mouth, deep enough for the cartilage of his windpipe to shine through the muscle and skin and blood.
So much fucking blood.
I can already smell the stink of peroxide. Can already taste it on my tongue—
My eyes fly open.
Not peroxide. It’s the fucking coke.
There’s a pink swathe cut through the dust on my palm where I licked it, because I just can’t fucking help myself, can I? Can I?
I’m so sick of never having a fucking choice.
Never. Not once in my fucking life.
And why?
Because The Witch put a curse on me and my sister when we were born.
My mind goes back to the first day I spoke alone with Haven in the parking lot at AHC. When she told me how she thought she’d been cursed.
I knew, even back then, we were simpatico. That we shared a resentment for life because it would always seem to favor everyone around us, but that same luck never came our way. We were doomed to experience nothing but pain and despair and the type of loneliness nothing—fucking nothing—could cure.
“Christ,” I mutter, mouth twisting with disgust as I shove open the faucet and let the water wash away the dregs of insanity. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
I’m only half-aware of stumbling out of the bathroom. Ripping my phone off the charger on the nightstand, unlocking it with trembling hands.
I don’t send a message.
My mind is nowhere near capable of crafting some manipulative bullshit to drag Haven and Kai back into my toxic orbit.
So I go into the group chat, and I hold down the record button, and I…
…I blow my house of straw to fucking smithereens.