Chapter 21
Creed
I hate you, Creed.
Yeah, the feeling’s mutual, baby.
Not Eli anymore. Rightly so. Eli’s the good guy and she didn’t get him in the equipment room. She got Creed.
I lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, both hands grasping the sheets as if that’ll keep me here. It’s been hours since I left the gym and skipped classes for the day.
Every time I blink, I see something different.
Millie’s glorious, naked body. Blood smeared over her thighs. The pleasure painting her face when she came beneath me. Blood on my cock. Those perfect breasts, rosy cheeks, and trust in her eyes. Blood again.
My pulse hasn’t settled for one goddamn minute. My lips are still swollen and fucking bruised from her desperate kisses. My back stings where she dug her nails.
And, to make things extra bad, I’ve injured my knuckles worse than ever before, taking my frustration out on the heaviest bag without wraps. I shouldn’t have hit so hard, but her parting words detonated something ugly inside me.
Fight night is tomorrow, and my knuckles look as if I’ve shoved them into a meat grinder. They’ve scabbed over but they reopen every time I flex my fists.
Fuck, I don’t understand that girl.
I fucking hate her right now. I fucking hate myself, but that’s nothing new. I’ve spent the better part of the day cursing my mother for leaving me with a monster and cursing my father for making me in his image. Cursing the teachers, neighbors, and my aunt for looking the other way.
I’ve never been soft in bed. Always rough, taking pleasure the only way I know how. Hard, fast, no thinking.
As soon as Millie kissed me, adrenaline flooded my veins and my inhibitions went out the window. My mind switched into take mode. Millie didn’t help, fueling that primitive, violent side, moaning and pulling me in like she couldn’t get enough.
Blood. On. Her. Thighs.
I need noise. Enough to drown out what I did and there’s only one place where I can get it.
Grabbing my jacket, I slam the door behind me. Keys in hand, I pass a group of seniors on my way out of the building. As usual, girls stare, elbowing one another while pointing my way. The braver ones smile, uttering a quiet hi, Creed.
A few guys measure me from my head down to my fucking shoes, but most avert their gaze quickly. They don’t want to draw attention in case I’m in the kind of mood where one wrong look would have me marking their forehead with a red X.
No one wants that.
I jump into my GMC and peel out of the parking lot, heading into Blackwood Point, a nearby town. The twenty-minute drive passes in a blur so profound I have no idea how I’m still alive instead of curled around some roadside tree.
The bartender, Jed, groans when I walk in, both elbows landing on the bar. “Forget it,” he tells me. “Not tonight.”
“Yes, tonight. Hit me.”
He stares at me, perfectly aware he can’t deny me a drink, or I’ll have Wade—his boss—here inside ten minutes.
He’s a good friend of mine and owes me a shit ton of favors.
One for every night he spent placing bets in the theater basement after I talked Brock into letting him in even though the events are student-only.
It’s also one of the reasons why Wade never barred me from entry despite the semi-regular demolition happening around here, thanks to my shitty moods.
With a grumble, Jed slides a Budweiser my way, the rest of the evening probably playing inside his head on a loop. We’ve done this plenty of times over the years. He knows how things go when I turn up with a dent between my brows.
“Does Hyde know you’re here?” he asks.
A shudder slithers down my spine at the mention of my best friend. It brings forth his little sister and the betrayal. I almost slide the beer back, but the need to dull the fucking agony tearing through me is too powerful. I’ve already done my worst today.
What will letting Hyde down again change in the grand scheme of things?
Nothing.
He doesn’t expect any better from me. I’m living up to his expectations. Besides, once he finds out what I’ve done with his sister, he’ll finally see me the way I see myself.
I’ve been on borrowed time with him since day one.
He shouldn’t have forgiven me for keeping him from Millie that night. She needed him, but he stayed by my hospital bed, talking me down from yet another spiral. He watched over me while I sobered up, three stitches over my brow, a cast on my hand after my pinky gave in on that guy’s cheekbone.
He should’ve answered the fucking phone. Should’ve left me there, but that’s the thing about Hyde... he doesn’t leave his friends in need, and I used that against him.
Fuck, I wish I were a better friend. I wish today hadn’t rattled me so much that I’m back looking for fights in bars.
I wish I could control myself better. I’ve done a decent job this past year, but Millie’s tilted me off my axis and every resolution I made outside her hospital room, crawling out of my skin to win Hyde’s friendship back, got washed down the drain.
Millie, Millie, Millie Baby... you drive me fucking crazy.
My self-loathing is at an all-time high, a constant thrum beneath my skin. I’ve ripped her innocence to shreds. She gave me something that’d never be safe in my hands, and I can’t give it back. I’ll have to live knowing she saw me as safe, and I blatantly proved I was the exact opposite.
Her first time should’ve been different. Gentle. Sweet. Slow. Soft kisses and whispered confessions. It shouldn’t have been with me because I don’t know how to give any of those things.
I hate how it happened. How rough I took her. How I let my instincts lead, desperate and greedy and so goddamn certain, when I should’ve questioned my every move.
She was a virgin and I fucked her into a blur of sensations. Pleasure, pain, fear, ecstasy... control instead of care.
I didn’t ask if she was sure, I didn’t hesitate, I took and it’s scary how naturally that came... pressing her into the mat, ripping her leggings off, driving into her hard, hungry, and vicious.
That’s the part that wrecks me most. That this is how sex will look to her. Not tenderness, intimacy, or safety, just a primal explosion of desire so sharp it leaves fucking bruises.
I down half the beer in one swig, every muscle in my body starting to relax. It’ll take much more to stop me feeling like shit, though, so I finish the first bottle in record time and Jed holds his hand out—a silent order to surrender my car keys.
There’s no point in arguing.
It’s a routine we developed after the first time I left this joint, my vision blurry after however many beers. I lost count at eleven. My legs were useless, but the keys to my car jingled between my fingers. Jed wrestled them out of my grip three steps out the door.
He gets me another beer, then another, and another. We don’t speak much. He knows me well by now, knows it’s safer to just let me vent inside my own head.
After five bottles, the effects of alcohol start to take. A calming buzz at the back of my mind covers everything I don’t want to feel. I turn in my stool, resting both elbows on the bar behind me, a fresh beer in hand.
“Can you at least take the shitshow outside tonight?” Jed asks, leaning into my peripheral. “The game starts in half an hour. You throw a punch and the whole fucking place will join in and trash the bar again.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I mutter, though we both know I won’t move for an hour at least, and by then, I’ll be too far gone to remember his plea.
Seven beers in I switch to whiskey, getting my buzz on faster.
It’s a slow evening for a game night. Half the stools are empty and the TV hums over Jed’s head on low volume.
I’m about to lose my fucking patience and take this hunt out onto the streets when five guys I recognize from campus stroll in.
They always travel in a pack, chasing skirts.
They approach the bar, laughing too loudly, their obnoxious swagger grating my nerves. They’re dressed in polo shirts and khakis, their hair perfectly styled, muscular chests pushed forward, wide shoulders stretched under pastel cotton.
They must be on the lacrosse team.
All the pretentious, polished, rich kids play lacrosse.
My gaze locks on the one leading the pack. Ash-blond hair slicked back with enough product to reflect the overhead lights, shining like he just stepped out of a shampoo commercial.
Fuck, I hope it’s him.
I could smash his face into the bar top right now. He fits the picture of Evan I’ve built in my head over the last year so well it makes the rage humming under my skin double in strength.
But I’ll wait.
It’s not my first time doing this, not even the tenth, so I know guys like them can’t help but give you a reason to break their nose. People raised on Daddy’s money never learn how to treat anyone they think is beneath them.
I spin on my stool, pushing my empty crystal glass along the hardwood, and Jed grabs the bottle, refilling while the blond and his friends come closer.
“What are we having, boys?” one of them asks, scanning the shelves lining the back wall.
“Bud Lights all around,” the leader replies, parking his elbow three inches from my glass.
“Taking it easy tonight, Gabe?” One of them slaps him on the shoulder. “Tarryn said you’re seeing that ginger girl later. Worried about your performance under the influence?”
Gabe grins, his teeth as blinding as snow on a sunny day.
“Yeah. She’s playing shy, but I’m pretty sure she’ll let me break her in tonight.”
My jaw tightens and fist curls around my full glass. Jed pauses mid-pour, looking up at me with one raised eyebrow like he’s surprised I’m still seated.
“She looks like a prude,” another guy pipes in.
“Those are the best,” Gabe replies. “Untouched. I like being the first.” He tilts his head, smiling to himself. “There’s something about ruining their innocence that gets me rock hard.”
I taste bile. The bar mutes and everything blurs and morphs into the equipment closet at the gym. All I see are my hands on Millie’s hips. My cock driving into her. How natural it felt to bend her to my will without questioning myself.
My father never questioned himself, either.
Something in my chest caves in.
I jump to my feet, grab a fistful of Gabe’s shiny goldilocks and smash his face against the bar before he knows he’s in a fight.
Jed doesn’t even flinch when blood spills across the hardwood. He’s seen worse.
Gabe whips himself up and around, wide eyes shocked. “What the fuck is—?”
He doesn’t finish. My fist cuts him off, splitting his lip, and the real fun begins once his friends jump forth, charging right at me. I swing left and right, my fists finding cheeks, noses, shoulders, and ribs. I dodge a few blows, but I’m no Neo.
One guy catches my jaw, another my stomach, then the back of my head and I grin, tasting blood on my tongue.
They don’t stop, hoping to bring me down, and I don’t stop either, grabbing the stool and throwing it at two guys clustered together. Bystanders egg us on. Guys cheer, girls scream once glasses start flying.
And through the chaos, my head is blank. No Millie, no blood on her thighs, no trust in those striking eyes. Nothing but my body buzzing with adrenaline and bloodthirst.
I grab one of the bottles Jed prepared for Gabe and co. and smash it on the leader’s head, my chest heaving. My brow is split, red obscuring my vision, but the pain is absent.
Too bad, I want it to fucking hurt.
Gabe goes down like a house of cards, folding in on himself, his body thudding against the floor with a bone-deep crack.
Only two guys remain standing. They exchange glances before charging right at me with a strangled battle cry. I ram my boot into one chest while the other guy clocks my temple, his signet ring hitting a soft spot.
The bar sways, swims, then tilts as I hit the floor.