40. Gio
GIO
S ecrets are an addiction. Once you have one, you can’t help but collect more.
Your mother’s not happy in her marriage, but can’t tell anyone because then she’d be ashamed.
Your father’s a piece-of-shit abuser, but you can’t tell anyone because then you’d be taken from your mother and she’ll probably die without you.
You hate yourself. You envy your friends.
Worst of all, it doesn’t matter how much you laugh and smile and fuck around with your friends.
It doesn’t matter that you have your whole life ahead of you.
That you’re smart and athletic and actually have a chance to get the fuck out of the shithole small town you’ve lived in your whole life.
Sometimes, when you lie in bed at night in the dark, just before you close your eyes for sleep to overtake you…
sometimes, you wish you’d never wake up again.
I don’t even remember what my first secret ever was anymore, but I do know that I collect them now. I keep them tucked away and I don’t tell anyone. Because when you open your box of sins, most people run. No one wants the ugly pieces of you, only the perfect, whole parts.
Drugs. Money. Alcohol. And secrets. They’re all the same. The only difference is that some things have outward side effects. No one knows about your secrets but you and the skeletons you bury with them.
My cell buzzes for what has to be the millionth time in as many days, the sound loudly ricocheting off the chipped wooden dresser I tossed it onto last night or maybe the night before. How many days has it been again? One? Two? A week? Feels like an eternity since I last saw her.
I get it now. All that bullshit those dead, old poets spouted about love. When your heart is broken, everything tastes like ash. Even five-hundred-dollar whiskey.
Somewhere in the house, I hear the front door bang open. Definitely not Mama because she left to visit one of her friends—or so I thought I remember her telling me through the closed bedroom door. If it’s my dad, then he’s in a pissed-off mood and for a change, I don’t really give a fuck.
I always knew one of these days we’d end up fighting it out and one of us would end up dead. The way I am right now, it’ll probably be me.
The door to my bedroom slams open, louder than the front door—likely because it’s not muffled by the walls and distance. Instead of my father, however, standing in the doorway, it’s Nolan.
Panting, sweating, and an expression like thunder, he stands there for a moment.
I roll my head to the side and know I should probably try to stand, but the room is still spinning from the…
I glance at the dresser again as my phone goes off yet again.
Huh, guess it wasn’t Nolan calling. Oh, but there’s the empty bottle of whiskey sitting next to a half-empty bottle of tequila.
The whiskey was the expensive shit, but when I realized that it tasted like nothing on my tongue, I switched to the cheap-ass, gut-rot tequila that’s been sitting in my parents’ cupboard since before I was born.
Can tequila go bad? Maybe that’s why I feel so sick.
“You smell like a dumpster,” Nolan says as he steps farther into the room, reminding me of his presence.
Finally, I do try to sit up and the world spins. I slump back down. “Go’way,” I mumble, shoving a hand out and waving at him.
Nolan shakes his head at me, or maybe he tries to, but I only catch part of the shake before the movement is too much and I have to close my eyes. Even with my lids shut, though, the space around still feels like it’s spinning. My gag reflex engages and I flip onto my side, shuddering.
Just like he had when we were fifteen and I’d gone on a bender after my first and last heartbreak, Nolan pulls up to the side of my bed and yanks the trash can out from under a pile of clothes stacked in the corner of the room.
He shoves it under my head just in time for the reminder of my poor choices to erupt from my mouth.
My abdomen clenches with each heave and I curse whatever fucking dumbass convinced me that drinking away my problems was the answer. It sucks raw, ugly-ass monkey balls being on the other side and dealing with the consequences.
After what feels like hours of upchucking the entire contents of my stomach into a small-ass trash can, I manage to swallow back the last of my bile and sit up. The room is no longer spinning, but the smell of my own vomit and the sweat on my skin cling to me like a second layer of body odor.
“Shower,” I grumble as I crawl off the bed.
Nolan stands and gets out of the way. “Make it quick,” he orders. “We’ve got shit to talk about.”
“Could’ve guessed,” I shoot back. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
Nolan doesn’t respond as I make my way to the bathroom across the hall, feeling like an old man with cancer versus an almost nineteen-year-old with a decent workout schedule.
The shower, thankfully, does the job of wiping away most of the liquor and puke smell.
By the time I get out, I feel marginally better and am able to walk a bit more upright into my bedroom to find that Nolan’s cleaned up the puke can and is sitting in the swivel computer chair against the rickety secondhand desk.
“Hurry up and get dressed,” he says, looking up from his phone quickly before returning his eyes downward. “We need to get going.”
“Where?” I ask as I march towards the open closet door and yank out a well-worn t-shirt. Back at the dresser, I snag a pair of boxers and jeans and begin to pull everything on.
“Viks came to me a few nights ago,” Nolan answers me. “He’s got new info on Denise Donovan.”
Buttoning my fly, I scowl as I reach for my t-shirt. “Does that have anything to do with Juliet being blackmailed by Calloway?”
Nolan’s hands pause on his cell, mid-type, and he slowly looks up. “You figured it out?”
Yanking on the shirt, I scrub the towel over my still wet hair. “Ma-Ri pointed something out to me, and yeah, though it took me a bit.”
Nolan looks to the empty bottle of whiskey and half-empty bottle of tequila. “Then, why this?” he demands.
My scowl deepens and I drop the towel to the floor. “Because there’s nothing we can fucking do to save her,” I snap. “Knowing your girl is sacrificing herself to protect you and your friends—it’d drive any man to fucking drink.”
“We’re not letting her stay with him,” Nolan says. “It’s out of the question.”
I laugh, but the sound is bitter and that tequila is looking good all over again despite the still sore, achy feeling of my stomach. “What choice do we have? Calloway is too powerful. He owns this fucking town.”
And her. The one woman who should never be owned by a man like him—Morpheus Calloway owns Juliet Donovan, and the knowledge makes me want to rip him apart piece by fucking piece.
“I’m going to take care of it.” Nolan’s words penetrate my thick skull and have me looking back at him.
“You’re going to take care of it?” I repeat his words back at him in a question before shaking my head. “How? He’s not the type of man you can just kill, Nolan. He’s not your father.”
Nolan’s gaze darkens, the set of his jaw hardening. “Any man can be killed, some just require more preparation.”
Morpheus Calloway requires more than just preparation, I want to tell him. The fucker needs a whole army, and we need alibis. Not just alibis, we need to have absolutely no question of our involvement. If we’re going to kill the richest man in Silverwood, no one can know. Not even her.
I settle my eyes on Nolan and let him see the truth in my gaze. If he wants to do this—I’m all in. Some men exist only because of a mistake of the universe and Calloway is one of them. I have no qualms about fixing that mistake.
“What’s the plan?”