41. Lex
LEX
L oving something that hurts has always been my default. It’s all I know. From my parents. To the girl I could never have. To the aunt that let me live with her like a lonely pet until I ran away and never cared enough to come searching for me.
Love has claws and needles and knives. It pricks, swipes, stabs at you until you’re littered with the scars of its being.
Maybe that’s why I wasn’t surprised when Juliet left.
The shock kept me from reaching out, sure, but what really stopped me from dragging her back was the fact that deep in the back of my head, a small voice whispered, I knew it.
I knew no one would want me. I knew she wouldn’t really mean any of it. I knew she wouldn’t care.
Then, the anger came. The rage. The unfettered fury and the pain and heartache. I wanted to make her bleed like she made me bleed. Our castle of pain came crumbling down with the realization that all of it was a lie.
She never left me and I almost destroyed her anyway.
She was my last chance. My redemption. My savior. Now, I have nothing.
The rage hits the second I make it into my house.
There are too many emotions bottled up inside of me.
The pain in my chest cracks wide open until I swear I’m bleeding out.
I scream into the nothingness that is this place that I built.
For her. Everything was supposed to be for her.
A safe place away from everyone else. A quiet place. A haven.
I pick up whatever is closest—a lamp—and throw it as hard as I can.
It smashes against the far wall, splintering into a thousand pieces.
Just like me. I punch the wall, over and over again, until it collapses around my bruised and bleeding knuckles.
Then, I kick a chair, overturning it and still, it’s not enough.
Tears burn hot in my eyes. The things I did to her. What I said to her… they can never be taken back. The tears break free, sliding down my face.
Why? Why do I always do this? I always break the people I love. I’m the bad guy. I’m the villain. I’m the monster.
Your father was different before you were born.
You stress him out, that’s why he’s this way.
Don’t talk. Don’t leave your room. If you don’t want to make him angry, pretend you don’t exist.
Old hateful words from the past spiral through my head. I collapse to my knees in the center of the living room, surrounded by dry wall and broken furniture, and bury my face in my hands.
There is an emptiness inside of you, Lexy boy, Aunt Jane’s words spear into my brain. You’ll try to fill it your whole life, but the only thing that can fix it is you. Not a girl. Not a friend. Not a lover. You.
But she did, I want to argue. She did fix me. For a short time, I was whole.
Maybe the universe made a mistake in creating me, and that’s why my father—a good man by so many others’ standards—was so angry. He tried to fix it, but I escaped again. Maybe I’m someone who didn’t die when he should have. Maybe I am not meant to be.
Head full of weight and heart bleeding all over my rib cage, I don’t know how long I stay like that, kneeling on the hard floor of my own home, staring into the void of nothing around me. It was only a few months, weeks really, but for those moments with Juliet—I was real. I felt real. Seen .
Hours pass. Maybe days. I don’t know. The sun rises outside of the windows and falls. The room grows colder. The heater shutting off and not turning back on. The near-silent crackle of something—like firewood popping—touches my senses. There’s no fire. Snow? Is it snowing?
My phone buzzes. My stomach rumbles. Life moves on. The things that I did haunt me, the words that I said spear through me like whips of fire, and yet… the Earth continues spinning. Uncaring. Indifferent.
I will live and I will die. I will love and I will suffer. And in the end, everything continues on as if it never happened in the first place.
My tears dry up as does my mouth. I’m so lost in my own head, I don’t even hear the voices of others until they’re inside.
Familiar brown eyes appear in front of me and then fingers waving.
Nolan says something to someone else out of sight.
His lips move and I see them, but I don’t hear.
My ears are full of cotton and everything is hazy.
Nolan tries speaking again, his attention wholly on me, which means he’s probably trying to talk to me.
I don’t reply. I can’t. Arms lift me up, big, heavier than my own.
I blink as the room tilts, my perspective changing as I’m forced upward.
A face like my own but with cold gray eyes that can’t deny our familial bond stare down at me.
Fucking Mitchell Vikson. What the hell is this bastard doing here? In my fucking house?
If I had the energy to yell at him, though, I would spend it doing something else. So, instead of demanding to know why he’s here, I just stare back at him. The hollowness in my heart expands outward. My fingertips tingle with numbness.
Viks says something, but his chin is turned slightly. Is he speaking to Nolan or is there someone else here?
My silent question receives its answer in another second as Gio steps into view.
He takes one look at me and shakes his head before jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
He says something and I’m lifted again. It strikes me as odd that I’m so easily moveable.
I haven’t been lifted this easy since before I was a preteen.
Viks, however, matches me in both height and size and combined with Nolan’s efforts, they don’t seem to struggle too much as they heft me through the house and to my bedroom.
Slow blinks follow as they usher me into the bathroom and without stripping me of a single item of clothing, they push me into the shower stall and yank the water on—ice-cold spray slaps me in the face.
It’s not just cold, but frosty. Thousands of needles pierce my flesh and I suck in a sharp breath.
“Good, are you back with us?” comes Nolan’s dry question.
“F-fuck you,” I stutter, slamming my palms out flat against the tiled wall.
“He’s talking,” Viks says. “He’s fine.”
“He looked comatose there for a while,” Gio adds, coming into the room behind them.
“Get out!” I snap. “This isn’t a party.” God, I want to fucking die. My hands curl into fists and I let my head sink down on my shoulders as the water that’s so cold it fucking hurts rinses all over my head and neck.
“Not happening,” Nolan tells me. “We’ve been trying to reach you for days. We need to talk about Juliet.”
Shame is a vicious beast that cuts right into my guts. I look down, half expecting my intestines to be spilled out on the floor of my shower, but no, I’m still whole and dressed. With a hard indrawn breath, I begin to peel off my clothes.
“Outside,” I say, breathless from the cold water. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Don’t take too long,” Gio says, walking out first. Then Nolan and finally, with a careful look over in my direction, Viks leaves as well.
Minutes later, I’m shivering and numb from the water, but stepping out and wrapping a towel around my waist. Dimly, I recall washing Juliet after I fucked her in Morpheus’ house.
I remember holding her and getting my cum out of the ass that I fucked nearly raw.
The toothbrush holder is in my hand and smashing against the wall before I realize I’ve moved.
The door swings open and Nolan looks around, a frown puckering his brow. When he sees the broken cup, he merely arches a brow at me.
We were supposed to train her. Ease her into anal so that the three of us could take her. In one angry fucking night, I took that experience. I ruined it. Just like I ruin everything.
“What the hell, man?” That question comes from Gio as he steps up to Nolan’s back and peers into the bathroom.
Nolan doesn’t say anything, though. Not when I push past the two of them to go to the closet, and not when I come out a few minutes later, dressed and feeling no better of my circumstances.
He waits, a patient predator, until I’m back in the living room where Viks is cleaning up the mess I made. Then, he attacks.
“What did you do, Lex?”
My spine stiffens where I’m facing away from him.
I contemplate, for the longest moment, telling him the truth and letting them kill me—but even angry at Juliet as they are, I doubt they’ll accept this damage of mine.
In the end, it’s not a death wish that makes me tell them the truth.
It’s a wish for something more. That hopeful little dick inside of me that made me believe that Juliet could be mine, if only for a second.
I tell them about breaking into Morpheus’ house. About the anger. The fight. The fuck. The afterwards…
They listen and though Gio’s expression grows darker and darker the more I talk, neither of them attacks me. Viks moves about the house, sweeping up debris and picking up shattered bits of wood and glass.
When I’m done, I stand there and await my sentence. My punishment, as I know it will be, should be nothing less than pain. To my surprise, though, Nolan merely shakes his head at me.
“If you expect me to fuck you up because of that,” he begins. “Then you don’t know me. I’m not the one you need to ask forgiveness of, Lex. That’s Juliet. Juliet is the only one who can decide what should happen to you.”
“I want to punch you,” Gio admits. “But I agree with Nolan. Juliet gets the final say and if she says she wants us to rip you apart…” He doesn’t have to say it. I know his response. If Juliet condemns me, they will as well.
“For now, though, you need to put it aside,” Nolan tells me. “Because we need to focus on saving her.”
I lift my head. “You think we can save her?”
Nolan, however, isn’t the one to answer.
Instead, it’s Viks. “I guarantee you that girl will figure out a way to save herself,” he says, joining us with thickly muscled and heavily tattooed arms crossed.
“I’ve known plenty of women like your girl.
She’s not the type to sit back and be the damsel in distress.
What you need to do now is figure out how to help her. ”
“How are we going to do that?” Gio asks.
“We can’t kill Calloway,” Nolan says. “No matter how much I want the asshole dead.”
Viks shakes his head. “God, the three of you remind me so much of them,” he grumbles, his lips curling down. “I thought I was over the young macho kill-’em-all bullshit.”
“If you have something to say,” I snarl, hands curling into fists and already not happy about this man in my private space—no matter what blood bond he thinks we might have. “Then spit it out.”
Viks sends me a quelling look and uncrosses his arms. “You do this in stages,” he says.
He holds up one finger. “Stage one, set up your game plan.” A second and then third finger follow the first. “Stage two—find her, steal her back, hide her. Stage three, gather evidence against Calloway and play his own game on him. Blackmail is successful for a reason and it’s easy to find something a man can’t lose when he has everything.
You go after his company, his reputation, his money.
No one is powerful without backup. You take that backup away and they have no more leverage. ”
“You make it sound easy,” Gio says.
“It’s not,” Viks replies. “But is anything in life easy? Is she worth the hardship?”
There’s only one answer to that final question.
“Yes,” I say. “She is.” And if she’ll forgive me, then I’ll spend the rest of my life under her command. Her willing knight in chains. With a deep breath, I release the rage and hate and distrust I feel for this man and meet his eyes. “What do you want us to do?”
In my head, I send out a silent promise to the universe. The one promise I know I can’t break.
I’m coming for you, baby. We’re coming.