Chapter 14 #2
Her furious response is to climb out, leaving the passenger door wide open, making me look like an idiot when I have to put the car into park and walk around to close it.
Even though she left me to make a fool of myself, my chest warms as I watch her disappear into the foyer of her building. Her fear is utterly intoxicating, and I don’t know that I’m ready to face what that says about me, but I know I’m not going to give up the high any time soon.
She can be angry at me.
I deserve it.
What I’m doing is sick and twisted.
I know that.
But I can’t stop. Don’t want to stop.
I might live in the dark shadows of her life, but I want her to come play there with me.
She says she wants me to leave her alone, but that’s what she’s supposed to want. That’s what a sane person would want. But her reaction to me every time we’ve been together tells me something else entirely.
She craves this depravity. This devotion. And she deserves it.
She deserves someone so thoroughly obsessed with her that all sense and reason, all ethical thought, fail. I’m just the lucky fucker who gets to be that person.
The drive back to Mingle is too quiet, the walk through the bar too loud. My only sense of equilibrium is hiding from me, thinking the walls of her apartment are a barrier between us and not simply another obstacle for me to overcome.
“There he is!” Skyler slurs from the dance floor. “Cormac, my man!”
I chuckle, finding Sky dripping with women clamoring for his attention. But the only things he has eyes for is the drink in his hand and the ice pack taped to his shoulder.
He shakes off the gaggle, following two steps behind me into the office.
Leaning against the door to close it, he takes another sip, “How’s your girl? Did she have fun?”
A breath escapes through my nose, and once again I wonder how much of the truth Skyler knows. He keeps referring to her as my girl or girlfriend, but he must have been suspicious that she never showed any signs of being with me.
“She had fun,” I finally land on as a response. “She’s home now.”
“She’s home alone after that? What’s the matter with you? You two should be riding the high of violence into the fucking sheets right now.” He throws back the last of his drink. “I mean, if you’re not up to the challenge, I co—”
“Don’t fucking finish that sentence,” the dark threat spills into the room, stopping him in the middle of his perilous stupidity.
He grins, and it suddenly occurs to me that he’s looking for another fight. Maybe the one he had tonight didn’t scratch the itch he needed it to.
“I mean,” he laughs, stumbling away from the door, “You did kind of use me to get her off. I could probably do it again.”
Every disgusting, violent instinct buried beneath my skin wants to rip him to pieces, but if he actually wanted to fuck somebody, there’s no less than a dozen willing participants waiting just outside this door.
He could have anyone he wants out there.
Man, woman, neither, somewhere in between, several at once, probably.
But he doesn’t. He just wants to get under my skin and get punched in the face for it.
“You’re drunk, Skyler,” I sink into the chair and rub the headache he’s giving me from my temples. “You need to sleep it off before you do something stupid.”
He chuckles, falling onto the couch with an arm draped over his eyes, “I’m just kidding, Bat Boy, calm down. I’ve got no interest in your girl. I’m just happy you finally fucking made a move.”
“So you did know,” I mutter to myself more than him.
He peeks over his forearm at me, “Course I fucking knew. I helped you set up the techy shit you needed to watch her.”
“Why?”
“You’re my best friend,” he mumbles. “Stalking is the least of the crimes we’ve committed together.”
I’m not sure if I should be thanking him or not.
This world we’ve built here is full of violence and depravity, more gruesome murders than I can count, but knowing he helped me follow someone innocent in all of it just because we’re friends leaves me full of both guilt and comfort that there’s at least one person in this world I can count on that much.
“And you’ve done worse things for me,” his words jumble together, the grogginess of the liquor getting to him.
Maybe he’ll be drunk enough to finally share the things he doesn’t usually talk about. “Like what?”
“Killed my sister’s dad,” he confesses. “Saved both of us, almost got your fuckin sloat thrit. Fuck. Sloat thrit— throat slit.”
He had said weeks ago that I protected them, but he didn’t explain how or what happened, trying to leave the past behind, I guess.
I can only imagine what it’s been like for him, having to ease me back into this life without completely reliving all the shit that got us here. If killing his stepdad gave me the hidden scar across my throat, that had to be the catalyst he didn’t want to talk about.
“Stella’s dad?”
His only response is a hmm.
“Does she know?”
I wait for a response, hoping to squeeze at least one last bit of truth from him before he passes out. If I try to ask again tomorrow, he’ll just brush me off and move on to the next distraction. The updated logo, the newest honey acquisition, or his plans for expansion up north.
It’s impossible to get him to take anything seriously, using everything as a fucking punchline like he’s afraid of the consequences of feeling anything besides humorous.
His snoring breaks the silence, and I internally groan.
I didn’t even get five whole minutes of genuine honesty.
Maybe I’ll have better luck with Stella in the morning.
For tonight, I need to get this dumbass a blanket and go home.
If I hurry, maybe I can catch a glimpse of Brigit before she goes to bed. I glance at my watch. 12:30. I dropped her off at about midnight, so she’s probably finished with her nighttime skin stuff routine and already in bed.
Pouring myself through the throngs of people, I keep my head down, hoping not to be recognized by anyone.
I only catch a handful of nervous eyes locked onto the tattoo on my neck, quickly averting their gaze the moment they realize I’ve seen them staring.
When I sink into a chair at Stella’s bar, she holds up a single finger before continuing to make drinks and scream at patrons to get their orders.
When she does have a free second, she slides up to me, placing her forearms on the bar and letting loose a sigh, “Is he passed out again?”
I nod, only now realizing this is a regular occurrence.
With an eyeroll, she digs into her pocket and signals to the other bartenders that she’ll be back in a minute, “I keep a blanket in the trunk for nights like this.”
“How often does he get like this?” I rub at my aching head again.
She barks out a soft laugh, “Used to be you could tell just by how his fight went when it was a bad one.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you remember about us? About what happened?” she pries, signaling me to follow her.
“I don’t remember anything,” I walk closely behind her out into the parking lot. “That’s the problem. If I try to focus and pull the memories from thin air, all I get is a raging headache.”
She twists her lips, sorrow filling her features, “Well, long story short, the two of you were already discussing opening this place together. You had brought him on as a logistics manager for Balor, and he thought it had significant growth potential beyond just crafting and distilling.
“And our sister’s dad rolled up to Balor one day, accusing Skyler of god knows what, and tried to kill him. You—”
“Wait. I thought it was your dad.”
“Gross,” she shudders. “No. Our stepsister’s dad. He came into our lives when we were teenagers so we never considered him our stepdad. He was just some asshole with a daughter about our age that took advantage of mom’s naivety until it put her in an early grave.”
“And he tried to kill Skyler? Why?”
She shrugs, “Sky still won’t tell me. Maybe even he doesn’t know.
But what he did tell me, in no uncertain terms, is that he would have succeeded if you hadn’t stopped him.
Skyler wasn’t quite the fighter he is now, and there’s only so much you can do when your opponent wields a knife instead of fists. ”
“And I got my neck cut for my trouble,” I laugh.
All the color drains from her face as her eyes glance over my neck before she pops the trunk of her car, placing a bundle of blankets in my hands, “From my brother's drunken confessions of that day, the blood only made you more furious. You killed him with your bare fucking hands. Beat him half to death and then strangled him the other half. Scared the fuck out of Sky.”
“Really?”
She nods, “Yeah, he said you didn’t look like yourself at all.
Like some ancient deity of vengeance took over your body.
You know how he is with all that spiritual talk.
Anyway, something changed that day. The business slowly became something it wasn’t before.
For the longest time, I thought it was just the fight ring.
But then the news broke… and Skyler told me everything. ”
“And you stayed?”
She shrugs, slamming the trunk shut. “You took a life to protect my family when you hardly knew us. It wasn’t a hard leap to assume you were willing to do the same for others. I never thought you were a danger to me, even for a second.”
A pressure I wasn’t aware of lifts from my chest. I don’t give a fuck if strangers are scared of me and what I might do, as long as the people I’m closest to know I’ll protect them. Knowing Stella sees me as a safe person matters more to me than the headlines calling me a monster.
I am a monster, but if that’s what I need to be to protect others from the real predators out there, I’ll be the most monstrous being they’ve ever seen.
“Thanks, Stella,” I hold up the blanket and pillow, “for this.” And for everything else, but I don’t say that. Can’t admit that I needed a friend besides the drunk passed out on the office couch.
“You’re welcome. But if Skyler pukes, you’re on your own.”