Chapter 11
Royal
O ut in the shed, I grab my mask, but my hand brushes another disguise, an old one, jagged and blood-red.
The kind I used to wear when I was a kid hiding from the Reverend’s belt.
When I’d sneak out of the commune and ride stolen bikes through the holler with Legend and Becki before any of us had names worth screaming.
I remember that Halloween when we were sixteen.
I punched a guy in the nose for calling her jailbait trash.
She always believed in me back then. Even when I didn’t. I was already halfway in love with her that night.
And now?
Now I’m drowning in it.
I go outside into the night, the mask still in my hand, and stare up at the black Kentucky sky. Hell’s quiet tonight.
But it won’t be for long.
There’s still one night left before the clock turns and All Hallow’s fades into November. Still one night left to be him , the man she needs even if she don’t know his name.
Her Biker Boo.
She can have her Legend.
She can worship the boy who left her every damn time it got hard.
But me?
I’ll be the one in the woods. I’ll be the breath on her neck. I’ll be the shadow behind the curtain. And when she whispers into the dark, Are you there, Biker Boo?
I’ll always be listening.
No, I ain’t the kind of monster who gets the girl… I’m the one who keeps her safe in the dark.
Becki’s hunting ghosts again. In town, I watch her behind a different mask, blending into the Halloween night. As she wanders from the party, I follow like the dog I am. This time to her father’s backyard.
Changing my mask, I become her Biker Boo. I watch her from the shadows of the crumbling church wall, the bones of this place hollow and rotted, just like the lies she tells herself.
Her boots avoid the graves. Her blood-red lipstick is smudged from drinking. I imagine she smells like candy and bourbon and longing. Like rage dressed up as desire.
She thinks she’s chasing Legend.
But it’s always been me.
I step out from behind the stone archway, the porcelain mask hiding everything she’s not ready to see. Her eyes widen when she spots me, somewhere between terror and thrill.
“Boo,” I rasp through the mask.
She flinches. Then smiles.
It’s all the invitation I need.
We collide like two wrecks drawn to each other by gravity.
I pin her to the moss-covered wall of the ruins, where the old church blocks out all the light. We are completely in the dark as my forearm braces above her head, the other gripping her hip. She gasps, not from fear, but from how badly she wants this.
Wants me .
Her fingers claw at my hoodie, yanking me down. “You came.”
She’s trembling. But not from cold.
From need.
No gloves tonight, I slide my bare hand beneath her shirt, rough with calluses, dragging my knuckles along her ribs, her belly, until she arches toward me.
“You’ve been watching me,” she whispers.
She grabs my mask like she might try again to take it off, but I catch her wrists and pin them above her head.
“Why?” Her breath hitches. “What are you hiding?”
Everything.
My love.
My rage.
My shame.
I lean in so the mask’s lips graze the shell of her ear. “What are you hiding?”
She shudders.
Slipping out of the mask, I find her neck with my mouth, sucking hard, and claim what I’ll never be allowed to keep. She moans, loud, reckless, raw.
She tastes like sin and sorrow.
I lift her thigh around my waist, pressing her harder against the cracked stone. She’s soaked through the lace of her panties, grinding against the denim of my jeans like she’s trying to crawl inside me.
“Fuck,” I grit.
I straighten the mask, not that it matters. Neither of us can see a thing, so when she kisses the mask, her tongue darting over the sculpted scream, desperate and clumsy, I’m tempted to remove it completely. Feel her tongue on mine. But I don’t.
My hands roam, sliding under her skirt, fingers teasing the place that’s already begging for me.
She whimpers, grinding down. “More…”
Leaning down, I murmur against her throat. “You don’t even know who I am.”
She laughs, drunk on lust. “I know enough .”
I slip two fingers inside her wet cunt, savoring the feel of her against my skin.
She jerks.
I thrust them slow, then fast, curling them until she chokes out a sob.
“Legend,” she moans.
And I freeze.
But I don’t stop.
She cries out again, coming apart beneath my hand.
I want to scream. Want to tear off the mask and tell her it’s me . That it’s always been me. That I’m the one who watched her through the window when she was crying. The one who carried her from the creek bank. The one who’s written her name more times than I’ve ever said it out loud.
But instead…
I keep the mask on.
I let her lie to herself.
Because if she knew it was me, Royal, she’d run.
Her mouth crashes onto the mask, her lips sliding like she’s desperate to swallow me whole. But not me. She thinks she’s kissing him. That name burns in my ears before she even says it again.
Legend.
Her hands are wild, clawing at my hoodie, tugging, yanking, begging me closer. I pin her wrists to the wall again, harder this time, stone biting into her skin. Her gasp shoots straight through me, half pain, half need, and it makes me grind against her pussy until she moans.
“Legend,” she breathes.
I grab her hips, lift her clean off the ground, and slam her back against the cracked stone arch.
She whimpers, legs wrapping around my waist, skirt bunched high, panties already soaked against my jeans.
My teeth find her throat despite the mask, biting hard enough to leave marks.
I want her to wear me tomorrow, to feel me every time she shifts in bed or pulls on her boots.
Her lipstick smears against the mask as she kisses it, licks it, begs me without words. My hands are everywhere, gripping her ass, sliding between us, shoving the thin lace aside. She cries out when I drag the blunt head of my cock against her swollen pussy.
“Please,” she pants. “Don’t stop.”
She thinks she’s begging him.
I push my cock into her slow, savoring the stretch, until her head thuds back against the wall.
She claws at my shoulders, thighs squeezing me so tight I see stars.
My hips snap forward, slamming her against stone with every thrust, bruising her, claiming her in ways he never has.
Her cries echo through the ruins, broken, breathless, alive.
“Legend,” she sobs, arching. “Yes, God, yes.”
I lose myself. One hand grips her ass, the other tangled in her hair, jerking her head back so I can escape the mask, bite her jaw, her throat, the hollow of her shoulder. She’s shaking around me, moaning his name, giving me what I’ve starved for since I was fifteen.
Every thrust propels her harder towards the wall. Her boots scrape at the stone. Her body bucks and trembles, breaking apart on me, and when she screams, it’s not my name.
It’s his.
But it’s my cock deep inside her. I come undone anyway, teeth sunk in her skin, fingers bruising her thighs as I bury my dick deep, grinding until she shatters again.
When it’s over, I’m still holding her pressed to the wall, her breath hot and ragged against the mask.
After, she sags against me, legs weak, heart racing under my palm where it rests on her chest. She touches the mask gently, fingertips tracing the cracked lines like she’s trying to memorize them.
“I love you, Biker Boo,” she whispers.
My whole body locks.
She doesn’t mean me .
But I let her believe it.
Pulling out of her, I set her down gently. Zip my jeans. I kiss her forehead through the mask, then step away before I say something that’ll ruin the spell.
And then I vanish into the dark.
Just like a ghost.
Just like always.
I lean against a tree, catching my breath like I just ran through a goddamn war zone. My jeans are tight, soaked in her and me, and my heart feels like it's trying to claw its way out of my chest.
She said she loved me.
Even if it was meant for another man’s name, I can’t unhear it. Can't undo the way her body melted for me. For me .
I press the back of my head against the tree, the wet moss cold against my skull. My fingers twitch. I can still feel her. The tremble in her thighs, her wet pussy, the way she came undone with her mouth against my masked mouth like I was her salvation dressed as sin.
I should’ve stopped.
I should’ve told her.
But I didn’t.
Because I'm a coward dressed as a ghost.
Because if I told her, she’d rip herself away and run. She’d laugh, maybe. Or worse, look at me with pity. And I’m not a man who survives that. Not again.
She’s still in there. Just a few yards away, tucked between the half-fallen archway and the stained-glass grave of what used to be a pulpit. Her skirt bunched. Her lipstick smeared. Her chest still rising and falling like a storm hadn’t passed through her.
Because that’s what I am.
Not a man.
A haunted thing that only knows how to burn and break.
Tearing off the mask, I light a cigarette with trembling hands. I shouldn't stay. But I do. Just for a moment longer. Just to watch her as she tugs her panties straight and tries to collect herself.
When she looks around for me, I duck behind the rotted church beam.
She whispers, “Where are you?”
And goddamn, I almost go back. Without the mask.
Almost.
But instead, I retreat.
Back into the woods.
Back into myself.
Later, I’m holed up in the shed behind the old storage barn the club doesn’t use anymore.
Inside the journal, the one I started last fall, I flip past the worn pages of scratched-out poems until I find the clean sheet.
I take out the pen. My hand still smells like her.
I press it to paper.
She moaned the name of a ghost.
And I let her.
Because it’s easier to be a fantasy than a man with blood on his hands.
I scribble harder, black ink tearing the page.
I don’t want her to love a mask.
But it’s the only way she’ll ever love me.
It should be raining, but it’s not.
The sky’s too dry for mercy.
I head back toward the graveyard near the trailer park. Don’t ask why. Maybe because she always walks through there when she’s hurting, or maybe because I’m too fucked in the head to stay away.
I hear her laugh first, then choke on the sound. It’s not her real laugh. It’s the kind she fakes when she’s trying not to cry.
I linger in the shadows of the blackened crypts, and sure enough, she’s there. Alone.
She picks up a crumbling piece of an old headstone and hurls it at a tree. It explodes into dust.
“Asshole,” she mutters. I think she means Legend.
But it still lands like a punch.
I take a step forward, just one, and snap a twig.
She whirls around.
“Who's there?”
I don’t speak. Just breathe slow through the mask. I know better now.
She peers into the dark. “You came back…”
She walks closer.
And I vanish again.
October 31 (midnight) “The Wall”
Your voice when you broke that final sob against stone and sin it baptized me again.
I kissed you rough because that’s the only way I know how. I let you whisper his name because I’d rather be your mistake than your nothing.