Chapter 13
Royal
S he walks away like she always does, back turned, chin high, storm in her hips.
And I just… watch.
Watch her boots kick gravel. Watch her hair catch in the wind like a curse I ain’t strong enough to lift. Watch the last sliver of her shadow slip away and vanish down that same path to Legend’s door.
Like I ain’t just torn myself in half denying her.
Like I ain’t the reason she’s limping a little.
Like I didn’t just press her against a ruined church wall and take her like I was starved, for her body, her breath, her love.
Let her think it was him.
Hell, maybe it’s better that way.
Let her believe it was Legend who made her feel that way. Let her wake up thinking the golden boy dipped down into the dirt long enough to ruin her for anybody else.
I’ll stay in the shadows. I always do.
Because I know better.
Legend gets the girl.
Royal gets the ghosts.
Always has.
I shut the shed door behind me and lean hard against it, heart punching against my ribs like it’s trying to get out. Like maybe it could chase her down for me. Say all the shit I ain’t man enough to.
But I don’t move.
Instead, I go to the desk. My notebook’s still open. That page, the one I wrote last night before I lost myself to her skin, is bleeding ink.
Her name.
Over and over.
Becki Becki Becki Becki.
Like if I say it enough, maybe I’ll forget the way it sounded when she moaned it against my neck and meant somebody else.
I rip the page out with shaking hands and crumple it into a tight little ball. It feels like ripping my own skin off.
I strike a match.
The poem catches fast.
The firelight flickers against the wall, and something inside me goes real still. Real cold.
Across the room, the closet door creaks open just a sliver. I walk to it slowly and pull it wide.
Inside, the box sits like a coffin.
Unmarked. Old. Duct-taped at the corners.
I kneel, heart pounding, and lift the lid.
Masks.
Dozens of them.
Some cracked. Some pristine. Some hand-carved from wood, some bought cheap at roadside gas stations on my way out of Louisville all those years ago.
I keep them like secrets. Like sins.
But only one matters now.
The one I wore when I first kissed her.
The one I wore when I tasted her name off her tongue and felt her legs lock around my hips like she’d always been waiting for me.
I lift it carefully, brushing ash off the cheek.
Porcelain white. Cracked down the side. Hollow eyes like me.
I press it to my face.
The world feels quieter behind it.
More honest.
Because without the mask, I’m just a coward who watches her love somebody else.
But with it?
I’m her ghost.
Her Biker Boo.
The monster who makes her feel.
Tucking the mask away, I pace the shed like a beast too big for its cage. Every time I close my eyes, I see her again, up against that stone wall, breathless, writhing, whispering Legend like it’s a spell.
She’ll never know it was me.
That I was the one who made her sob into my shoulder when she came apart.
I’m the monster who keeps her safe in the dark. Even if she don’t know it’s me.
Even if she never will.
I pick up the burned paper and crumble the blackened bits between my fingers like bone dust.
Poems don’t mean shit if the girl don’t read ’em.
Love don’t mean shit if she don’t see you.
All she sees is the mask.
All she wants is the mask.
So that’s who I’ll be.
Not her friend. Not her club brother. Not the boy who used to sneak cigarettes behind the tool shed with her when we were too young to understand what hurt really was.
I’ll be her nightmare.
Her obsession.
Her secret.
And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s better than nothing at all.
November 1 “Graveyard Confession”
They called me a lost cause. You called me your Biker Boo once, like it meant something. Like I wasn’t just bones in leather waiting to be buried behind another boy’s legend.
But you keep coming back to the dark. And I’ll be here. Not your lover. Not your friend. Just the monster who knows you.
The End