Chapter Eight #2
She’s beautiful with that fire in her eyes and spit still on her lips. I’ve never wanted anything more than I want her at this moment.
But wanting and keeping aren’t the same. I’ve never kept a damn thing in my life.
“Skylar…” My voice cracks. I swallow it down, force it flat, make it sound mean. If I don’t kill this now, I never will. “You think this meant something? You think sucking my cock made you special?”
She flinches, but I keep going.
“You were on your knees. That’s all it was. A good mouth and a tight throat.” I step back, cold spreading through me, even as my cock still throbs from the way she took me. “Don’t confuse sucking my cock with something real.”
I watch the hit land.
“You were just a mouth, Skylar. A good one. But still just a mouth.”
Her lips part. Hurt flashes in her eyes.
Good.
I need her to hate me.
“Next time, don’t act so fucking needy.”
I watch her breathe it in. No tears. Just silence.
Her face hardens. “Fuck you,” she spits. Her voice shakes, but her eyes burn straight through me.
“You wish, sweetheart.” The words drip off my tongue, cruel and easy, even though something in my chest tears wide open.
I shove the pieces back together, forcing myself into the only armor I’ve ever had.
I move past her, step onto the ladder, and climb down into the dark, leaving her standing on the roof.
My boots slam the ground, the impact rattling up through me, and whatever was still human in me stays behind on that roof with her. I bury it before it has the chance to breathe.
The darkness surrounds me, but the fire under my skin refuses to die.
Walking away isn’t mercy. Skylar deserves a world that doesn’t cage her, a life where she can breathe, fight, and actually win.
She deserves more than a mess of a man dragging her down into his shadows.
If I stay, that future vanishes. I won’t be the reason she never escapes.
Every step on the cracked pavement tastes bitter. My hands bury deeper in my pockets. I force my eyes forward, clinging to the dark ahead so I don’t have to think about her on that roof, tears drying on her cheeks, staring after me.
The thought alone tears me open.
I push on anyway, one foot, then the next, pretending movement can drown the guilt clawing its way up my throat.
The streets are dead.
The only sound is the echo of my boots and the low hum of traffic bleeding in from somewhere two blocks away. Dolores’s place isn’t far, and the thought of heading back into that house twists my gut.
I fucking hate it there.
Each step drags heavier than the last. My feet don’t want to carry me back. They want to run until the night swallows me whole.
Reality cuts deep. Less than twenty-five days and the system’s grip will be gone for good.
Twenty-five days until my name slides off their books and I can vanish wherever the fuck I want. But now, how the hell am I supposed to stay in that house with Skylar down the hall, knowing she had her mouth around my cock.
The thought shreds me, fucks with my head until I can’t breathe straight. I can’t stay there. Not another night.
By the time I cut across the empty lot to Dolores’s house, my head is already sprinting ahead of my body.
Pack up my shit. Get out. Don’t wait for the clock to run down.
The state won’t give a fuck about me now, not with only a few weeks left on the leash.
They’ll shrug and move on. That’s the only plan left worth holding onto, walk out, and burn the whole place from my memory.
Whatever comes next, I’ll figure it out once I’m gone.
The front gate sags, hinges shrieking when I shove it open. The sound crawls up my spine and dares me to turn back.
Just ahead, the house sits in the dark, porch light dead for months. Windows blank.
I walk the short path and climb the steps, each one groaning under my boots, loud in the quiet.
The back door sticks. It always has. I lean my shoulder into it, trying not to make a sound, but it still drags loud through the frame, a scraping sound that always gives me away.
I freeze.
Wait.
Any second now I expect to hear her voice tear through the house. That sharp, cracked yell that carries from one end to the other, dragging your name through it like you’re filth for daring to breathe too loud.
But nothing comes.
Which means Dolores is done for the night.
Probably screamed herself hoarse at the little ones, slammed a few doors, then shoved them into their rooms whether they’d eaten or not.
Right now, she’s either crashed on the couch or in her bedroom with one of those trashy paperbacks and a drink in her hand, her version of peace.
The kids are always quiet once the yelling’s over.
I don’t bother shutting the door.
I won’t be here long enough for it to matter. Just grab my shit and get out before the walls remember I was ever part of them.
I move down the hallway, past the frames Dolores keeps nailed to the walls.
Photos meant to convince the system this place is something it’s not.
All those kids from years ago, frozen in time, their names probably long gone from her memory.
Smiles stretched too wide, faces pressed behind glass like that makes them real.
Smiling hard enough to make your teeth ache.
My room’s at the end of the hall.
Door shut, same as always.
I push it open. Smells of old sweat and dirty socks, something sour shoved under a bed and forgotten about.
One kid’s curled in the corner, legs folded underneath him, a book cracked open in his lap.
He doesn’t look up, just keeps reading, eyes locked on the page as if maybe if he stares hard enough, the words will crack open a trapdoor and take him some place better.
He’s smart. Too fucking smart to rot in a place like this.
If he was anywhere with clean floors and real meals and someone who gave a shit, he’d be the kind of kid who makes it.
But here… He’ll get swallowed. Forgotten.
Just another file in a drawer no one opens.
The other two are sitting on the bottom bunk, shoulders pressed together. A cracked phone screen glows between them. One earbud each. Some video playing.
They look up when I walk in, eyes blank, then drop their gazes like I was never here.
That’s the rule. Don’t ask. Don’t talk. Don’t fucking look too long.
Around here, survival’s a quiet game, heads down, mouths shut, pretend no one bleeds.
I drop to the mattress and rip off the blanket to get to my backpack. I drag it closer and pull the zipper open. One side’s torn, the teeth don’t close properly, but I force it open anyway.
I grab the jeans crumpled by the wall and shove them into the bag. The black hoodie goes next, then the socks at the end of the mattress, one balled, the other inside out. I lean down and scoop up the two shirts from the floor, shove them in until the seams bulge.
The blanket waits at my feet. Thin. Frayed. Mine.
I roll it tight and cram it into the top of the backpack, and push down with both hands. The zipper fights me the whole way, but I drag it closed, teeth grinding, until it zips shut.
I cross the room to the wardrobe. My dirty laundry sack hangs off the hook. I yank it down and twist the strings tight around my wrist. Then move back over and lift the pack off the mattress. The straps digging deep into my shoulder.
This is it.
Every fucked-up, used-up piece of my life, shoved into bags that barely hold. Everything I can carry. Everything I have. And it still doesn’t feel like enough to outrun this place.
I turn to see the kid with his face in the book is now watching me.
I look past him. Past all of this, I don’t give him anything. I shift the bag higher on my shoulder and turn to the door.
I don’t say goodbye.
I just keep moving, slipping down the hall, shoulders brushing cracked plaster, and step through the open door without so much as a pause. I don’t bother closing it. I leave it wide open, a final fuck-you to a place that never gave a shit about me.
Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I cut across the yard.
I reach the fence, find the hole I tore months ago in a rage, and push through, the jagged wire snagging my sleeve as if even this place doesn’t want to let go.
I have nowhere to go. No one waiting. Just a backpack that digs into my spine and a night dark enough to swallow me whole.
But that’s always been the story, hasn’t it?
I was born disposable.
Shoved between broken walls and cracked floors. Handed off, passed around, forgotten. I learned early how to fight. How to stop asking. The world never opened its arms to me. It opened its jaws.
So I keep moving.
Just me and this pack full of fuck-all, dragging my shadow down streets that don’t give a shit who I am.
If survival’s all I’ve got, then I’ll take it. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. No backup. No safety net. Just fists, scars, and whatever the hell gets me through the next day.