Chapter Five #2
I didn’t like handouts, and avoided them where I could, but Harlen and his father Rusty, were insistent when they found out I was sleeping on the streets.
I fall into it when Harlen wheels the chair out from behind a small desk that holds an old computer, a couple of half-empty pens and scraped notepads, and too many empty bottles of beer.
He slides the chair to the side, along the same flattened carpet that the wheels had traveled many times before and grabs the acoustic guitar resting against the old brick wall.
Pressing it over his lap, he tunes it, then tangles his fingers with the strings before pushing his palm to the opening, silencing the reverb that bangs around in the hollowed circle face.
And when he passes it over, I take it.
I didn’t enjoy playing the guitar much, never really had. However, I knew the basics. So, I circle through the five chords I have and look up at Harlen. “See how something is missing?”
“Yeah, add an F-flat before the B-flat,” he says, watching my fingers.
And I clap the sound away. “That’s what Jade said, then she added a high D.”
Harlen is shaking his head. “Fuck, that girl is talented. That would sound sick.”
I’m nodding, playing it over again, when Harlen asks, “You got lyrics yet?”
And this time, when I pause, I hand the guitar back to him, falling further into my couch on an exhale. Lyrics, for me, were at times sometimes even harder than finding the notes. Too much emotion, too much blood to spill. “Nah, not yet. Can’t find the right words.”
“That’s alright…” Harlen’s fingers return to the strings, looping through the same riff, though adding his own spin. “They’ll come when they’re meant to.”
I sigh, scrubbing my hands down my face. “I hope so.” Then I pop a knuckle and open the bag of chips beside me. Grabbing a handful, I begin stuffing my face, speaking around a full mouth, “We are going with the girls to a party at Bryce’s toni—”
Harlen cuts me off, “What the fuck are they doing going to—”
I speak over him, “That’s what I said.”
Harlen reaches out and takes the bag of chips from me, reclining his head and pouring the contents into his mouth. “Why the fuck though? We know how those parties go; someone always ends up close to dead.”
I lean forward, elbows digging into my knees, pinching my bottom lip, staring at the grained brick that makes up the opposite wall. My mouth flattens, and my fists clench. “Laiken wants to go, apparently she likes Colton.”
Harlen snorts, unfazed. “That’s a load of shit, there’s no way, I don’t believe it.”
“Jade told me.”
I watch Harlen shrug.
“Yeah, and your sister’s a good fucking liar.
” He scrunches the empty chip bag and throws it at me.
It bounces off my forehead. “Think about it, right…” He pauses, grabs one of the beer bottles beside him, holds it close to his face, squints into the opening, then pushes it to his mouth, draining the last drop.
“The girls know we would be pissed if we found out they went to it on their own. So, instead of lying, Jade has just found a way to get us to go with them, which in turn means they get to go. She’s smart.” He taps his finger against his temple and tsks. “Fucking smarter than I was at sixteen.”
I don’t reply, and when silence fills the room Harlen catches on to my concern. “Are you worried that motherfucker might want some kind of revenge because you fucked Aria?”
Aria is Colton’s girlfriend. And I wouldn’t be surprised if payback is on the agenda tonight.
I jerk my chin toward the beer he just had. Harlen checks the one beside it, squinting the same way he had before passing it over.
I clean it out, then reply, “Yep.”
“Valid. Hope her pussy was worth the target you put on their backs.”
I belch; it tastes like shit. “Fuck, I hate you sometimes.”
“It’s the tru—”
I don’t let him finish. “I won’t let him lay a fucking finger on them, and you know it.” The vibrato in my tone is full of rage, heated and sinister, and Harlen quickly picks up on it.
“What’s up your ass?” he asks, swinging back in his chair and kicking his legs out.
My throat feels like a funnel, tightening and squeezing. “I’ve just had a bitch of a day.”
“You wanna talk about it?” he asks, his light brows furrowing.
I raise my dark eyes to his blue ones and palm my hand over the back of my neck. My entire body starts trembling. “Dad hurt Jade today.”
Harlen’s eyes turn sharp, icy. “He hasn’t done that before, right?”
Acid burns in my stomach. “Right.”
“Fuck,” he whispers, and if I wasn’t listening, I wouldn’t have heard him. It was so low.
My eyes latch on to a black dot embedded in the brick across the room, then I tell him, “I made a promise to myself when I was fifteen, lying on the ground after he beat me, that if he ever touched Jade…” I pause when a whimper threatens to escape.
Swallowing hard, I bring my eyes back to Harlen's. “I would kill him.”
A knock at the door snaps Harlen’s gaze from mine, though mine remains fixed, searing hot tears well in my eyes and one drips from the socket, landing in a pool on my torn black jeans.
I quickly shove my face into my elbow ditch when I feel a hand clench my shoulder, the couch dipping out beside me.
“Who are we killing?” Keaton Everson—known to all as Skinner, the enforcer of the Devil’s Peak MC—asks, glee in his voice.
I turn and look at him, my eyes catching on the gnarly scar sliced high into his right cheekbone.
His hair is cut a little shorter than normal, sitting closer to the scalp. His blue orbs frosted over.
I hadn’t told Skinner about my home life. But today, when I look at him, something twists and turns and pulls in my gut, urging me to speak, though words congeal in the base of my throat.
When I blink, he beats the palm of his hand against my deltoid. “It’s all good, you don’t have to—”
“My father,” I cut him off, and he whistles, falling back into the cushions behind us.
“Have you killed anyone before?” he asks blankly, reaching into his pocket, retrieving an already gnawed toothpick.
When I don’t reply, Skinner leans forward, knocks his elbow to mine.
I shake my head.
“It’ll fuck you up, man,” he warns, only, it doesn’t stick.
Inhaling roughly, my chest rises, then falls. “I was fucked up the day I watched my father lay his hands on my mother.” My words are mumbled beneath my breath.
A pop of knuckles, ten, then Skinner’s deep, hard voice follows. “Yeah, now I want to kill that motherfucker, too.”
Harlen snorts, and I flick my eyes to him, brows furrowing as I try to process what the fuck he thinks is funny.
He raises his calloused hands in surrender. “I was just thinking about how that piece of shit would literally shit himself if he came face to face with our boy here.” He reaches forward and attempts to knuckle Skinner.
Skinner kicks his legs out and brushes a finger beneath his nose. He doesn’t entertain Harlen. “What’s really going on?”
I feel my face turn to steel, and my eyes shift away when I remember how my father’s hand on Jade’s jaw looked.
His grip only became tighter when she cried harder.
“He hurt my sister today,” I breathe my words out, shame for the bloodline I carry trembling in the rigidness of my tone, my veins. When Skinner doesn’t reply, I shoot my gaze to my side and watch him grind his molars together, a vein in his neck ticking before his mouth flattens like ice.
“Is your sister okay?” he asks, his voice void of emotion.
And I shake my head, because even though she acts like she is, I know she’s not.
And she never will be again.