Chapter Fifty-Four #2
I’m sucking on my teeth, stuffing my hands into my front pockets and when I turn around, I think I almost hear her sigh a breath of relief.
I think she thinks this is over—us, me and her.
I think she has no fucking idea what I’m capable of.
I think she’s underestimating me.
I think she has underestimated us.
I move without knowing. Two steps toward the kitchen table, where the gun lay. I snatch it up. Working to temper my trembling hands, I turn around, reach into my pocket, load it.
I no longer hear her breathing, and I’m unsure I am myself. And I don’t look at her again; my eyes firmly pressed to the linoleum flooring when I take a step toward her.
I watch her feet shuffle back, then I continue forward until I’ve got her back pressed against the kitchen countertop.
She doesn’t try to move anymore, she’s frozen still.
Tension is a live wire between us, and I feel like I’m moving through water when I snatch her hand from the counter, settle my palm over hers.
She’s trembling, but she doesn’t look nervous.
I hold her tighter though because of it, curling her fingers around the handle, then I bring the muzzle to my chest, press the metal to the center.
And when I lift my eyes, let them touch hers, I watch hers harden.
“What are you…”
I don’t let her finish. I work her thumb back on the safety, the click echoing around us, then I force the barrel over my heart deeper.
My eyes don’t lift from hers when I rasp, “The only way I’m leaving you again is in a fucking body bag, Laiken.” I grab her waist, pull her against me, let my forehead touch hers. “So, pull the trigger. End me.”
She wets her lips, keeps her hand as steady as her body will allow, all while simultaneously oscillating her eyes between mine.
But too much time passes and when she closes them, her truth whispers.
I knew firsthand that when you really wanted someone gone, uncertainty never had the chance to take root. You drove the bullet in, then you wiped your face clean.
It’s how I felt when I pressed the muzzle to my father’s temple and squeezed the trigger.
There was no space for anything but spilled blood. Because they didn’t matter.
So, why was she flinching? And why did she flinch when the same gun was in her mouth?
I’m about to ask her again when she speaks, and what she says next, and the way she says it, tremble fiercely along the cadence of death.
Her words connect like a hammer.
“Is that what you really want, Chase Keller?” She lifts her chin, her lips a ghost over mine, her nose too. I close my eyes, breathe her in.
Laiken pushes the metal deeper between my ribs, twists it, waits for my flinch.
I don’t fucking dare, but I do peel my eyes open.
“You want me to carry your blood on my hands?” She chews the inside of her cheek. Tears are in her eyes. They slide in a silent sheen down her cheeks. She catches one at her top lip. “Tell me, why would I do that when you’ve never had the stones to carry mine?”
My heart shakes against my ribcage, something cold settling across the back of my neck.
Her words are ugly, but they’re the goddamn truth.
Laiken slides her lips back to mine, and this time, she keeps them there, hovering over top.
“I bled for you, yesterday. And you let me leave, you let me go.” She parts her lips, and I try to reach for her chin, but she’s quick to jerk her head away.
I swallow past the lump in my throat, thinking of the tunnel, the bleed out. The opportunity to right my wrongs. How I froze. How I buried myself in a familiar pussy, looking for coke.
My chest constricts.
Guilt whispers.
I palm the side of her face, she jerks again. The same way I knew she would, and still, I found enough courage to ask, bypassing all that she had just said. “Why you flinching, Laiken? Then and now?”
She laughs, a clipped sound full of anguish, and then she begins to slowly twist the barrel in our hands, turning it until it’s pressed into her own chest.
My limbs turn to steel.
Her hand seals around mine, nails digging into my flesh, clamping me there, the other on my arm. I keep my finger miles from the trigger, but still, it trembles harder than it ever has because something sick leaks into my gut.
A realization of sorts.
The delay of a memory, one I’d tried to scrub from my mind.
I swallow, squeeze my eyes. What had I done?
When I reached for the gun, wrapped her hand around it and pressed it to my chest, it’s as if I’d blacked out.
But as I feel Laiken grab for mine now, curl her palm against my skin, I wake up.
Because I feel the disgusting prickling phantom of my father’s grip at my arm.
However, this time, there is no grapple for power, no fight. Just resignation, and maybe a little bit of trust, too. For us, for me, for her, to do, and say, the things we both needed to.
A tear rolls down her cheek, and I want to lean forward, catch it on my lips.
“Why were you my flinch?” She smooths her lips together, swallowing her tears. “Because, Chase, I fucking hate you…just as much as I…”
I press my brow to hers, and she goes silent.
She arches her throat, her lips right on mine. She swallows so tightly, another tear rolling down her cheek.
“Just as much as I love you. I’ve. Always. Fucking. Loved. You.”
Her words reach into my chest, take my heart, along with my breath, and all that’s left is my fucking life beating in her hands.
I can’t speak.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t even fucking look at her.
How could she love me? After everything I’d bled from her?
My silence pushes the barrel into her chest deeper, and when she cries over the weapon harder, she tells me, “So, pull the trigger. End me, Chase Keller, so I never again have to feel the way you made me feel three years ago.” She pauses, only to swallow.
“So, I never again have to feel the way you made me feel yesterday.”
I’m frozen, and when words don’t come, when silence opens and closes between us, she rises to the balls of her feet, brings her lips just below my ear.
“Who’s flinching now?” she goads, and when words are still lost on me, she returns to her heels with a scoff, her hand slipping away from me, from the gun, away, away, away…
She steps back, shoulders slumped.
My jaw tightens.
I whirl around, watching the way she drags the arms of my hoodie over her wrists, using the fabric wrapped around her knuckles to dry her tears and stop the blood from dripping off her palms.
I disarm the weapon, throwing it across the room, making sure it's as far away as it can be from us. Her shoulders hit the wall at the same time it hits the floor and she bounces off it, the same way it does, too.
She’s watching me carefully, though her chin is to her chest, her tongue to her top teeth. “You’re going to fuck me up again, it’s only a matter of—”
I don’t let her finish. I’m across the room, one hand wrapping around the top of her throat, and instead of pulling away, she leans into me, into my touch, into the hold I have on her. My other hand cups her cheek, fingers her hair.
She’s trembling harder now.
A silent mounting need for the other writhes between us.
“That’s exactly what I plan to do,” I growl.
My lips slam down on hers as I lift her into my arms.
Her own wrap around my shoulders, her heels digging into my lower back, holding me against her, and when I slam her back into the wall, brushing my tongue to the seam of her lips, she lets me in.
Our mouths crush together, a frantic entanglement of shared pain and volatile anger and heightened fear, all outweighed by the need for each other. A feeling, a fate, our storm we had no chance of outrunning.
I close my teeth around her bottom lip, tugging it back into my mouth. She moans, her hands sliding up my neck, fisting my hair, wrapping the strands around her knuckles.
She pulls back, presses her forehead to mine, sinks her teeth into her swollen bottom lip, closing her eyes softly. Our breaths are frantic, my chest rising and falling faster than I’ve ever felt before, hers matching the pace.
“This time…” She swallows, and I press my thumb to her bottom lip, fingers tightening around her jaw.
She closes her eyes at my touch, savors it, though only for a short moment.
“This time,” she repeats, opening her eyes, touching them to mine.
Her hand wraps around my wrist, something slick and warm between us, and when I chance a glance, I see that the blood from the cuts at her palm has painted my forearm in bright red streaks.
She lifts her chin, guides my palm down her throat, over her sternum, smoothing past her waist until she settles me beneath the hem of her hoodie.
My knuckles graze against her lower stomach and she shivers, though she doesn’t stop her trail, shifting her hips and settling my hand between her legs.
I suck on my front teeth, squeeze my eyes closed.
Laiken Campbell is the only girl that can remind me just how strong and weak I can be.
My entire body is hot with the need for her, a tingling right at the base of my spine, my dick aching in an unfamiliar, violent way. She shivers again, her breath catching when I slide my knuckles around her clit, pinching her.
I push my lips against hers, tightening my knuckles before pressing my palm flat, cupping her perfect pussy, pinning her harder against the wall.
She pulls back, licks her lips, her fist tugging at my hair. “This time, Chase, when you hurt me, at least make it feel good.”
I shove her soaked panties to the side and slide a finger through her slit, circling her clit.
She gasps, follows it with a moan, her throat arching, her back too, pushing her chest into me.
I bring my hand back to her throat, return my forehead against hers and my breath is heavy over her mouth when I rasp, “I’m going to make you cry. You sure you really want that?”
I wasn’t sure I meant now, or later, or two years from now, but I still said it.