Chapter 14 #2
“I don’t think you can,” she groans, egging him on.
“I bet your dick is so soft, it’s like a floppy, wiggly worm.
You’ll have to turn me around so you don’t have to look at my face.
Isn’t that right, Callum?” She eyes me where I stand, back by the door.
“Isn’t that how you’ll have to do me, too?
Turn me around and jam that pathetic, droopy appendage inside me by pretending I’m him. By pretending I’m—”
I launch at her. “Shut up!”
Milo’s hand whips across her face, but it doesn’t wipe away her smile.
“I’ve got five of you motherfuckers at home!” she shouts to the room. “Is that the best you got? Huh?”
I shake my head, running my hand through my hair.
I don’t want to hurt her. I never hated Liv. I want to hurt him!
Milo grabs the backs of her knees and yanks her down to the end of the table.
“You’re such a man.” She trembles, but her fight doesn’t stop. “Come on. What are you gonna do? Huh? Do it. Come on, baby. Do it. Blow my mind.”
Jesus, will she just shut up?
He reaches inside his jeans, and she stares. I wince. Fuck.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, breathing so fast. “More, more. Come on, come on.”
“Come on, Milo!” Vincent shouts, but his brow is etched in anger, and I can see his face flush with strain.
I can’t do this…
“So, is this it?” She starts laughing. “Is it happening now? Is this what I’ve been missing? He can’t fucking get it up.”
He shoves her down and grips her throat, digging his fingers in.
“Is it happening yet?” she pants. “Come on, baby. Fuck me up! Come on!”
“Goddammit!” he shouts, throwing her off and stuffing his shit back inside his pants. “She won’t shut the fuck up.”
Del hands him a roll of duct tape. No…
As he bites off a strip and moves it toward her mouth, I take a step, but she’s already launching up. Grabbing the bar light over the pool table, she yanks it again and again, screaming at the top of her lungs. How did she get free?
But I make no move to stop her.
It crashes down, right on top of Milo’s head, and in a moment, she’s bolting off the table. She runs for the nearest door, diving through.
I exhale. She was buying time with that little performance, somehow loosening the band around her wrists enough to escape.
One, two…
“Goddammit!” Milo holds his head, trying to get up.
Three, four…
We help him up, and he tries to bolt to go after her, but I grip him tightly.
“Let’s go!” he cries.
Nine, ten…
I shove his head to the side, checking for bleeding like I give a shit.
Eleven, twelve…
But he pushes past me, and we all run after her. She’s had time to hide.
Or get a good head start, at least.
They race through the door, my strides just a hair slower as I keep the others behind me. We spot her just as she escapes at the end of another hallway, and Vincent runs.
He crashes into something on the ground, and we all tumble over a table she shoved in our way.
Vincent bellows.
“Fuck!” I growl.
We try to stand in the dark, climbing over each other.
“We have to get her before she gets on the green,” Vincent spits out.
“Just fuck it,” I snap. “Let her go.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Milo gripes. “They’re going to come after us hard for this. If I’m gonna bleed, it’s gonna be worth it!”
“We’re not going to bleed anyway!” I bark. “She’s not gonna say shit. Too afraid of our families. Leave it alone.”
I wanted her willing. Maybe coerced but still agreeable.
I don’t want this.
My friend laughs in my face, though. “Not a fucking chance!”
And he runs, the others following him. “Milo!” I shout.
What the fuck did I do? I kick the wall, growling.
I’m a fucking weak piece of shit.
But I run. I pound the cement floors, racing after him. I push past the other guys, coming up on Milo, both of us stumbling out the door to the golf course.
All of us stop, looking up, my stomach sinking immediately.
Liv stands thirty yards away, Clay and several men with her.
Oh, shit.
Liv’s already covered in a flannel shirt, and I don’t know if all of her brothers are here, but Dallas is there. I would know Dallas’s outline anywhere.
They charge toward us. How the fuck did they know we were here? She wasn’t wearing a smart watch. I—
Del and his two friends scatter, the vague movement in the corner of my eye as they dash across the course and the others disappear back into the field house.
Clay holds a knife.
Milo growls, and I almost sigh with relief even as the dread curls through my stomach.
This might actually kill me.
They close in on us, and Milo quickly fumbles with his phone.
Before he can make a call, Dallas swats it out of his hand, and I simply wait my turn. Pulling out a chair from the small lawn table with a closed umbrella, I take a seat and watch them go for Milo first.
Army grabs him from behind, and Macon kicks his legs out from underneath him. He falls to his knees, and I watch, but all I’m really aware of is Dallas positioning himself behind me. I wait for something to hit my head or the feel of his hand around my throat.
“Stop,” Clay tells Macon. “You’ll get in trouble. I won’t.”
Milo chuckles, eyeing her and the knife in her hand, but then his face quickly falls. She raises the blade to his face.
“Clay, no!” he screams. “Ah!”
He winces as she drags the knife across his cheek, from his temple down to the corner of his mouth, and he’s bleeding all right. Just like he said he would.
“Clay…” Liv gasps.
Milo shakes, blood dripping off his chin, and Clay squats down. Tears thicken her throat.
“Now, when you go to get stitches,” she tells him, “you’re going to tell them that you cut yourself shaving.”
I study her. She acts like them now.
Macon watches her, too, almost admiringly.
I don’t even think he ever noticed when I was in the house.
“When your parents ask, you tell them you cut yourself shaving,” Clay goes on.
“And when the next woman in your life asks about your scar, you’re going to remember that if I get even a hint that you have done this to anyone else, they won’t find you with another scar.
They won’t find you at all.” And then she raises her voice and presses the point of the blade to the other side of his face as Army holds him.
“Don’t you ever touch her again! Not a finger! ”
“Okay! Okay!” Milo pleads. “Okay…”
Army lets Milo fall to the ground, and he grabs his bloody cheek as Clay moves over to me.
I sit there, only feeling Dallas looming behind me, though.
For this one moment, maybe the last ever, I have his full attention.
“That was hot,” I tell Clay.
Clay steps in front of me, still holding the knife.
“You really want to do this?” I ask her. “Make all the threats you want. Promise to sink me in the swamps for the gators. You and I both know that what you can do, so can I.”
Liv drops her eyes to her phone, slowly moving her thumb over the screen.
“You didn’t learn, did you?” I ask her. “That’s why you always pick on the weak, Clay. You can’t beat me if the playing field is even.”
That’s why it’s not fun to play with our own.
But just then, Liv taps her phone.
“Did you know,” my voice drifts through her cell, “that a structure can be deemed a historical landmark and cannot be destroyed after it reaches one hundred years old?”
Everyone turns to look at Liv, taking in the recording coming through. I narrow my eyes.
“And while fucking for me will get you Mercutio, fucking me will get you a meeting with Raymond FitzHugh to push through your petition to protect the lighthouse? And, in effect, your land?”
A cold sweat breaks out over my body. She recorded our conversation several days ago. We’d been alone, and she really wanted my part in the school play. If she went the extra mile tonight, I’d give her a business contact, as well.
It was the only way I knew how to hurt Dallas’s pride.
“Fucking me good guarantees it, in fact,” I told her.
She pauses the recording, stepping up to Clay’s side. “The playing field is”—she shakes her head at me—“not even, Callum.”
She was one step ahead the entire time.
Her brothers close in around me, and I close my eyes.
“Not here,” she whispers to them.
Another time. Another day. Somewhere not with cameras everywhere.
I tip my chin back up. “Get out of here,” I tell them.
Clay stands there, and slowly, Liv takes her hand, both of them backing away.
But her brothers stay, Dallas coming around my chair and stepping up to me as Macon, Iron, and Trace flank him.
“Dallas, no,” Liv warns.
But no one looks at her as Macon speaks. “Army, get the girls home. We’ll be there soon.”
“Macon…”
“Now!” Macon yells, ignoring her.
I laugh, shaking my head as her brothers approach me. “Four against one. That’s no fair.”