twenty
The Saint
My phone buzzes, but before I can pick it up, Ronique starts yelling.
“I can’t believe you,” she seethes, wheeling on me as soon as the door closes behind Mercy. “How long has this been going on?”
All my life, from beginning to end, whenever that day comes.
“I told you I wasn’t a nice guy,” I remind her, not bothering to pretend to care. Ronique was a means to an end, and the end is here. I warned her that I’d hurt her, and she took it as a challenge. That’s on her, not me.
I pick up my phone, but before I can check the messages, she hurls a shoe at me. “You didn’t tell me you were fucking your sister. It’s sick!”
“Adopted sister,” I reason, batting her shoe into the corner. “We’re not related by blood.”
“By blood? ” she splutters. “Do you even hear yourself? What kind of perverted house did you grow up in?”
If she thought insulting my family would piss me off, it just shows how little she knows me. I take great satisfaction in hearing someone slander my father’s name, even if he doesn’t know she exists.
“It’s over,” Ronique fumes, snatching up the shoe she threw.
“It never began,” I point out. “I told you I don’t date.”
I thumb open my screen and see a text from Angel.
“And now I see why,” Ronique howls before I can read it. “Because you’re too hung up on your own sister. Oh my god, it’s so gross. I can’t believe I let you touch me.” She shudders dramatically and shoves her foot into her high heel.
She was waiting for me when I got back, looking all sexy, and she pounced the second I walked in the door.
I would have sent her home, since I’d just nutted inside Mercy like a fucking one-pump chump the second I felt her hot, slick cunt gripping me, soaking my cock in Heath’s cum.
But then Angel texted and said Mercy was coming over, so I figured letting her see my dick in Ronique’s mouth would show her how it feels to see her acting like a happy fucking family with my best friend.
I’ll be jerking off to the memory of her heartbreak for years to come.
Angel may have fucked her first, but I broke her. I smile with sick satisfaction at the thought.
“Is this funny to you?” Ronique screeches, mistaking my smile as having anything to do with her.
I open my text from Angel, knowing that ignoring Ronique will piss her off and get her out of the room faster. I’m done with her, anyway. It was fun needling Mercy by fucking around with her friend, but Ronique’s gotten too clingy and demanding.
9:17 AnAvengingAngel: M get there ok?
9:40 AnAvengingAngel: u seen h?
9:45 AnAvengingAngel: SOS
9:57 AnAvengingAngel: dude wtf pick up ur phone if ur alive
10:15 AnAvengingAngel: 911
“I’m out of here,” Ronique yells, stomping to the door.
I don’t even look up from my phone. Something’s wrong.
I’m out of bed in a moment, letting texts scroll while I pull up my jeans.
I don’t even bother grabbing boxers, socks, or a hair tie.
I just shove my feet in my tennis shoes and swipe my phone, shoving my head and arms through a shirt as I leave the room.
A few people are trickling in from the movie, but I don’t stop to talk, even when a few of them call out to me.
I shove past them and take the stairs two at a time, throw open the door to the dorm, and take off across campus.
My thumb hits the call button, and I see Angel’s face flash momentarily before he picks up on the first ring.
“You there?” he barks.
“I’m here,” I say, heading for the parking lot behind campus. “I’m good. I was with Mercy. What happened?”
“Where the fuck were you?” he demands. “I texted you a hundred fucking times and called you and—”
He breaks off, and in one horrifying moment, I realize that whatever happened is bigger than me not answering my phone, bigger than when I saw him fucking Mercy, bigger than when we saw her on campus the first time.
This is something more, something that hasn’t happened since Eternity disappeared.
In that moment, I realize nothing will ever be the same.
Because Angel didn’t drop the call. He didn’t break off in frustration at me. He broke off because he got choked up and couldn’t continue. Because he’s crying.
Angel North does not cry.
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice tight. “I’m on my way. Where are you?”
“Faulkner Regional,” he says. “It’s Heath.”
My heart stops, and now I’m the one who can’t speak.
Heath isn’t just our friend. He’s not just our brother.
He’s more than that.
I jump in the G-Wagon and floor it, peeling out of the parking lot so fast I burn rubber on the way.
It takes way too fucking long to get to the hospital, but it’s too soon.
I stumble in, bleary eyed and frantic, and find Angel in a chair, surrounded by his family, Heath’s family, all the people who love him.
My stomach swoops again, and I have to fight not to go to my knees.
People don’t show up like that for a scratch.
People show up like that for death.
And even then, most people are lucky to draw a handful of mourners.
But Heath is different. He’s special. He’s the one we protect, the one we watch over because despite his antics and hedonism and heathenism, we know.
Under all that, he’s different from us, not because he’s worse than the rest of us but because he’s good .
Angel stands when he sees me.
In one sweep, my eyes take in the dozens of people filling the room, in chairs and sitting on the floor, backs to the cinderblock wall.
His parents, who already lost a daughter.
His aunts and their partners. Their kids, his cousins.
His sister and her partner. Their kids, his nieces and nephews.
Even some of their cousins are here, Mad Dog and Maverick and Annabel Lee and Hemingway.
And their friends—Manson, a high school friend of Hemingway’s, the blonde high schooler that Maverick’s been bringing around.
A few Hellhounds have already arrived, a couple football players, and two or three guys he knows from the racing circuit, along with that asshole Colt Darling, who I still haven’t forgiven for bringing Mercy home with a fucking stab wound.
“Did the whole fucking town show up?” I ask when Angel makes his way over to me and grips my hand, pulling me in close and wrapping his other arm around me.
“Somehow, the heathen convinced all these people he’s worth caring about,” Angel says with an attempt at a laugh. I can hear the strain in his tone under the lighthearted words.
“He is,” I mutter, holding onto Angel a moment longer.
“I know,” Angel says. “I wish he did.”
And then we’re holding each other in a different way, holding each other together like we did back then, like we might fall to pieces if we let each other go. Except then, we were holding Heath between us, cradling him like something fragile, because he was.
“What happened?” I ask quietly.
Angel shakes his head, unable to speak for a minute. At last, he pulls back and wipes his face.
“I don’t know,” he says. “They’re saying he cut himself. Someone found him on their way back from the movie.” His fists clench so hard his arms shake. “I wasn’t fucking there. I sent him after Mercy. I should have gone. I thought he was doing good…”
“What do you mean, cut himself?” I demand, my voice sharper than I meant.
Angel shakes his head miserably, stumbling back to his chair and collapsing into it. His mom rubs his shoulder, then gives me a sympathetic smile and makes an excuse to get up so she can offer me her seat. Normally I’d refuse, but I need to be near Angel, so I don’t argue this time.
My mind is whirling. Heath couldn’t have…
Could he?
I thought he was doing okay with all the Eternity stuff, but I should have made sure.
I should have talked to him more, pressed when he said he was fine.
He couldn’t have been. If I was in his shoes, and we dug up what we did, I’d have lost my mind.
And Heath is far more impulsive than I am.
Did he find out something that pushed him over the edge, something he hadn’t told us?
Or…
Is it because of what happened at the movie?
I can’t ask Angel. He wasn’t there. He didn’t see. I’m not even sure he knows, though he jokes about it often enough.
“I don’t think he did it,” Angel says. “However it looks… No way. No way he cut himself like that. No way he was trying to…”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “What if he did?”
“No way,” he says again, almost to himself, shaking his head slowly back and forth. “No way.”
I drop my head forward, and my hair tumbles down around me.
Shit. I forgot I hadn’t pulled it up. I search my wrists for a tie, but there’s nothing.
The threadbare old bracelet I made at church camp with the rest of the Quint is on my nightstand, and I don’t even have an elastic band.
I rub my thumb over the tendons inside my wrist, the tattoo I got with Heath and Angel freshman year.
I picture Heath’s switchblade sinking through it, between the tendons. The blood welling.
“He loves you, you know,” Angel says, grinding the knuckles of his fist into the palm of his other hand while he stares at the reception desk.
“I know,” I grit out, though it makes my chest cave in to hear someone say it aloud.
“Not just the way I love you,” he says quietly.
So, he does know. At least he knows that. He doesn’t know about tonight, and Heath’s shoulder warm against mine, fist wrapped around my cock while he was inside Mercy. I didn’t push him into it. He reached for me. So why does it feel like this is my fault?
My eyes sting and I can only manage a curt nod. “I know.”
Angel is quiet for a while, punishing his palm with his knuckles so hard his skin starts to redden. “Does he know?” he asks at last, almost under his breath. “That you do too?”
He thinks it’s my fault too. That’s what fucking breaks me. I blink hard, trying to see past the blur of tears. “I don’t know,” I mumble.
But I do know.