by B. B. Reid
“N—no.”
I snatched her by her shirt and brought her chest to mesh with mine.
“Then you don’t hit me.”
I felt my teeth grind against each other and practically felt the grit in my voice as I spoke to her. I could tell myself I was mad because she hit me. That maybe I was even mad because she shed my blood. But no, I knew why I was really upset. Doesn’t she know who I am and what I am capable of doing? What if I had been someone else? Someone wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her.
She held the gun in her hands, and she mistakenly believed it made her strong when it only made her much more vulnerable. She wasn’t ready to use the gun, and I didn’t mean on a physical level. Mentally, she was still too protected by her innocence. Someone more depraved than me would have killed her with her own gun by now.
“It’s just a little bloodshed,” she mocked. Her body betrayed her as I felt her quake and listened to the uneven rhythm of her breathing.
“Are you nervous?” I fought the smile tugging at the corner of my lip.
“In your dreams.”
“You have no idea what I dream about.”
“Dead little girls and the other people you murdered?”
Her back had hit the wall with a violent crash, and I was on her before I could waste time to regret my next move.
I was going to own this girl.
I braced the back of my arms against the wall and leaned down, bringing our faces close together. It was the closest I was willing to allow myself. I didn’t dare touch her again. Not now. My demon was raging a war against my will power and was calling me to hurt her, to give her the bite of pain she reserved to like only during sex.
The gun in her hand hung almost limp as if she’d forgotten that it was even there but the fight was still in her eyes.
Everyone, including me, was still waiting around for her to change, but instead of wanting to build her up, I wanted to tear her down, to bare the deepest part of her soul, and to taint it.
“You have no idea of the things I’ve done. What I told you was filler, nothing more. My secrets are far more sinister than you can handle, Monroe. I can drag you into that world. I can make you a person who never has to worry about fear again.”
“There’s more?”
“There’s always more.”
“Just get away from me,” she bit out.
I grinned down at her but didn’t budge. If she thinks I would leave without my goodbye kiss, she has another thing coming.
“No.”
“If you’re going to kill me for putting you away, then do it. All this nauseating foreplay is boring me.”
“Nauseating, huh? Boring?”
Before she could respond, I stole her lips with mine in a hard kiss as I shared my leftover blood with her and did my best to bruise her.
“You have no fucking clue what you do to me, do you?” I asked when I finally allowed her air to breathe. Her lips were stained in crimson red, and there were little bite marks from where I had bit her. Nice. I couldn’t explain the unspoken need to mark her, but it felt right.
She was breathing hard as if she’d just run a race. I think the sappy love stories would say ‘I stole her breath away.’
“I told you not to touch me,” she panted.
“And yet here I am.”
She hadn’t realized I had taken the gun from her, flipped the safety on, and stuck it in my jeans. My hands itched to touch her, but I braced them against the wall again and watched her squirm under my gaze.
“I hate you.”
“You don’t hate me.” I lowered my lips to her neck and licked the spot where her pulse was beating faster than usual. “You hate that you can’t.”
“I should say the same to you.” I heard the angry bite in her voice and smiled.
“You’re right. I don’t hate you, Monroe. Not anymore. I’m obsessed with you,” I admitted.
“Why do I get the feeling that is much worse?” she whispered woefully. I lifted my head to meet her eyes, and I could see the question and the fear. “Why are you here, Keiran?”
“I told you I needed to see…”
“Me?” she whimpered.
“Yes.”
“You needed to see if I was still afraid?”
She now had a faraway look in her eyes, and I experienced the unfamiliar, yet intense need to hold her and protect her from the world, but most of all from me.
I remember the first time I felt a similar need.
I had just come back from a summer at basketball camp. Instead of fun, it had been grueling and a waste. I got into countless fights, many of which I started and stayed pissed practically the entire time. It was the first time I’d been away from Monroe for so long. The school year began, and I saw her walking down the hall the first day of school. She looked so beautiful. She was different now, too. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was a more womanly quality about her. I had reached out to caress her face as if it were the most natural thing to do. It was her flinch that brought reality crashing down on my shoulders, and I quickly recovered by slapping her books out of her hand. I had to force my feet to keep moving and fight the urge to look back.
It wasn’t until I had her for the first time that I realized the petty shit I had done to her gave me only a false sense of satisfaction. Making her fear me was only half the battle. I needed to make her want me, too.
“Yes,” I lied. I didn’t give a damn about her fear anymore, but I would lie if I said I didn’t still want to control her.
“Well, then I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“You didn’t.” I shrugged and moved away to sit on her bed. I needed the space just as much as she did. At this point, it wouldn’t take much for me to fuck her right there against the wall. It would be hard and unapologetic. I would make her want it, and then I would make her cry before leaving her like always.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
“So you said.” The murderous glint in her eye, and then the way she stared down at her hand in shock as she finally realized her gun was gone, told me what she was thinking. “I took it from you while I kissed you, silly.”
“Give it back.”
“Why did you get a gun?” I didn’t try to hide my smugness. I wanted her to know I was aware of my effect on her.
“Do you really have to ask? Between you and your sick, crazy father, I felt it was more than necessary. When I think about what he did to Keenan, I—” She snapped her mouth closed and regarded me with a worried expression. “Have you gone to see him yet?” she whispered.
The change in subject took me by surprise but I hid it well. I even found myself nodding. “He’s awake now,” I volunteered.
“I know. Sheldon told me a few days ago. How is he?”
“He isn’t the same.” We stared at each other for long moments as she tried to interpret my meaning. The deep frown marring her forehead only deepened before suddenly clearing.
“Keiran, I have to know…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Why did you kill her? Before you said you didn’t believe she was innocent but there has to be more.”
“Why would you think there was more?”
“Because I don’t believe you kill for the hell of it.”
“You don’t know me beyond my cock, Monroe. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“Even a closed book can tell a story.”
“Yeah, well, mine is no fairytale.”
“And your mother? What about her story?”
She’s still on that? Her persistence in learning more about Sophia’s death was something I could use to my advantage. “What are you willing to do for the answer?”
“Come again?”
“You can have your answer if you give me something I want.”
“Such as?”
“You. Tonight. Right here and now.”
“Not happening.”
“Not even if I promise to fuck you hard and long?” I almost grinned at the
way she squirmed and the way her mouth dropped open. Her body had already said yes, but her mind had yet to catch up.
“You make such a compelling argument,” she quipped.
“You’re the one standing here as naked as the day you were born. You know how much I appreciate easy access.”
“Screw you. I don’t want the answers that bad.” She stomped over to her dresser and with angry, jerky movements, pulled out a pair of sweats and a shirt.
“Should I take that as a no?”
“You bet your ass,” she snapped.
I rose from the bed to stalk toward her, wearing what I knew was an intimidating expression. While a part of me liked her new defiance, the other half wasn’t willing to give up control. The last thing I needed was for her to think she was free from me. I backed her up until the back of her thighs touched the dresser and then lifted her to sit on the polished top and held her there.
“Your desperate attempt to be someone you’re not is only giving me the ammunition I need to have you at my feet begging for my mercy.”
I took her chin gently in my hand and lifted her face, forcing her to witness the cold manipulation calculating in my eyes.
“You remember what that’s like, don’t you?” A whisper, and then a soft kiss was unexpectedly pressed against her lips. “Only this time, I won’t need to coerce you, force you, or threaten you. You’ll do it for me, baby. Just like you always have.”
* * *
I never thought I’d walk these halls again. Sometimes I thought even I could be a bit dramatic, but the way my already fucked up existence had been spinning on its axis, I was deserving of a few dramatic moments.
The weekend was the longest of my life. It took everything in me to stay away from Monroe. I spent my days dodging Arthur, Mario, and John, while sneaking in and out of the hospital to see Keenan while he was asleep. Not to mention, my unsuccessful search for Mitch in between. For a greedy fuck, he was great at hiding. I guess years of borrowing money from dangerous sources, and failing to pay back what’s due, afforded you particular skills.
“How’s it hanging, man?” Dash greeted as he walked through the front entrance where I was hanging. It was a little early, but I wanted to beat Monroe at her own game. I wanted to know the exact moment when she walked through these doors.
“A little lower and a little to the right…” I stopped short when I realized what I was saying. That was usually Keenan’s line and a standing joke between the two of them. I scowled at Dash, who only smirked at me, unfazed by my anger.
“I miss him, too,” Dash offered.
“What the fuck are you doing, Dash?”
“Not pretending he’s already dead,” he barked.
“Fuck off. I’m not in the mood for your shit.”
“You need to talk to him. You sneak in and out of his hospital room trying to protect him, and yet you haven’t spoken one word to him.”
“How about I put one in your mother’s head and see if you would be ready to engage me in conversation.”
I never saw the blow to my face coming. Hell, I could barely see after his fist impacted with my face, snapping my neck to the right. “Too fucking far,” Dash gritted.
I didn’t apologize. I wouldn’t. He knew that, so I let him have his pound of flesh without retaliating.
“I don’t know what went on in your fucking past, but at some point, you are going to have to man the fuck up and leave it in the past. It’s getting old, man. It’s getting real old. Whoever they made you to be doesn’t have to survive.”
Usually, I didn’t give a shit what someone thought or the invaluable shit they had to say, but he always knew where to strike.
I straightened from the wall and met his eyes, matching his stance. It wasn’t about who the bigger man was. I just needed to see the truth in his eyes.
“How many people have you been forced to kill including your own fucking mother? How many days have you starved? How many nightmares have you had? How many people have you been forced to fuck as a child?”
“None,” he answered in a hard tone. Dash was a hard person to shake. It was one of the reasons why I respected him the most even though I had a shitty way of showing it.
“So, if you ever have to do even one of those things, then you can let me know when it gets old.”
“That was ten years ago, Keiran. If you want to continue to live your life as if you are still someone’s fucking slave, then do so. You’re capable of making your own choices. I’m only allowed to care about you, but at some point, you have to stop inflicting your own personal form of punishment on the people close to you.”
He stalked off and disappeared down the hall.
Dash never usually called me out on my shit, but when he did, it only served to make me angrier. Self-righteous asses like him were what made me hold on tighter to who I was. I gave up on trying to be good a long time ago. It was a hopeless pursuit for people who weren’t born with it. Arthur was the one to teach me that the first time I met him…
I felt like I had bathed in blood. My face, hair, and hands were covered in it, but it didn’t belong to me. The bound, nameless man, whose throat I just cut open, stared up at me with lifeless eyes. Each time I took someone’s life, I would start to feel guilt, and each time, I beat it down. It had been a year now since I made my first kill. I was still considered in ‘training’, as they called it, because of my age and size. Frank said I wouldn’t be ready to be on my own until I was far older, and this was just a mere introduction.
It already felt so very real.
The beginning had been rocky, and I suffered countless beatings. I could never understand what they wanted me to do. Sometimes, even now, it was a little hard to understand. I would do what they ordered me to do when they ordered me to do it.
I didn’t dare tell them about the nightmares. They would see it as a weakness and beat me for it.
I was learning, they called it. I was progressing. I saw kids far away who lived a different life. Sometimes I wondered what that life was like. I would learn about it when they brought in new kids. They would often talk about their parents, siblings, and home. It made me wonder about this life. Was there something better? Didn’t everyone live like this?
“Good job, son. You show much promise.”
An unknown man stepped out of the shadows dressed in a shiny suit. I took in his clean appearance, and the way everyone seemed to snap to attention when he made his presence known and figured he must have been the boss Frank spoke about often.
“Sir?”
“You see that?” he pointed to the dead man who was bleeding out on the floor. “Good people have no place in this world so we must eradicate them. Only the strongest survive, and to be strong, you have to be ruthless and prey on the weak. Do you understand?”
I nodded that I did even though I didn’t. I would ask one of the older kids later.
“You did a good thing here. This man was a rat. He was a disease that had to be cut off before it could spread, and you did that. What is your name, little one?”
“He doesn’t have one,” Frank spoke up. “We just call him slave.”
“Even better,” the man grinned, evilly. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you. You’re smarter than the rest and willing to work, is what they tell me. Tell me… how do you like our line of business?”
* * *
“Mr. Masters, you’re late. I expected you thirty minutes ago,” Mrs. Gilmore admonished when I stepped foot inside her office. I’d waited for Monroe well past the first bell for class, but she never showed. I sent a quick text to her and told myself I wasn’t worried. I was annoyed that she denied me my morning fix by not showing up.
“Well, I’m here now so say what you have to say and let’s get this shit over with,” I snapped.
I normally wasn’t rude to the school staff, but my patience was long gone. Monroe’s absence was just the thing to send me over the edge.
“All right. You won’t have a future at
the rate you’re going this year. When college is no longer an option so is basketball. Lucky for you, you’ve been a somewhat of an outstanding student these past three years… academically. You’ve been jailed twice already, and you are looking to fail another year if you don’t button up. So far, your future is promising if you are looking to pursue a career in the penitentiary. If that is what you want, then a high school diploma isn’t what you need and you are wasting my time. I realize you have a lot going on considering the tragic accident with your cousin—”
“My brother,” I snarled.
“Excuse me?” She stared at me with shock etched on her face.
“He’s my fucking brother. If you are going to talk about my family as if you have a fucking clue, then speak correctly. He’s my brother.”
“Well, I—”
“Never mind all that. Continue. You were telling me how I’m a waste without a future.”
It took her a few moments to pick her face up before she spoke. “Yes, well, not in exactly those words, Mr. Masters. What I am trying to say is you are a smart young man and a leader. Whether you know it or not, there are people who look to you. Is this the kind of example you want to set for your peers?”
What the hell was up with people telling me what I needed to do today? “Well, then, I’d say they have a bad judge of character, and it should be them you need to speak to.”
“Nevertheless, you are on your last strike. There are no more chances, Mr. Masters. I suggest you heed this warning. You may go.”
I didn’t waste any time leaving her office. After her condescending speech, I had half a mind to skip, but that would just be petty. My phone vibrated in my jeans, and I quickly fished it out.
As I recall, my whereabouts are NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Kindly fuck off.
I smiled and pocketed my phone without replying. Monroe continued to dig her hole and I let her. When she finally realizes she’s dug too deep, she’ll be too far in to escape. It didn’t stop me from going after her though. I still needed to feed my addiction. It was time to change classes, and so it took me a little longer than I liked as I tried to dodge the unwanted attention and ignore the wary looks from some of the other students. I wasn’t surprised most of them had heard by now how I was suspected of Trevor and Anya’s murder. I was almost sorry I wasn’t the one to do it.