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How far will he take it? Will he touch me?
Please touch me.
I’m lost in the way Nico tastes when the door to my bedroom swings open, slamming against the wall so hard it nearly flies off the hinges.
“What the fuck!?” my father’s voice bellows, bouncing off the walls, and I nearly leap from my skin. Pushing up off of Nico so fast, I shove him to the side as my father lunges at me.
“Little fucking faggot! No son of mine!” his fist connects with my face and I feel the cartilage in my nose crunching. I don’t even try to fight him off because I know I’ll get it worse, so I just drop my hands at my side and cry out to Nico.
“G-get the fuck out Nico,” I choke out.
“This is what happens when I leave you to your mother?! She raises a little fucking queer?” His opposite fist connects with my chin and blood spurts from my mouth. I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s hit me at this point. The room is spinning and each time his knuckles slam into me a burst of bright light temporarily blinds me.
Finally, he stops, and I think to myself, ‘thank god’, because I can’t take another moment, but it’s just a brief intermission. Because moments later his fingers wrap around my neck. My eyes bulge as my airways constrict, and the force is so heavy I can’t even gasp for air. Swinging my arms, I try to hit him. I flail as much as I can but I’m losing strength and everything is hazy.
Suddenly the room goes dark.
I don’t know how much time passes, but when I come to, I’m on the ground with an oxygen mask on my face. The voices are so loud, but I can’t hear anything over my mother’s wails. EMTs slide me onto the stretcher, and I don’t understand what’s happening. Two officers cuff my mom as she screams, and I notice there’s blood all over her clothes.
Reaching for my mask, I try to pull it off but the EMT swats my hand away. Shaking, I turn my head to the side, and I see it. Pops. Bled out, dead, on my bedroom floor.
Sucking in the last hit from the joint, I snuff it out as I exhale, returning the roach to my pocket. I don’t know why the memory haunts me the way that it does. Because in all of that chaos that day, the part that sticks with me the most was the terror in Nico’s eyes as he fled. And the worst part of the fallout? Well that was him avoiding me like the plague every single day after.
I always told myself I was better than this life. I promised myself I’d get out of Havok Hills. I promised myself I’d find something better. That I wouldn’t allow myself to be just another victim of circumstance. But here we are. The last time I cared about someone, my life burned them, and I swore that would never happen again. Now, all these years later my life isn’t just burning someone I care about, it’s setting fire to all the people I love.
The emotions are overwhelming and painful, but I shove them all down and I lock them up tight. Because I’m not the boy I used to be. I’m capable now of pushing back. I’m capable of protecting what’s mine. I no longer have to sit back and take it. So I push up to my feet, and head back to my car. Because I don’t have just one man waiting for me, I have two, and I’ll protect them both no matter what it costs.
Even if what it costs is my soul.
Chapter twenty-four
Cole
“So, Lennox, you cook?” Zeke laughs, leaning back against the counter with a beer in one hand, the other resting casually on the granite surface.
After I told him I was going to fuck him earlier, not sure why that popped out of my mouth by the way, but that’s beside the point, he’s been lighter. He laughed until his sides hurt, which didn’t take long because of his wounds, and then we high-tailed it back here with his belongings and his laptop bag.
“Of course, can’t you?” I cock an eyebrow at him as I fill the pot with water and carry it over to the stove, setting the burner too high.
“I mean…” he nods his head a few times and laughs as he shakes it side to side, “Yeah, no. No, I can’t cook. We eat takeout all the time. Where did you learn to cook?”
“Directions on a box?” I snort and he chokes on a laugh as he takes a swig of his beer. “Youtube? Nah, I mean it’s just the basics. I’m not some world renowned chef, it’s just food.”
“You know Riot burnt boxed mac and cheese once right?” Zeke grins.
“Shut up,” I cover my mouth as I burst into laughter.
“Yep, set the smoke alarms off and everything. He’s worse than I am.”
Shaking my head, I busy myself pulling the remaining ingredients from the cabinet. I’m learning quickly that Zeke has multiple facets of his personality. Like more than one Zeke. There’s calm and collected Zeke who seems like he has it all together. He’s got this air of confidence about him that makes you either want him or want to be him. Then there’s the guarded Zeke. Walls so high they are nearly impossible to scale, surrounded by a moat full of flesh eating piranhas. If you’re lucky maybe you can jump in from a plane or something, but odds are you could miss your landing entirely and fall to your death.
Then there’s this Zeke. Smiling, happy Zeke. He seems like he doesn’t have a care in the world. I know I don’t know him the way that Riot does, but something tells me this Zeke doesn’t come out often. I like every facet of Zeke, but this Zeke is intoxicating. You get high off of his smile alone and never, ever want to come back down.
“You know you really didn’t need to make anything, we could have just stopped at the diner.”
Placing the noodles in the pot, I turn down the temperature a smidge before turning back to face Zeke.
“You took a bullet not even 24 hours ago. It’s the least I could do.”