Page 21

If there’s anything I’m certain of in my life, it’s that Spencer Maddox would crawl to the ends of the earth for me. I know it because I’d do it for her. So I have to keep these secrets that are eating away at me. I have to hold onto them and not allow them to bleed into her world.
Bouncing my left knee nervously, I crack the knuckles of my left hand against the steering wheel, waiting for the game of twenty questions that I’m positive Spencer is about to put me through. But she’s silent, and the questions never come. Like she’s reading the energy in the car, and she knows. But she’s nervous at the same time.
From the peripheral of my right eye, I see her chewing on the skin around her thumb. Switching my grip on the steering wheel, I reach out and grasp her hand in mine, pulling her thumb from her lips. She squeezes as I interlock our fingers together, and graze the back of her hand with my thumb as I cruise down the back roads.
I can feel her body slacken and she audibly exhales, as if she’s been holding her breath. A warm tingling sensation creeps throughout my body and goosebumps crawl across my skin. I’ve missed this so much the past couple of weeks. I’ve needed it so much. Needed her. I’ve dreamt about her, worried about her, and felt my heart stop and start so many times all because of her.
I curled up in my bed and I cried every single night that I was gone. I wrapped my arms around the pillow and held on so tight, wishing it were Spencer. I pressed my face to the pillow and sobbed. I needed her. I needed to breathe in her cotton candy scent, run my fingers through her hair, and listen to her heart beat.
She would hate me if she knew the things that I’ve done.
Every day was something new, something depraved, something illegal, and another violent shove into the life he has planned for me. I met the high and mighty Ryker Underwood that I keep hearing so much about, and the guy is absolutely psychotic. I can feel it in my bones that he’s going to be nothing but trouble.
While I wanted no part of any of it, learning about the drugs, money, and clubs, wasn’t the worst thing in the world. If I had to, I could handle those aspects. They were wrong but didn’t make me queasy. What was expected of me though, my role within this organization, it chipped little pieces of my humanity away.
I was meant to torture. Meant to enforce. Meant to peel secrets away from the very souls of our enemies by any means necessary.
Dad put me through 8 more torture sessions during the last two weeks. By the 6th one, I stopped shaking, crying, and throwing up. By the 8th, I learned that I could allow my soul to leave my body while I did what had to be done. That I didn’t have to actually stay and watch the madness unfold. I could disassociate completely, and let my body carry out every inhumane act, while I curled up in a corner in the recesses of my mind, waiting for it to end.
He finally let me leave, but with the knowledge that it’s a short lived bout of freedom.
When I make the turn down our street, Spencer finally breaks the silence.
“Where have you been Trav?” her voice comes out in a shaky whisper that makes my heart splinter, as she squeezes my hand.
I pull into my driveway, putting the car in park and cutting the engine. Shifting in the drivers seat, I turn to face her and bring my free hand up, softly cupping her cheek.
“I’m sorry babygirl, it was…” I pause, not sure how I can explain any of this to her. “Can we just go inside?”
“Fine, but I’m not letting this go Trav,” she sniffles and takes a deep breath. I know she’s hurting and I’m to blame because she’s trying to hide her sadness from me, like it’s not written all over her face anyway.
Flopping down beside her on my bed, I roll over onto my side and prop my head up with my fist. She lays on her back and fidgets with the hem of her t-shirt as she turns her head to face me.
Grasping a few strands of her bright red hair between my fingertips, I rub them together gently, and I smile.
“I like the new hair.”
She snorts, “Yeah… I dyed it in the middle of a nervous breakdown last week.”
I nod my head as I tuck the strands behind her ear, “Why?”
“I just,” she pauses and tears threaten to spill over her eyelids but she blinks them back quickly. “I don’t want to look like her anymore. Ya know? I don’t want to see her staring back at me every time I look in the mirror. I’m not sure I’m sold on the red though.”
“Well, I think it looks fucking hot,” I reply with a big cheesy grin, hoping to make her crack a smile.
“Shut up,” she responds, holding back a grin.
“It’s true though. You’re fucking hot, red.”
She elbows me in the stomach as she laughs, “I hate you.”
“I love you.”
“That too,” she sighs looking back up at the ceiling. “Trav, what aren’t you telling me? Where were you?”
I swallow the lump in my throat, getting ready to lie to Spencer for the first time in our entire lives. I tried to hype myself up earlier and convince myself it wouldn’t truly be a lie, just a massive omission of details, but it’s a fucking lie no matter which way you slice it.
“I’m sorry I was gone Spence. My dad, he dragged me to the city. Havok Hills. I know you don’t know a lot about him,” I start off.