Page 1 of Broken Highway (Cult Boys #1)

NOAH

The world only makes sense in short bursts of ecstasy.

Like clockwork, it always seems to happen at just about the same time. Sometime after the moon is high in the sky and right before daybreak.

Behind closed eyes, I can feel the gold chain that hangs from my neck as it slaps against my sweaty, slick chest. Can feel it swaying back and forth as I ride through the trauma, my hands pawing at the hairy chest of the stranger beneath me.

The cross that dangles from the thin necklace is supposed to protect from demons. And yet, it doesn’t burn my skin.

The stranger’s fingers dig into my hips as he thrusts upwards, insatiably craving every inch within me. He buries himself to the hilt and my eyes snap open, catching a glimpse of my reflection staring back at me.

There’s a mirror hanging over the headboard that reflects the perverse display. The only sense there is for a mirror like this to be hung over a bed is for moments like these. A smart motel owner capitalizing on the customer base of these parts of nowhere.

I don’t see myself in the mirror. I see somebody else.

Someone I don’t know. Someone I may never know.

The visage of my body has always betrayed the way I’ve seen myself.

It’s strong and muscular, and I’m weak. Always have been and always will be.

No matter how far I run, I will never escape that scrawny boy who lost his innocence in that trailer park.

I lock eyes with the stranger in the mirror, lost in his dark burnt eyes that beckon me to remember who the fuck I was before the trauma.

Some things aren’t meant for knowing.

I’ve been lost since I first learned to walk.

But that man in the mirror? I’d fuck him too. Been fucking myself since I was old enough to fuck things up, anyway. Mama always said I was born to self-destruct. Like a star, it was fucking inevitable.

My cock slaps against the belly of the lonely man beneath me, who is not so lonely in the moment, but lonely nonetheless.

Loneliness is like cancer—it can recede into the abyss, but the threat of recurrence is always there.

A lingering shadow. A ghost waiting to swallow you whole because you can never quite outrun it.

The rush comes fast and hard, building up from within. I drop one hand to the headboard to hold on while I jerk my cock with the other.

Just on time.

Like clockwork.

I squint and my mouth drops open, gasping for air as I spend my loneliness onto the man’s chest. He claws at me, tearing at the flesh of my ass as he edges closer to release.

But I’m no longer interested. I raise myself off him with a pop and roll onto my back, chest heaving, well aware I haven’t fully held up my end of the bargain.

He tugs at his condom-covered cock and grunts out, “Turn over.”

And I do as told, shifting my weight to the side and rolling over. He climbs on top of me, the weight of his body pushing me down into the mattress, and wastes no time burying himself in me once more.

The thrill is gone because once I’m spent, the world turns dark again.

No purpose. No enjoyment. Just apathy. Lying dead while a man hammers into me on the verge of a breakthrough of ecstasy.

Each thrust stings. His grunts and groans burn ragged while his motions become feral.

He buries himself to the hilt, stills, and then finally collapses onto me, the sweat of his chest slicking my back while his weight suffocates me.

His breath is hot against the nape of my neck as he wages a war to catch his breath.

This is probably the greatest fuck of his life and he doesn’t even care that I’ve slipped into my natural state of being kind of dead. But what else is a ghost, other than someone already dead?

An older man killed me once. And then he killed me again and again on repeat for three thousand nights.

I was his most expensive toy, sold to him by a mother who really should have known better.

I suppose she did know better. She just didn’t care.

And then I suppose I killed him too, many times over—a constant sledgehammer to the heart of a man who only ever wanted to be loved.

Too bad nobody ever told him he couldn’t buy it.

He was always kept at a distance emotionally, but physically I was always his.

Until I wasn’t.

Until I pushed him down a flight of stairs.

The only times I really think of him are when I catch a glance at the ring on my left hand or in the silence that follows another empty fuck.

Empty-fuck of the night climbs off of me and shifts to the side of the bed. He lets out a soft chuckle as he rips off the condom and ties it in a knot. “I just realized I don’t even know your name.”

I turn to my side, my body still exposed, and cradle my head in my hand. “Call me Casper.”

“Yeah, right,” he says with a huff and stands up to collect his clothing off the floor. “Well, thanks for a good time, Casper.”

I watch as he puts on a show of getting dressed.

He’s moseying and taking his time, and I’ve never quite understood the casualness of nudity when we spend most of our lives covering our bodies up.

After he finishes buttoning his shirt, he reaches into the back of his pocket and pulls out his wallet.

Oh no.

He retrieves a fifty-dollar bill and drops it onto the bed beside me.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I sit up nd pull the sheets over my naked body. “I’m not a prostitute.”

“Yikes.” He reaches for the money, wads it up, and stuffs it into the front pocket of his black sweats.

“Yikes is right.” I gesture with my hand for him to take a look around. “This is my room. I paid for it, remember?”

He thumbs at his eyebrow and drops his head, unable to hide a sheepish grin. “Sorry about that, but maybe I could get your number?”

“I don’t have a phone,” I say, and it’s close to being the first time I haven’t lied to this man.

He shakes his head. Disbelief. “What kind of person doesn’t have a phone?”

“The kind that doesn’t want to be found.” I climb out of bed and make my way to the bathroom. “I’m going to shower, but it was nice meeting you.”

Another lie, and he has to have caught on by now that I’m a liar, but I shut the door behind me and wait with my body pressed against it. Just waiting for the familiar sound of a door slamming shut. But it doesn’t slam. Just opens and comes to a gentle close.

And then he’s gone, forever. Another lonely stranger on the same lonely road and we will exist only in each other’s memories. He’ll go back to his wife and she’ll be none the wiser that her husband gets off on dicking down young men in trashy motel rooms.

I avoid my reflection in the mirror as I step into the shower and turn on the water. Ice-cold water pelts my face before I’m thrashed with a rainbow of temperatures until steam pools all around me. I bow my head and inhale between the gaps of water ribbons that trail down my face.

Mama always said it was important to wash the sin off, but never took responsibility for being the brush, the tool, that painted it upon me.

She’d look at me when the men were done with me with disgust in her eyes.

Looking back, I try to reconcile that the disgust was her own.

However, she never apologized, not even in her final breaths.

The first time was when I was fifteen. She waited for me on the front porch while I sold myself inside.

She took only half, so it didn’t feel like the worst deal in the world, but that’s what trauma does to you.

Makes you rationalize the shitty things shitty people do to you.

When I’m done, I turn off the water, rip the curtain to the side, hang my hands around the curtain rod and stare blankly ahead.

And unfortunately, I catch another glance of myself in the mirror and it’s the worst fucking reminder in the world that the person I’m really running from is the one person I’ll never be able to escape.

He’s always staring right back at me like a ghost of the life I want to forget.

The life I need to forget.

I exit the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my body.

A fifty-dollar bill sits on the bed. I grab a pack of matches off the nightstand, grab the money off the bed, and step back into the bathroom.

One strike of a match against the strip and it erupts into a tiny flame, emitting a heavy smog of acrid heat.

I angle the money over the flame and watch as it ignites.

Everything I touch burns, either because I myself am the match or because everyone who’s ever claimed to love me has doused me with their lies. I’m an arsonist, hellbent on torching the world the way it has always burned me.

Daylight isn’t a friend of mine. The bright light makes it impossible to hide and all too easy to be seen.

The mid-afternoon sun on the skin of my arm burns as I make my way past the algae-filled pool of the motel with an unlit cigarette dangling from my lips.

Everything I currently own is packed in a rugged brown bag that’s slung over my right shoulder.

It’s not lost on me that I’ve fallen from grace, back into the same kind of cesspits I grew up in.

I’m gay Cinderella with a twist—from rags to riches to rags again.

Also, Cinderella was a saint and I’m a trauma-stained whore.

A bell rings as I swing open the front door of the office. There’s nobody behind the counter at first, but a middle-aged woman with tight curls enters from the backroom and plasters a fake smile on her face.

“Do you need a lighter?” she asks.

“I don’t smoke.”

“There’s a cigarette in your mouth.”

“It’s a comfort thing.” I retrieve the cigarette from my mouth and stick it behind one ear. “I used to smoke, but it’s one of many bad habits I’m trying to break and this makes me feel like I’m smoking without the risk of cancer.”

If I’m going to die, I’m not going to die from lung cancer.

It’s a horrible way to go out. Mama smoked until she couldn’t smoke anymore.

Knew it was killing her and kept on smoking anyway.

Addiction is like a speeding car without brakes on a curvy mountainous road.

There’s an emergency brake, but when we’re in freefall, we never think to pull it.

The only thing that can save us is a divine act of intervention.

Pushing my husband down the stairs was that divine intervention.

“So what do you need, honey?”

“I need to use your phone and before you ask any questions, I don’t have one. If I did, I wouldn’t be asking to use yours. No, I didn’t lose it somewhere. No, I haven’t forgotten to pay my bill, and I didn’t drop it in that nasty pit someone probably calls a pool.”

She stares at me while pushing the landline phone from her side of the desk to mine. I give her a nod of appreciation as I dial a number I’ve now memorized and wait for someone to answer.

My heart races as I steel myself for the possibility that I’m not going to get the news I’m hoping for.

A voice answers, soft, feminine, and familiar. “Wilcott General Hospital, how may I help you today?”

“I’m checking up on a patient,” I say while the motel attendant pretends to not listen, but she’s angled in just the right way that I have my suspicions. I turn away from her and look out the glass door as a car pulls up front.

“I would love to help you with that. What is the patient’s name?”

“Kevin Richards,” I say, gravel in my throat. His name passing from my lips is enough to send me into a tailspin. With my free hand, I reach for the cigarette and place it back between my lips.

“Can you please provide your name and relationship to the patient?”

“Kevin Richards Jr., and he’s my father.”

“Let me just check something. Do you mind if I place you on a brief hold? ”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” I take a puff of the unlit cigarette while watching a tall man get out of the car out front. Dark skin, a faded cut, a nose ring, and light blue jeans tight enough to take my mind elsewhere. Makes my cock twitch and my jeans tighter around it.

The voice on the line stabs at my ear. “I’m sorry, Mr. Richards, but I cannot provide any information over the phone about the patient as there are restrictions on file.”

That’s all the information I need. I pass the phone back to the attendant, but can faintly hear the receptionist babbling on about something until the phone finally clicks.

The sorry bastard is still alive. Bad news for him and even worse news for me. Moments like these are the moments when I find myself buried balls deep in some stranger or impaled on some stranger’s dick.

The bell rings above the door as it swings open.

The man—a perfect stranger—offers a polite smile as he walks past me, and my imagination runs wild; raw-dogging him from behind while he lies face-first on the hood of his sports car.

But then I realize there’s a woman in the passenger seat, and I’m back to reality.

On the run again, and besides, I never stay in the same place for too long.

I make my way back to my car—a burnt burgundy Challenger from the 1970s that’s faded from the sun, chipped from the passing of time, and rusted around the trim.

Toss my bag into the passenger seat.

Pull sunglasses over my eyes.

Turn the ignition, and then I’m gone.

Driving straight into the sunset, ready for another night on this endless highway.