Page 3 of Make Me Scream (Visceral #2)

ABEL

Feral screams burn inside me.

I want nothing more than to let them out. To feel my vocal cords shred with the intensity. For everyone to feel what I feel, to finally fucking know what’s going on with me. But there’s one problem with that… not even I know.

Lucy’s back.

She’s really back… and I only have one guess as to why.

She needs money, and she’s pretending to be a fucking mom again to do it.

Playing the whole sober game—which, I’ll give her credit, is pretty hard to do.

She’s gotta play the long game for it this time around.

With CPS being involved, she must have had drug tests, at the very least. Which makes me wonder what her end goal really is.

My fingers find respite in my braid-wavy locks. I wind the strands around each digit, finding no comfort in it the way I did when Peris did the very same.

The thought pisses me off, and I yank hairs out with a growl as I pace the floor of my room… which might not be my room for much longer, actually…

“Fuck,” I breathe faintly, the realization hitting my chest softer than my heart beating against my sternum. It’s painfully pragmatic to know these could be my final days here. My final hours, minutes… seconds.

Especially when Elise finds out what Peris and I just did in his bedroom…

Jesus fucking Christ, I’m spectacular. Abel Silver, forever the fuck up.

My fingers find their way into my left pocket, only to draw short when I come up empty. I suck on my front teeth and roll my eyes into the back of my head. My lighter must’ve fallen out of my pocket in Peris’s room when we… when we were…

“ Fuck! ” I whisper shout as tears clog my throat. I’m unable to even fucking think it, let alone say it aloud for some reason. It was different this time. He was different. Calling me his puppy, his mess. Saying he won’t fucking lose me.

I slam my eyes closed, but it’s too late. The sting is long past the point of no return. Tears burn their way to the surface and down my lashes, clumping them before trailing down my cheeks and into my mouth where the salt sits like lead on my tongue.

As the tears stream, unbidden and resolute, I let my trembling knees collapse and take me to the floor.

I collide with the wall, shuddering when the coolness of the drywall makes contact with the exposed nape of my neck.

I feel the unnerving sensation of goosebumps prickling across my skin, but I don’t feel the burn of them.

I don’t feel much of anything at all.

Just mind-numbing sadness.

And anger.

I nod resolutely to no one but myself. Yeah. A fuck ton of that.

Because why not? Why the FUCK did she have to come back now? When I’m finally some place good, when I’m… well, I don’t know. Maybe I’m fucking happy.

Yeah.

I force myself to slide up the wall, dragging the back of my hand across my wet, snotty face. Yeah, I’m fucking happy. Or, at least, as close to happy as I remember being—or knowing what that even is—and she has to come and take that away from me.

She had Bill with her, and I know what that means.

It means she wants me gone.

She wants to take me away.

I’ll have to go…

And I don’t want to.

My crooked nose twitches, crinkling upward when it burns uncontrollably as a fresh onslaught of tears is brought on. I sink my teeth into my bottom lip to stifle the sobs I know are imminent, but it doesn’t make them hurt any less.

My palm finds the center of my sternum, and I dig the heel in harder as each second passes of my heart breaking a little more.

I finally found my family, and now, I have to go back to the one I never wanted—the one that never wanted me, either.

“Does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Elise asks the second we’re all seated at the cleared kitchen table. Dishes are stacked in the sink from when she cleared dinner when Peris and I were busy fucking in his bedroom…

Jesus, I’m fucked up.

Words stick to the roof of my mouth, unable to leave my tongue as her gaze flickers back and forth between us. Peris is hardly fucking subtle as his eyes bore into the side of my face as I stare down at the veins in the wooden tabletop.

My top lip pulls into a sneer, just knowing he’s looking at me. What he’s risking exposing when I’m already so damn close to jumping right off the edge and losing it all.

Elise could’ve walked in at any moment. She could’ve seen what we were doing, and it would’ve been all over from there, and what would I do then? I would have no choice but to go with Lucy.

“We got into a fight, Ma,” he finally says at last, and I blow out a slow breath and let my eyes fall closed for a brief moment.

“A fight,” she deadpans. I glance up when I feel her eyes and shrug sheepishly.

“Yeah,” I admit because, in all honesty, it’s not exactly a lie.

“A physical fight?” She looks for clarification.

Peris sighs loudly, as if pained by such an admission. He pulls his thick hair up off his forehead before letting it flop back with a groan. “Yes, Mom. A physical fight. I’m not proud of it?—”

“I’m not either!” I interject, trying to make the story as believable as possible, and when Peris shoots me a glare, I narrow my eyes, smirking when he does the same. Even fucked up on pain and desolation, it’s still instinctual to play this game with Peris.

“Okay, okay, ” she says sternly, hazel eyes darting between us. They’re hard with anger and frustration and swimming with exasperation from the turn of events. She blows out a long, tired breath, pushing her dark hair back from her face before dropping it into her open palms.

The sight of her looking so dejected makes my heart ache terribly—and the fact I’m the reason why only makes me hate myself more.

“It’s been an incredibly long, strenuous day, so I think what we all should do is just get some rest and try to get a good night’s sleep, yes?

” She lifts her head after speaking into her hands and glances between us.

Peris and I rip our gazes apart to look at her and nod our heads solemnly in consensus.

“Good.” She nods, then presses her palms to the table to push her chair back. The scraping of the legs doesn’t make a single one of us flinch as they slide across the floor, and Elise pushes to her feet.

She looks between us one last time before settling on me. Her eyes take on a softness I see far too often. My throat clogs up, tightening to the point I’m choking all over again. Elise walks up to me and cups my cheek in her palm as she leans down, her hazel eyes warm and shining.

“You are wanted here, Abel, and this will always be your home, no matter what happens tomorrow, all right?”

I nod, unable to speak a word, but it seems to be good enough for her because she gives me the softest smile.

With a light, chaste kiss to my cheek, she rises and heads to bed, leaving Peris and I alone in the kitchen—alone when that’s the last thing we should be, but who would know that aside from us?

When the soft click of Elise’s door closing resounds around us, Peris finally opens his stupid fucking mouth. “Abel…”

“Don’t.”

“Excuse…” He starts before drawing short for a pause. “Don’t what, exactly? ” His voice is much colder now. Just the way I like it. With less concern.

Less care.

“Let’s not pretend you give a shit about me,” I snap before making my way out of the kitchen and back into my room.

But, of course, the moment I try to close my door, Peris’s hand is there to block it.

I roll my eyes but let him through because we both know I don’t really have a choice in the matter.

I never do when it comes to my life.

“What do you want, Peris?”

“What do I want? ” He sounds incredulous, that precious, thick vein popping out in his left temple in perfect tempo to his heartbeat. It reminds me of when his cock throbs exactly the same way inside me.

I clench at the thought, and unfortunately, my ass still feels well and thoroughly fucked by the boy standing right in front of me, arm extended, long, hard fingers clamped around the edge of the door.

Veins bulge from his sinuous forearms. His pulse thrums in his neck so fast, I just wanna lick it.

Damnit, I’m hard.

“Why do you have to be so fucking hot?” I snarl, snapping my crooked teeth.

Peris rears back, not expecting my venom.

His grip loosens on the door, giving me just enough leverage to plant my hands on his chest and shove him back.

He stumbles past the threshold, and I slam the door in his face, twisting the lock and dropping my head to the wood with a deep groan.

Peris pounds his fists into the door, obviously not giving a shit his fucking mother can hear him. “Open this motherfucking door, right now, runt!”

“Shut the fuck up. Your mother can hear you,” I hiss.

“You think I fucking care about that?” he shouts, sounding incredulous. The pounding gets louder. “You think I care what she thinks? What she hears me say? Open. The GODDAMN DOOR! ”

“Fine!” I stumble back at the whoosh of frigid, burning hot air, a tornado of oxymorons as Peris tramples over me, sending me tumbling back onto my bed. I’m heaving for breath, unable to inhale as he crawls atop me, legs on either side of my waist. Crotch to crotch. Dick to dick. Mouth to mouth.

His tongue plunders my mouth, saturating and consuming.

Our noses drag against one another as he licks across my teeth, paying special attention to each tooth that isn’t quite so smooth.

Hands bite into my upper arms, leaving more finger-shaped bruises I’ll savor with a special reverence when I’m alone.

I gasp for breath when Peris finally releases my mouth, only to drop down to my neck. He latches onto the skin there and sucks—hard. I shriek, only to have his hand slap across my mouth with a loud crack. I groan at the sting, my cock throbbing in my sweatpants.

My throat pulsates in time with my heartbeat as he sucks bruise after bruise into my flesh, marking me as his—for however long they’ll last.

But it won’t be forever.

I’m not anyone’s permanently.

When Peris has decided he’s left enough of his mark on my neck, his lips find mine once more, and when that happens, a sort of frenzy begins.

His hips roll and thrust, grinding our dicks together.

The frictions is nearly painful through our clothes and nowhere near enough, but it’s so fucking good—and nearly too much at once.

I reach up and claw my way into Peris’s hair, yanking strands out as I dig my nails into his scalp, yanking and pulling, moving him any way I can to get him closerclosercloser. He grunts and snarls before sinking his teeth into my tongue.

Blood drips into our mouths, karma in every sense of the word as our cocks pulse and we spill into our pants, always craving our hate and insanity as we lose ourselves in it.

As I come down from my high, panting into Peris’s mouth, breathing in his breath as my own, I relish in his taste and his heat and his touch while it lasts—before the inevitable hate and self-loathing makes itself known again.

It takes longer than I thought as time slowly ticks by, one inevitable heartbeat at a time.

“Runt…” Peris says, softer than expected after an endless amount of time.

It’s dark outside… definitely the middle of the night.

I’m exhausted, the day having been way too fucking much.

I want nothing more than to grab my lighter and burn the nightmare of it away, but I’m surprisingly content lying halfway beneath Peris, listening to his breaths and feeling his heartbeat against mine.

I sigh loudly, hoping he’ll get the hint that I don’t want to fucking talk.

“What, Peris?” I thread my fingers through his hair again and yank, drawing a low hiss from his throat.

It’s quiet after that, leaving only the sound of our breaths and the eventual chirp of the birds as the sun slowly begins its ascent in the sky.

It’s only me and Peris and our bodies melded together as we lose ourselves in our sadness.

Surprisingly enough, I find myself resenting the morning sky and what it means. The separation. The forced awareness of reality. What tomorrow brings and all that fucking nonsense.

“Nothing is going to change.” Peris’s voice shatters my tumultuous thoughts, as if he knew what I was thinking.

“You can’t say that,” I say with a sigh, still threading my fingers through his thick, wavy hair.

He nods against my chest, still lying against me. “Not really, but I’m still saying it. This is your home. She can’t just take you away now. You’re eighteen.”

“You think that matters? You think she even remembers? I’ve still got two and a half months ‘til I’m legally an adult, Peris. And unfortunately, the courts love sticking to the mother’s side. If she’s clean, I’m probably going to have to go back with her eventually. That’s just the truth of it.”

He stiffens, and I laugh. “Mom will fight for you,” is what he says, and I laugh even louder and force him off of me so I can sit up. I need away from him. Away from his heat and false promises and bullshit he knows nothing about.

I can’t hear this shit.

I stand up and turn my back to him, dragging my fingers through my dirty hair and yanking. “It won’t make a fucking difference.”

“You can’t know that?—”

“Get the fuck out.”

“Runt,” he snarls, low and threatening.

“Don’t even fucking start with me, Peris!

” I whip around to shout at him, heart nearly bursting from my chest as tears spring to my eyes.

“I can’t do this hot and cold bullshit with you right now, okay?

! I can’t. Not today, don’t you understand?

Please,” I plead, staring into his golden-green eyes with tears in my own, not even close to faking it. “Please just leave me alone.”

He blinks at me slowly, probably not expecting my outburst. His sharp jawline clenches and bulges as he flexes his fists at his sides, but he finally makes the right choice and leaves me alone.

I try to release a breath of relief, but it comes out as a sob, and I fall to my knees, choking on my tears as the reality of my world being flipped upside down again hits me.

This is what I fucking get for finally falling for it…

There’s no such thing as a happy ending for kids like me.