Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91064 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
“He had a heavy hand. Sometimes with me. But especially my mammy.”
“You shouldn’t be telling me this,” Scarlett whispers.
There’s worry in her eyes. Worry that this thing between us- this constant push and pull- is getting stronger. Bigger. And she can’t stop it.
I don’t want her to stop it.
“He was a drunk and a slob and a leach who couldn’t hold down a job. And he’d come home and take it out on her. He did it for years. I’d hear her crying in the bedroom at night. She told me not to concern myself with it, for her sake.”
“So I didn’t. I stuffed it down and took what he doled out to us, provoking him so he’d give it to me the worst. I thought if he went after me, it would stop him from going after her. But it didn’t.”
“Rory…” Scarlett’s clinging to me, begging me not to continue.
“I was thirteen. And I was so fucking angry. Full of rage and hatred. For him and for everything. And one night he came home, started having at it. I was tired. And I was bigger by then. Stronger too. I listened to him slap her around for five minutes before I just snapped.”
I look right into Scarlett’s eyes and admit the truth.
“I beat him with my bare hands. And when I finished, there wasn’t a thing left of his face.”
“You’re good,” she insists. “You are, Rory.”
“It never goes away,” I tell her. “I’ll never get that image out of my head. The blood off my hands. My mammy has never looked at me the same way since. I had to leave.”
She isn’t telling me I’m good anymore.
“It felt good to kill him, Scarlett. But it changes you forever. I won’t allow ye to live that way. I don’t want ye to be like that.”
“I’m already worse,” she insists. “I’m the worst thing you ever could have come across.”
“You aren’t.”
She reaches up and grabs hold of my face, crushing her lips to mine and crawling onto my body. Clinging to me in a way she’s never done before.
It isn’t sexual. It’s something deeper. A primal need to feel safe.
“You might think our codes are ridiculous,” I tell her. “But we take care of our women. I’m going to take care of you too. That means righting the wrongs that have been done to ye. Tainting my own soul so that yours will stay intact. I want to do that for ye. And I want you to let me.”
“Rory.”
She’s kissing me now, all over my throat and my face. Distracting me with sex the way she always does.
“Take me back to your place,” she pleads.
“Not until you give me at least one name.”
She groans out her frustration.
“Just give me a day,” she says. “One day, Rory. I’m trying. I am. But I’m not ready.”
I nod, because it’s the best I’m going to get from her.
Twenty-Five
Scarlett
As these affairs typically end when faced with the evil queen, it’s off with his head.
While the world spins round and evolution takes place bit by tedious bit, there are some things that never change.
Trip’s family summer house outside of New Haven is one of them. It is a mummification of memories. The tomb of nightmares and final resting place for my childhood.
And I was a child, then.
Still innocent and wide-eyed and naïve.
I left here a different person.
I crawled my way out of that shallow grave, and I left all those childish notions- along with my heart- to die the death they deserved. I emerged with an armor that wasn’t there before. A hard-outer shell embraced me and I was reborn.
That shell has served me well.
But it doesn’t make my stroll down memory lane any easier.
The soil feels the same beneath my feet- bare- because I want to be in the right mindset. I want to relive those memories and change the way I feel about them.
The air is cool, the forest still.
This place is a dead zone. Nothing around for miles.
There is a man-made lake behind the house where Trip used to hold ragers throughout the school year.
I never made it to any of those parties.
The only party I’d been invited to was private. On the night of the initiation.
Trip still comes here often, or so the report I have tells me. He spends entire weeks binging on cocaine and cheap vodka, even though his father’s liquor cabinet is stocked with the finest whiskeys that money can buy.
It would lead almost anyone to the same conclusion. That Trip is as sick in the head as Alexander. I wonder if he fantasizes about that night too while he fucks his paid whores. If he comes up here just to relive it.
As I wait in the darkness of the lounge room, I wonder if we’re really all that different. For years, I’ve done nothing but fantasize of my revenge. I’ve watched them stumble over every hurdle I’ve thrown their way while they went about their lives as if that night never happened.