AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And then I was moving. One target in my sights. The guy rose to his full height, raised his hands and curled the tips of his fingers inward, smirking as he beckoned me in. He knew who I was. He didn’t know I was going to bust his skull open. He was about to find out.
My fist slammed into his face the second I was in reaching distance. I’d shocked him. I didn’t g
ive him a chance to recover, to go for the knife I didn’t doubt he was packing. I lifted my arms and rained down on him like a fucking storm. Satisfaction seeped further into my veins with every hit, but none of it touched the pit of agony caving my chest. The grief only intensified, until I couldn’t fucking breathe. The smile slipped from my face and I shut it all down. Until I couldn’t fucking feel anything anymore.
I watched my right arm pull back again with a sense of surreal detachment, an almost out-of-body experience, like I was a spectator, like I needed to see every second. There was a sickening crunch of bone as my knuckles connected with his cheekbone, the skin splitting open. Chaos erupted all around me, but a blissful numbness settled in as his head snapped to the side, blood spraying from his mouth in slow motion. I kept hitting.
When his body tried to fold in on itself, my left hand fisted his shirt and held him upright, while my right swung again. The skin over my knuckles bust on impact, but I didn't stop, didn't even feel it. A roaring blasted through my ears and I swung again. And again. And again. I didn't stop when his eyes rolled back in his head. I didn't stop when his nose cracked, or his body went limp, hanging from my grip like a wet noodle. I didn't stop when screams and shouts tore through the cloud of rage shrouding me, fuelling me. I never wanted to stop. Not until his face was unrecognizable, until his mangled body would need scraping off the floor. Until there was nothing left of him, and he was six feet fucking under like my brother.
Hands caged my arms behind my back, hauling me away. The noise in my head became deafening as I fought to get loose, to go back and keep pummelling until I fucking undid it all. With a guttural cry, I sank to my knees, my chest heaving, my mind crazed. Owen was never coming back. Brett was never coming back. My stupid, selfish bitch of a mother was never coming back. Eventually, every fucker left. They promised they’d stay. They were all supposed to fucking stay. But they’d all left.
And now I just wanted it all to fucking go away.
Twenty-One
Riley
“Where is he?” I asked, keeping my voice low, as Leon pulled the door open and stepped back to allow me to move inside.
The scene that greeted me halted me in my tracks. My head swivelled, wide eyes straying swiftly back to Leon, who dropped his gaze to his feet.
Voice sharp and accusing, I murmured, “You said you were taking care of him.”
My heart felt like it grew heavier in my chest, as if it had somehow absorbed too much, like a sodden sponge I couldn’t wring out.
“I tried, Riley. We all did. He wouldn’t listen. That’s why I called you.”
My gaze drifted back to the darkened room at the end of the hallway. A sharp triangle of light spilled into the space, illuminating the prone form taking up most of the small couch. Reno sat, reclined with his chin to his chest and eyes closed. Even from here, I could see one of them had swollen shut. A multitude of dark shadows littered his face. Dried blood crusted on his pale shirt and his knuckles had split open.
“What happened?”
I already knew that he’d put the guy who’d stabbed Owen to death in the hospital last week. I also knew that no matter how many messages I’d left him that night, and every night before and after, he hadn’t picked up the phone or called me back. He hadn’t been back to his trailer, either. I’d stayed there alone for a few days. I must have sent him a hundred messages since then.
He hadn’t called tonight. Leon had. I’d come because I always would. If Reno needed me, I would be there. But the possibility that he might not want me here, that he might tell me to leave, terrified me.
“It was like he wanted them to hit him, Ri.” There was a distinct undertone of fear in Leon’s voice. Fear for his friend, for the state of Reno’s mind. “He just stood there, taking hit after hit, didn’t even try to defend himself.” He trailed off for a second, brows lowering as if he was seeing it all again, before giving himself a visible shake and twisting back to face me.
“He said he wanted to fight. We tried to talk him out of it. Figured after the way things went down last time it wasn’t a good idea, I mean, fuck, we barely stopped him from killing that guy. But he was going with or without us, and we couldn’t let him go alone. We expected him to beat the crap out of someone. Seemed like that’s what he planned to do. He picked some random dude out of the crowd, head-butted him... and then just stood back while they jumped him.”
Leon’s hands landed on his thighs, disbelief still visible in his eyes when his gaze traveled back to his friend.
“He could have easily taken the first two, no fucking doubt. Didn’t even raise a fist, Ri. When we figured out what he was doing, we ran in. Two other guys jumped us, and it was fucking chaos. But... he didn’t fucking try, Riley. He didn’t try.”
Dread spiked through me and my feet crossed the distance before I’d noticed I was moving. My need to comfort Reno, to soothe the demons plaguing him, overrode my doubt and my fear. Falling to my knees between his spread thighs, I wrapped both hands around his calves and rested my cheek down lightly on his bent knee. I didn’t speak. The floorboards creaked under Leon’s feet as he walked back down the hall and then climbed the stairs, leaving us alone.
Leon’s mom had married a nice guy named Alec two years ago, and they’d moved out of the trailer that sat three down from mine and into this house a few months later. They’d kept the trailer. Leon sometimes used it. Reno probably could have gone there if he was finding it too hard to be home, but I suspected that he hadn’t wanted to be that close to me.
The thought gutted me, but still I held onto him. I couldn’t let him go. Not until he told me to.
Maybe not even then.
“I’m sorry,” his voice rasped, low and tortured, and laden with regret. His words seemed even heavier, shrouded in darkness. There was something about those two words that broke my heart. Something that spoke of finality.
Turning to press my face into the fabric of his sweatpants, I nodded.
“I know.”
I’d told him in a million ways, in the voice messages I’d left, in the text messages I’d sent, that he had nothing to be sorry for. I didn’t know whether he’d even listened to them or read them. I couldn’t get those words to come now.
