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“Do you know why I like to fuck, Asia?”
The question throws me, and I flinch at the cold leaching into my skin. This isn’t him. This isn’t the warm Sonny I’ve come to know. Dread tracks a trail down my spine, freezing my insides further.
“No, why?” I whisper, my mouth parting a little as he leans in closer, his free hand sliding up the bare skin of my arm.
“Because it helps me to forget what I did…” His cold thumb presses against my bottom lip, parting my mouth before his hand falls away.
“What did you do?”
Sonny looks away as a coldness folds over us both. I swear to God it’s as though we’ve suddenly stepped into a freezer. My jaw begins to chatter, and I have to grit my teeth together to stop the noise from filling the silence with my fear.
“When I was fourteen and my dad was in prison, my mum decided that she needed another man to warm her bed. She brought this guy back to our house. They were drunk, high. Out of their damn minds. When I heard them fucking, I tried to block out the noise. But when she started screaming…”
“Sonny, you don’t have to go on,” I say, feeling my stomach turn. I know where this is going. I know how this story ends.
“I went into mum’s room. He had his hands wrapped around her throat, her lip was bleeding, her eyes bugging out of her head. The next thing I knew I was standing over this man. His head was caved in and I was holding a baseball bat in my hand. I remember blood sliding from the wood onto the floor. Mum was screaming.”
“Sonny.” I reach for him, but he flinches away.
“I killed him, Asia. I killed a man. I didn’t think. I just acted out of instinct…”
“To protect your mum. You did it out of love,” I say, gripping his hand and pulling it to my lips, pressing a kiss against his cool skin.
“It doesn’t matter why I did it, only that I did,” he responds, his gaze weary. “I started fighting not long after. I fought people with a crazed kind of anger that was only soothed when my opponent hit back. I sought out the pain to blot out what I did. I was angry all the time. I had this beast inside of me that wanted to hurt people as much as I was hurting. Then later I managed to contain that anger and funnel it into something I believed was less damaging. Sex. Only that hurt me in a different way because I didn’t fuck to be close to someone I loved, I fucked to get out of my head. Taking a life changed me, Asia, and itwillchange you.”
“I’m sorry, Sonny, for what you’ve been through.” His pain is like a million tiny nicks from a knife, splitting open my skin. I bleed for him, for the boy he was.
“What happened after?”
“Mum took the blame. Six months into her sentence she slit her wrists with a pair of scissors stolen from a beauty therapy class she took as part of her rehabilitation in prison.”
My hand flies to my mouth as I stifle the cry that tries to burst from my lips. When his gaze meets mine again, it’s all I can do not to shed the tears that are threatening to fall.
“I sought out other ways to dull the pain. I became a thief, I stole things. I fucked and I fought, and until I met you, I thought that was all I could do. But you gave me a different purpose, Asia. You gave me a reason to smile, to laugh, to want a life beyond the pain.”
“Sonny, I don’t know what to say…”
I’m so fucking grateful that he felt comfortable enough to share his past with me, to trust me enough to give up this part of him. But will it change my mind when all is said and done?
If I’m faced with the King again and had the opportunity to kill him, would I walk away? If I had to choose between Pink’s freedom and Mr Carmichael’s life, could I honestly say that I wouldn’t even try to save my friend?
“There isn’t anything you can say. I just wanted you to understand why I feel so strongly about this.” He stands, walking towards the door but I go after him and grab his hand.
“Don’t go, please,” I say softly. “I can’t lose you too.”
He turns to face me, stepping close enough that I can feel his body heat seep through my skin. “I said that I’d always have your back, Asia, and I will.Always,” he says fiercely. “I’ll be there to catch you when you fall, but I need something from you too.”
“What do you need…?” I respond, pushing back the flop of dirty blonde hair as he looks down at me.
“To feel…” he says, and my heart aches that little bit more.
