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“You’re lucky I gave you my come. That’s the only soothing relief you’ll get for tonight. Get in the fucking house and go take a shower. You smell like earth and decay.” He walks off, leaving me alone.
Fuck, I love him and the fucked-up mind games he plays with me.
CHAPTER5
DOM
A FEW WEEKS LATER
Stepping into the warehouse, the entrance seems to swallow us whole. The darkness engulfing us into its secrecy. I rent this space for us using an offshore account and entity. Nothing that can be tied back to the name LaRue.
The smartest thing I did with that damn money from the estate and the policies was funnel it into abad investment. I didn’t need any eyes on my brother and me. I needed us to blend into society even further. We needed all the help we could get in that aspect.
The stupid fucking land that decrepit, sad house sat on was worth a pretty penny. Who fucking knew our parents had been sitting on that, refusing to sell? No, they would have rather fought about money from their extracurricular activities. Both of them blowing what money they had on whores, horses, and whatever other unscrupulous pastime they could.
Here is where we kept…everything.
Every last item we use.
The tokens we take as mementos.
I even have a staged murder scene, just for old time’s sake. I did it exactly in the same replica of the diorama Malakhi first made. I gifted it to him as soon as he turned eighteen and then fucked him in it. Spilling our mixed fluids over every inch we could.
It’s like our home away from home. Eerie light softly casts across the large open space and the flickering is hypnotizing. I’m jolted right into a portal leading directly to our past.
Right to our very first murder together.
I’m eighteen and should move out, but I can’t leave Malakhi here to deal with the bullshit of our parents. I just need to hold out for two more years and then we can leave together.
I’m sitting in the library, pouring over an old medical textbook that’s seen better days. The name written on the front, Henry Dominic LaRue, was my grandfather. He had a fascination with learning about anything. He collected books on all sorts of random subjects. I’m not entirely convinced he wasn’t like Khi and me.
I hear Khi enter and see the shadow his body casts across the old scratched table. I keep reading, flipping pages back and forth.
I realize Khi is unnaturally quiet. I glance up, and devastation fills my gut.
He’s sitting there holding the side of his face, lip split and still faintly trickling blood.
“What happened?” More silence greets me. He won’t speak, and he keeps shifting his eyes, unable or unwilling to meet my own.
“Malakhi Xavier, I asked you a question. What. Fucking. Happened?” I demand before getting up and walking to the other side of the table. Enclosing my hand over his own, I lift his face until he’s looking up at me finally. Water lines his eyes. Unshed tears.
Not because he was hit. I’m eighteen, not a fucking idiot. As soon as I saw his face, I knew he’d been touched.
No, it’s not the physical damage but the emotional that has caused such a reaction.
“I–I was outside by the old campfire pit because I couldn’t breathe. I just needed a moment. I must have had mud on my shoes and didn’t realize it. Mom and Dad were fucking fighting again in the entryway when I came out of the mudroom.” He pauses, leaning further into my palm and wetting his lips before continuing.
“It’s comical. Isn’t that the point of the mudroom, to leave your dirty shit in there and not track it through the whole house? Well, Mom smarted off to me and smacked me across the face, which I barely felt. So, I may have opened my mouth and told her that grandmother would be ashamed of the abysmal mother she was. So, Dad fucking clocked me. A right hook that I should have seen coming. They can talk shit to each other all fucking day long, but if we say even a fucking thing, it’s like they’re finally on each other’s side.” A lone tear falls from his left eye, and I swipe it up with my thumb.
Bringing the digit to my mouth, I like the salty liquid. No one gets to make him cry, no one but me.
“Your tears belong to me, just like everything else. Don’t shed another one for them or anyone else. Do you understand me, Malakhi?” He’s got fucking hearts in his eyes as he looks at me. I know it’s wrong, but I truly do not have a single fuck to give. Not when it comes to how I feel about him.
If I was a better person, I would discourage it. I would redirect his feelings and encourage him to explore his sexuality with another. But I’ve never been a good person, and he belongs to me.
Always has and always will.
And no one touches what’s mine. Not if they want to live.
