Lust (The Elite Seven #1)(5)

My blood? I think to myself, but the reality of what’s happening doesn’t penetrate my drunken haze.

“Fuck! Call an ambulance!”

Laughter cackles from me, rattling my entire body.

I don’t feel human right now.

Am I losing my mind?

A burly white dude with a skinhead and tattoos up his neck kneels in front of me and rubs his chin. “That’s pretty grim, man. The bone pierced through the skin.”

“You in any pain?” God asks, and I snort, pushing at him playfully.

“My brother’s killer was given a fucking fine. I’m numb,” I tell him honestly, and then the laughter turns to sorrow, and I can’t stop the tears and desperate hands tugging at my sanity.

Someone’s knocking on the door to the recesses of my mind, and it’s the old me, begging me to let him take back the wheel.

Fuck him.

Slouching back, I close my eyes to shut out all the faces looking down on me.

A throb begins to pound behind my eyelids, and everything swirls around inside me like a tornado, dragging me under into the calm of the storm.




It’s too quiet.

Eerie.

I’m in the middle of the road. The asphalt is wet, but it’s not raining.

“Rhett.”

My name is whispered on the gentle breeze rustling through the trees, and my breath hitches.

“Where are you, Rhett?”

My heart rate is elevated, pounding through my chest, beating through the skin.

Placing a hand there, I search the treeline for someone…for him.

“Don’t forget about me, Rhett.”

“Robbie!” I shout.

“I’m here.”

My entire frame jolts, and I brush at my ear, certain the whisper echoed there.

My eyes spring open, and I’m propelled into consciousness.

A dull yellow glow lights the room bringing it into view.

The shadows shift and move until a figure steps out from them, and I exhale an unsteady breath.

Emotion, heavy and weighted, pushes down on my chest, and tears burn my eyes.

My mother comes to stand at the base of the hospital bed I appear to be in.

“Mom?” I croak.

My mouth feels like it’s been left open for a week and moths have taken up residence.

“Do you know how terrifying it is to get a call informing me my son is in the hospital?” she says, shaking her head, exhausted.

Her brown curly hair matches my own, messy and chaotic, and full lips tug down her pretty features. Red-rimmed eyes pin me to the spot, and guilt cloaks my body like a blanket.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“So am I, Rhett. I can’t stick around and watch you self-destruct. It hurts too much. I’ve lost too much. Suffered more than…” she chokes, but there’s a resolve in her tone that leaves a pit in my stomach.

My mouth opens, but words fail me.

Her hand comes to rest on my leg, and it’s then I notice my other leg is suspended in the air, hanging in a sling with a cast from my shin to my toes.

“You snapped the bone. Ruined your football career before it even took off.”

She swipes at a stray tear and sniffs, shaking her head again.

“Your grades are slipping, and the school is worried about you graduating.”

“I don’t care about any of that shit anymore,” I tell her honestly.

Her features transform from sorrow to anger, and she rounds the bed, coming to stop right next to my head.

“You better start caring. You lived, Rhett. You didn’t die that night, Robbie did, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch you piss your life away in his memory. You owe him more than that—more than this!” She punctuates each word with a pointed finger to my chest.

Guilt, rooted all the way to my bone marrow, infects me. It’s like an illness inside me I can’t recover from.

“That son of a bitch who killed him got a fine—a fucking fine! He was over the limit!” I weep, tears brimming and falling from my eyes. I know it’s selfish of me to put all my anger and pain on her. She must feel a million times worse than I do.

I hate it. I hate this. I hate him. I hate myself.

Closing her eyes, she hugs her arms around her waist like she needs to hold herself together or she’ll crumble to dust.

“The system is full of injustices. Instead of becoming part of the problem, become part of the solution,” she snaps. “Make your life count for something.”

Without another word, she leaves the room.

Our house.

Our town.

She leaves me.





2 months later…



Order pizza. Working late. Dad.

I snort at the note left on the fridge. It’s the same one that gets reposted at least four nights a week.

He’s hardly ever home, and that suits me just fine. I swipe the twenty he left and stuff it in my pocket.

He’s tightened my allowance these days and took my credit card as punishment for renting out an entire hotel for my friends and me after our prom.

It was worth it. If I can live in the illusion of who I used to be before Robbie’s death, it helps me forget—if only for a moment. I long for those moments where I get a sliver of reprieve from the anger, the guilt, the goddamn sorrow.