Bang(57)

Fuck Declan.

Fuck Bennett.

This is about righting the wrong.

This is revenge, and I’m ready.

Without wasting any more time, I grab my coat and keys and head down to the garage to go to Justice. I need to see Pike.

When I pull up to his trailer, I see Matt’s car. I’ll never forget that night when Pike crawled through my bedroom window in the middle of the night. Matt was there too. Pike held me while I cried for hours in the back seat of Matt’s car as he drove us to northern Illinois where he had rented a rundown apartment with Pike. The three of us lived together for a few years until Pike and I got a place of our own.

I never went back to school. I was a runaway, but I didn’t let that define me as a complete failure. Pike gave me money to buy a few home schooling kits that got me through high school. Doing it on my own doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m just as knowledgeable as any other graduate, diploma or not. I’ve always loved school and learning new things. I would look through the course catalogues from the local university and buy the textbooks for the classes I was interested in and read them on my own. Pike has always teased me, but I wasn’t going to let the reality that I was a high school dropout plague me.

Until I was of age, I couldn’t risk getting a job either, so I helped Pike, weighing and bagging the product Matt would bring in. Because of the people they dealt with, I was always by Pike’s side. It was safer running the streets with him than to be left alone in the apartment.

But I’ve never liked Matt despite Pike’s friendship with him. I had to fight him off a few times when he would get drunk and try to get into my pants. But it was him that stood by my side on that fateful night, the night he and Pike gave me one of the greatest gifts I could’ve asked for. Matt and Pike gave me payback in the form of death. The first stroke of revenge as the both of them stood by my side as I lit the match, killing both Carl and Bobbi in the ink of night. I was only fifteen when I discovered the sweet taste of vengeance as their pleading screams were engulfed in the flames of hell.

So to see him here, now, irritates me because no matter how much I dislike him, I’ll always be indebted for that one precious gift he allowed me. And when I shut off the car and walk inside, Matt sneers, knowing everything about what I’m doing with Bennett, “Well, well, well, what drug in the shit-stain on high society living?”

“It’s an amazing thing to see.”

“What is?” he asks.

“The way your vocabulary has matured through the years,” I give him as I slip off my coat and then look over to Pike, saying, “I need to talk to you.”

“Dude, get lost,” he tells Matt.

“What the f*ck?”

“Don’t start that shit, you know Elizabeth has a hard enough time getting out here to see me,” he tells Matt as he stands up and walks over to me.

I give Pike a hug and watch as Matt grabs his coat and starts heading for the door. “Call me when she leaves.”

“Yeah, man. Talk to you later.”

Matt looks back over his shoulder at me when he gets to the door and then leaves. I wrap my arms more tightly around Pike and nearly smother him.

“Whoa. What’s going on?” he says as he holds me.

“I really missed you,” I tell him thickly.

“Is everything okay? Did something happen?” he asks as then we walk over to the couch and sit down.

“I f*cked Declan last night.”

The concern on Pike’s face isn’t surprising. Aside from Carl, Pike is the only guy I’ve ever had sex with, until Bennett. But Bennett is nothing compared to Declan.

“Shit,” he sighs. “Are you okay?”

“He tied me up with his belt,” I reveal to him.

“What the f*ck?”

“It’s how he is. He’s forceful. He actually f*cked me at the New Year’s party. That was the first time. It was a dirty f*ck in a bathroom.”

“Wait. Go back,” he says, confused.

“I was trying to make him jealous at the party, apparently it worked. He followed me into the bathroom and we had sex. I didn’t see him or talk to him until I went to his place yesterday. Bennett is in Miami, so I wound up spending the night with Declan. Sex with him is awful. It’s impossible to drown out what’s going on because he’s so demanding throughout. I left this morning to go home because I was feeling disgusted.”

“Come here,” he breathes as he tugs me into his arms. We sit for a moment and then he asks, “So what are you thinking?”

“I can’t walk away. He’s the right guy, I know it.”

“How can you be sure?”

Shaking my head, I say, “I don’t know. I just feel it. I can’t explain; it’s just how I feel.”

“I don’t know,” he says, doubting my words.

Feeling a little annoyed, I question, “What?”

“Do you think he’s capable?”

“That’s not a question anyone can really answer, but yeah, I think he could be.”

“What if he finds out?”

“He won’t.”

Eyeing me, he presses, “Don’t be so sure about that. Confidence is a dangerous thing to have.”

Turning out of his arms, I sit back and exhaust, “Fine. What if he finds out? I don’t know, Pike. What would it matter? No crime would’ve been committed.”