Of the seven people I sicced Havoc on … four of them are dead. Two of them are maimed. Only one is left standing, as whole as she was when this started. I bite my lip.
“I know you said Dad isn’t safe, but … he’s fun to be around.” He was. Sometimes. Pedophiles can be charming; it’s part of their ruse. I give her nothing but a sympathetic smile in return. “And Mom has her good days.” She sounds so much older than eight. That’s a failure on my part. I should’ve done a better job protecting her.
“Mom and … Neil,” I start, because he isn’t my dad. Never was. I can only thank the stars that Penelope and I didn’t share DNA with that monster. Glancing from Heather to Hael, I see that he has no more idea how to handle this than I do. He’s an only child, that motherfucker. Then again, despite the heartache and the worry, I wouldn’t trade having a sister for anything. There’s something special about that bond, something you can’t possibly understand unless you have a sister of your own. “We’re not going to see them for a little while. Was that what the dream was about?”
Heather shakes her head at me, curling her fingers around the edge of the blanket and sinking into the pillow just a little further. Her eyes peek out at me from beneath the old Star Wars blanket that’s so faded, it must’ve belonged to Aaron’s mom or dad as a teen.
“In my dream, you were bleeding from the mouth.” Heather pauses as my lips part in surprise. How the fuck do I respond to that one? How do I tell my sister what she needs to hear, reassure her that I’ll be okay? Even though that’s probably an awful, awful lie. “Bernie, in my dream, you were dead.”
“It’s just the dream of a stressed-out kiddo,” Hael says when I lean against the wall in the hallway, waiting for him to close the girls’ bedroom door carefully behind him. He puts his ass against it and lights up a joint. He puffs it twice and passes it my way. I stare at the damn thing in my fingers for a minute before I take a drag. “Don’t sweat it.”
“The GMP,” I start, thinking of the dead gang members back in the woods. “I want to know everything there is to know.”
Hael sighs and shakes his head.
“Not tonight, Blackbird. You need to fucking rest.” Hael pushes up off the door and comes to stand in front of me, lifting the edge of the t-shirt so he can see the stab wound in my side. It could’ve easily killed me, if Kali had moved the blade an inch in any direction. Isn’t that funny, how you can have the shittiest luck in the world until you just don’t? “It’s winter break, yeah? Try to lean into it. We’ll deal with the GMP, but you know as well as I do that you cut the head off the zombie to keep it down.”
“Ophelia,” I breathe with a sigh as Hael drops my shirt back in place and takes the joint from me again. He smokes it for a second, and then laughs in that loud, raucous way of his. His red hair looks like blood against the beige of the hallway walls and my heart constricts painfully in my chest.
“Ophelia,” Hael agrees, reaching up to play with my hair. I want to tell him that I’m going to dye it the same color as his, but then I look into his brown eyes and I’m falling so hard and so fast that I can’t even remember what I was going to say. When I swallow, I swear I can taste honey and almonds on my tongue.
The sound of Victor’s boots coming up the stairs draws both our attention.
I can always tell it’s him in the house because he’s either silent as a mouse or, when he wants you to know he’s coming, has the loudest footsteps in the Pacific Northwest.
“Heather okay?” he asks, and I nod, offering him the joint. He comes up the last two steps, towering over me with his six-foot-five frame. Many men will try to become Vic. They’ll see him and they’ll think they can copy his vibe, that they can be more vicious or more brutal and somehow they’ll encompass that very unnamable thing that is Victor Channing. It’ll never happen.
He smokes the remainder of the joint, but Hael’s already moved into the boys’ room and come out with a glass pipe. He loads up some flower and lights the bowl.
“She’s fine,” I say finally, knowing my response is incredibly delayed. I take the pipe from Hael. Everything is better when you’re high. Food. Music. Sex. I’m smoking specifically for the last reason on the list. Oh, and because I hurt. All over, heart and body and soul. So bad that I’m seeing ghosts that aren’t real.
My eyes slide over to Victor. Looking at him, I feel like I should have every confidence that life is going to work out. That’s how he stares back at me, how he reacted when Aaron was gone.
I saw his shell crack for a fraction of a second, but now … it’s like he’s doubled up on his emotional armor. I can’t get a read on him at all.
“Excuse me,” I say, heading back downstairs and finding Aaron in bed. South Park flickers on the wall-mounted TV, the volume turned down nearly all the way. It’s nothing but a murmur as I pad back into the room, climb onto the bed, and find myself in Aaron’s lap.
He doesn’t ask me any questions as I shed my shirt, ignoring Oscar as he turns his attention from the TV and over to us. He can either watch or get the fuck out. I couldn’t give a shit less.
“Let’s fuck this away,” I tell Aaron, rocking my hips against him. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.” What this is, exactly, I’m not sure. And maybe that’s the cause of it all? The fact that I’m not sure of anything.
“You have no idea who you really are. You thought you did, but you were wrong,” Kali hisses in my ear.
“Tie me up,” Aaron says, and I blink down at him in surprise. There are mottled bruises on his wrists and ankles. He might not want to talk about what happened with me, but even an idiot could see that he was likely restrained. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t care.” He purses his lips together, his eyes like flinty chips in the darkness. “Do it. Handcuff me to the headboard.”
“I have to say, I’m surprised,” Oscar purrs, and when I glance back, I see that he’s sitting with an elbow on the small, round side table next to the chair, chin parked in his hand. “Sadomasochism never quite struck me as your thing, Aaron.”
I turn back to Aaron, but the expression on his face hasn’t changed.
“Are you sure about this? Your hand …” I start, but he shakes his head, resting the fingers of his left hand lightly against my hip. Even though I can’t actually see the letters of Havoc scrawled in ink across his flesh, I swear I can feel them.
“My hand will be fine; I’ve got a cast on. Just … cuff my wrists.” He looks away toward the wall, and that’s when I decide to stop arguing. Everyone manifests their trauma differently; we all have our own ways of healing.
For me, apparently, my psyche needs to go through the process of healing by seeing ghosts. The Kali creature, not at all banished by the weed as I’d hoped, skitters across the top of the wooden headboard like a rat. Jesus, this is either really good weed or really bad weed. I’m not sure how to categorize what I’m seeing.
Manifested fucking trauma.
With a groan, I push myself up and crawl over to the nightstand, retrieving two pairs of fuzzy cuffs that Hael bought for me and Victor as a wedding present. Pretty sure it was a Homer Simpson gift that he himself intended on using with me. Such an asshole. Victor is basic, and we both know it. I mean that in the best way possible, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
I take the handcuffs back to Aaron and straddle him again, feeling his body sweaty and hot beneath mine. He might not have been able to get hard for Kali, but he’s most definitely hard for me. His cock is thick and needy beneath me, and he groans when I wiggle in place.
Presumably, Oscar is still watching us, but I ignore him as I hook my no-longer-ex-boyfriend to the bed. His breathing picks up, heart thundering as I lay my palm on his sweaty chest. I don’t ask again if he’s sure. I won’t question him, and I won’t hesitate. I promised I never would again.
I scoot back and free his cock from his sweatpants, taking the hot length of him in my palm and stroking him until his hips move to meet my hand. All the while, he keeps his eyes on mine, silently suffering in the dark.
My own hand sneaks between my thighs, pushing aside the loose boxers I’m wearing to find the swollen heat of my cunt, teasing the slick readiness and coming away wet. I wish absently that it weren’t so dark in here, so I could see Aaron’s face as I torment him, slipping my fingers into my mouth and sucking them clean.
We exchange a long look, one shared by lovers in the dead of night. It says I know your body aches the way mine does; I know your heart pounds. It’s a look that can be summed up with dark chocolate, black vodka, and clove cigarettes. It’s a look that, for me, tastes like the blackest night of the year when there’s no moon, only stars across a velvet sky.
I exhale and readjust my body so that the length of him rubs against that scalding space between my thighs, the one that wants him so badly that she’s lost any hope of rational thought. Life gets that way, melodramatic and meaningful both, when you come close to losing one of your few reasons for existence. It scares you in a way that’s indescribable, a way that digs into the soul.
Aaron watches me as I lower myself onto his cock, nice and slow, savoring every second. I keep going, until he’s fully sheathed in my body. I bite my lower lip, closing my eyes for a moment as I dig the fingers of my inked left hand into my hair. Rocking my hips forward, I tear a groan from Aaron’s throat that’s only half pleasure. The rest of it is agony.
I open my eyes to look down at him, but I don’t stop the rolling of my hips, stomach muscles tightening and releasing as I work his body with my own. The way Aaron stares back at me, the way the muscles in his arms tense as he strains against the pull of the handcuffs, it all tells me one thing: he might be tied up, but I’m still not the one in charge here.
“Faster, harder,” he orders, and I comply, even as pain ripples through my side and I cry out. The movement of my hips slows just a little as I place a hand over the bandage on my side. This is probably a stupid idea, to fuck Aaron like this, when we’re both injured the way we are.