The familiar sound of the house alarm beeped from upstairs, and I rushed to my feet, my head spinning from moving so fast, but I ignored it as I ran toward the stairs, heart soaring at the thought of being with Nate again. But then the door opened, a shadowy silhouette appeared, and I squinted against the light from the main house as Nate’s footsteps traveled down the steps, one at a time, not rushed like when he left or like mine when I’d heard him return.
Blood.
That’s basically all I could see and even though, deep down, I knew that Nate’s body was there, and he was standing and most likely talking, which meant that he was alive, the only thing I could see was all the blood. On his clothes. On his face. On his hands.
And it occurred to me then, why I’d been so worried about him. Why I worried about him every time he left. The circumstances in which we came to be weren’t derived from fate, or from a blind date, or a coffee shop moment where we caught each other’s gaze from across the room. No. Our fate included drugs. Included guns. Included death.
I wasn’t aware that my hands were all over him, my eyes filled with tears as I searched for the wound that created the mess in front of me, not until Nate held my wrists, his knees bent, eyes focused on mine as he said my name over and over and over, that I came to.
I blinked, tears falling fast and free, landing on my shirt—his shirt—the one I’d taken off of him mere hours ago. My body shook, as uncontrollable as my breathing. “Where are you hurt?” I managed to get out.
“Bailey,” he soothed, his blood covered hands releasing me, only to cup my face. “Baby, it’s not my blood.”
Relief slammed into me like a tidal wave of emotion, but it only lasted a second before I was back to stage one. Fear.
“Tiny?” I breathed out.
“Tiny’s upstairs. He’s fine,” Nate assured, trying to keep my gaze locked on his. “Everyone’s fine, Bailey.”
27
Nate
The second I told her that I was fine, that Tiny was fine, the dam broke. But it wasn’t just a dam. Something else in her unleashed and she’d covered her mouth and ran to the bathroom where she spent the next ten minutes over the toilet bowl dry-heaving, her cries loud, her tears large, drowning out whatever words she was trying to speak.
I’d kept quiet, spending those minutes holding her hair and stroking her back. I’d known that it’d been a bad idea to walk in looking the way I did, but I didn’t expect this much of a reaction, this amount of emotion to flood out of her.
Once her body had surrendered to her feelings, she leaned her back against the tiled wall, the same one she apparently spent her days staring at, only now she was staring at me, her head resting back on the wall. She seemed like she wanted to speak, so I sat as still as possible, letting her look at me. With each second that passed, her loud cries became quiet cries while her fists balled at her sides and I don’t think I’d ever felt heartbreak until that very moment.
At least not as an adult.
I wanted nothing more than to tap into her brain, tap into her heart, and find out what she was thinking but the only thing I did was stand up when she did, hold her hand when she grasped onto mine, stand still as she stripped out of her clothes and removed my blood stained ones, and then follow her into the warmth of the shower.
It’d been a really long time since I let someone touch me the way Bailey was. Soft, foam covered hands with gentle strokes helped me forget the events of the day. Bailey was still crying. She couldn’t seem to help it and in that moment, I couldn’t seem to help her. So I let her clean the blood from my face, from my arms, from my hands and I was almost grateful she was in such an emotional state that she hadn’t asked what had happened. Not that I would tell her.
She kept her eyes on her hands which were working to get me clean, freeing me from my actions, and I kept my eyes on hers. She was beautiful. Even with tear-stained cheeks, shaky shoulders and trembling lips, lips I’ve envisioned wrapped around my cock and fuck—I was hard. It’s kind of impossible not to be when Bailey was standing inches in front of me, naked, wet. Her hair was loose, a thick strand covering one of her breasts and without thinking, I reached out and moved the hair behind her shoulders. Then I palmed her tits. She froze momentarily but didn’t stop me. Maybe because she knew I needed this. I needed to forget, and she was going to help me do that.
Eyes locked, Bailey reached for the shampoo behind me. She dropped some into her palm and put it back in its place. Tiny hiccups had replaced her cries, one sounding just as her hands rubbed through my hair, massaging my scalp. Her back arched slightly, her tits pushing into my hands and I took it as an invitation to dip my head and take a nipple in my mouth. Her moan could be heard over the sound of the water, and so I moved to the other breast and gave it the same attention. I pulled back when I felt her hand on my shoulder, pushing down. “Get down on your knees,” she mumbled. “I have to rinse this out.”
I did as she asked, a little pissed that I had to leave her breasts, but that feeling didn’t last long once I realized that from my new position, her pussy was only inches in front of my mouth.
I didn’t ask.
I didn’t warn.
When the heat of her pussy pressed against my mouth she gasped in shock, her back leaning against the shower wall and her hands fisting my hair, I spread her legs farther apart, putting one over my shoulder and I licked and sucked, and I ate her pussy like a man starved. Maybe not starved for pussy but starved for comfort, for clarity, and by letting me have her, she was giving me all of that.
My name fell from her lips, seductive but strong as she ground into me, using me while I used her.
I hadn’t fucked her.
I hadn’t even put a finger inside her.
But fuck, I wanted to.
I wanted her.
I’d thought about her while I was at that stupid fuckin’ party last night, surrounded by girls the same as age as her, girls who probably spent hours, days even, trying to look the way they did and still, none of them came close to Bailey.
And then I watched the guys, rich and obnoxious as they teased the girls and the girls teased them, and I wondered what Bailey’s life would’ve been like if she’d been brought up different. She could’ve been any one of them. Wealthy, smart, successful, and even if she wasn’t one of them, she’d attract them. And they’d offer to give her the world, a world which she didn’t really want, but the most fucked-up part is they could give her the world. They could give her everything. And all I had to offer was a fucking concrete box and a living hell.
That thought alone had my fingers digging into her hips, bringing her even closer to me. I wanted to give her everything those guys could offer, but more than that, I wanted to possess her, to own her, and as shitty as it sounds, I’d never wanted to fuck her more than I did right then. I wanted to fuck her until the only sounds I could hear were our moans and the slapping of our sweaty bodies as I pumped into her. I wanted to knead her breasts, not gentle like my fading willpower had encouraged me to do—but rough. Rough and hard. Because she was fucking mine, dammit. And as her legs shook, and her back arched and her fingers tightened in my hair, she exploded on my tongue with the sexiest fucking moan I’d ever heard. I kept her there, her movements jerky as she rode out wave after wave. It was then that I felt the grinding ache in my shoulder. I was jerking off. I didn’t realize I was jerking off, but I needed to relieve the ache, the need, the want.
“Nate.”
I looked up at her, her body a blur behind the lusty haze of my vision. Her hand landed on my shoulder, my pathetically aching shoulder. Then she smiled and said, “Take me to bed.”
I stood quickly, not bothering to turn off the shower, not even bothering to dry our bodies. Instead, I carried her with her legs around my waist and half placed, half threw her on the bed. She didn’t try to cover herself like I thought she would. Instead, she lifted her knees and slowly spread them apart, inviting me.
I hesitated, just for a
moment, because this isn’t at all what I wanted it to be like—her first time—I wanted to show her love, give her romance—and this sure as fuck wasn’t it. But then she said the words that tilted the entire world off its axis and set my whole body ablaze. “I want you, Nate. I want you inside me. Please. Make me yours.”
I should’ve been more careful, more understanding of the pain she was about to receive, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything other than my cock buried deep in her pussy. I kneeled between her spread legs with my dick in my hand and the tip at her entrance and glanced at her one more time. “Please, baby,” she said, covering my hand with hers before guiding me inside her to the point where I claimed her as mine.
The point where she gives up something that I’ll forever possess.
To the point of no return.
Her nails pierced into my back, her teeth digging into my shoulder as she used it to muffle her cry. Whispered apologies fell from my lips, landed on her skin, over and over as I moved inside her and after a while, she began to move with me. Names, prayers, promises, all of it shared between panted breaths and desperate declarations.
*
We showered again, only, this time, I washed her, washed the mess I’d made mixed with the blood of her purity off of the place that was now mine and mine alone. Then we replaced the wet sheets from the bed and climbed back in, a tangle of limbs as we held on to each other.
“So…” I started, stroking the wet strands of her hair as she laid half on top of me. “Tiny and I have some stuff we have to do tomorrow morning, but he thinks it’s a good idea for us to lay low for a few days.”
She looked up at me, her eyebrows raised. “So that means you’re home for a while?”
I nodded. “Tiny’s going to be staying here, just as an extra precaution, I guess, so I’ll probably spend a bit of time with him. I feel bad him being here and me locking myself away with you.”
“That’s cool,” she said, attempting to hide her smile. “I’m just happy I get to be with you a little more.”
“Me too.” I kissed the top of her head. “He says he wants to check out a gym to go to together. I’ve promised him since you moved in, and I keep putting it off.”
“That sounds like fun.” She settled back in the crook of my arm and traced my stomach muscles with her finger and this strange calm—a state of nirvana—washed over me. I realized that I’d give anything for this to be my life. For her to be my life. And for the first time since I was sixteen, since I made the choice to give The Family my life, since I stood in front of Uncle Benny and made a promise to him to honor my father’s death—at the same time I promised myself redemption for my mother’s—that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t want the job anymore.
Bailey’s giggle cut through my thoughts.
“What’s funny?” I asked, peering down at her.
“Tiny sure could use the gym time,” she said, the joke rolling off her tongue. She looked up at me, her smile so pure and so genuine and I wished more than anything in the world, that this wasn’t our life. That we were able to be out there, loving each other freely and honestly, because I’d give up the world if I could’ve met her as her and have her fall in love with me for me.
She winced when she draped her legs over mine. I lifted her chin, her eyes clear as she stared back into mine. “Was I too rough? How badly did I hurt you?” I asked.
She drew back a little, relaxed and lazy in our post sex, post blood, post murderous-rage bliss. Well, the last two were more mine than hers but I pushed back the thought at the same time she answered, “A little. I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t seen or felt how big you were. I guess I just didn’t expect it to feel so big inside me.”
I smiled—I couldn’t help it—and flipped us over until she was beneath me. My mouth finding the crook of her neck as I murmured into her skin, “That’s ’cause your pussy’s so fuckin’ tight, baby.”
She moaned, her head tilting back so I could kiss her neck. “Is that good or…?”
“So good,” I said, my lips trailing down her neck toward her breast. I was already hard—or still hard, I should say. “Your pussy’s perfect. You’re perfect, Bailey. So fuckin’ perfect.” I took her nipple into my mouth while her fingers found my hair, stroking gently.
“Do you like that?” she asked. “Talking dirty, I mean.”
I pulled away and gazed up at her. “I didn’t really know I was. I can stop if it bothers you,” I told her, a little deflated.
She shook her head. “No. Don’t stop. I think… it kind of turns me on.”
I smirked. “Oh yeah?”
She nodded, and I went back to business. Back to worshipping her perfect breasts that go with her perfect everything else. “Nate?”
“Mmm?”
“Will you teach me?”
I pulled back. “Teach you what?”
“What you like… sex wise, I mean. How you like things done and what turns you on.”
My cock throbbed against her leg, and all I could do was nod because I couldn’t speak. My voice was somewhere closer to my balls than my throat, or maybe that was my cum, because fuck, her words got to me.
“Good,” she said, returning my nod, her hands pressing on the back of my head until my mouth found her nipple again.
For a few minutes, the room filled with the sounds of her pleasure, of my mouth as it explored every inch of her tits. And then she said, “Nate?” so I stopped and looked up at her, eyebrow quirked, cock in my hand ready to go again.
“You’re not going to tell me what happened today, are you?”
I released my cock, as well as a frustrated breath. “No.”
“Why?”
I sighed. “Because it’s better this way. The less you know, the less you’ll be accountable for if anything happens.”
“Was it about me?” she asked, her hands slowing in my hair.
I looked down at her breasts, at the perfect shade of pink surrounding her tight, perky nipples and I drew in a breath. Released it. And then drew in another.
“Nate?” Bailey said, my eyes drifted shut, my jaw tense because I knew I had no right to be as angry as I was getting, especially with her.
She sat up, pushing me back onto my heels, my hard-on sticking up in front of me. “I think I’m ready,” she said, and I mumbled a “huh?” confusion clear in my tone.
She chuckled lightly as she got on her knees and elbows in front of me, her ass in the air as if waiting for me to take her from behind. Then she reached for my cock and lowered her head at the same time, and with the tip of my dick less than in inch from her mouth, she licked her lips, drew her eyes away from my cock and looked up at me. “Teach me. Show me how you like it.”
*
It’s strange how something like sex, or the euphoria of an orgasm, can pull you away from the things that lay at the forefront of your mind. It’s as if it has the power to erase all memories, all thought process, but only for a while. And when you come down from the high, from the pure physical bliss, all you’re left with is your forgotten thoughts. And as Bailey lay with her head on my chest, her soft slumbered breaths doing nothing to lull my demons, I reached for my discarded jeans on the floor next to the bed and pulled out the tiny bag of cocaine. Then I looked at Bailey, my fingers stroking her hair, and then back at the drugs.
One hit.
I’d just need one hit to clear my head.
To clear the memories.
To clear my conscience.
28
Nate
Three hours earlier
A kid had overdosed. Not just any kid. The kid whose congratulations-on-being-a-perfect-fucking-poster-child party I’d just been to had overdosed. His parents had found him dead in his bed, apparently, and because of his last name, and the wealth and social standards linked to that name, the media was already all over it. Not just the media, but the cops, the users, and the pushers. Fuck, everybody knew about it. And because of that, we had to act fast. We had
to cover our bases, and we had to make sure that none of it led back to us and our supply.
For months, everything had been fine—no deaths caused by drugs (at least from what we were supplying). So I thought the last altercation we had with the Francos had sent the message that we weren’t to be fucked with. I’d wanted to find a new supplier, but Uncle Benny had been dealing with the Francos since before I was born and he wouldn’t even consider it. So I put up with the shitty supply and made it clear to Louis Franco that we were close, and we were watching every single fucking thing he did, waiting for him to fuck up so I could cut ties.
He’d fucked up, and he’d fucked up good.
I’d kept everything low key, had made the calls and set up the appropriate meetings, and a couple of hours later, we were pulling into a parking lot of an abandoned motel on the outskirts of Philly. I rolled my eyes when Louis Franco came into view because fuck if he didn’t look like your stereotypical criminal. But, of course, he was a Franco and just like the rest of his family, he wanted everyone to know he ran on the wrong side of the law because his image was more important than his job.
And other people’s lives, apparently.
“You here about that dead kid?” Franco asked as we pulled up in front of him.
I checked my weapon, made sure it was loaded and opened the door to step out.
“I didn’t know it was a meeting where we needed muscle,” Franco added, pointing to Tiny.
After shoving the pistol in my waistband, I stepped out of the car and made my way over to him.
“Augustus Sherman,” Tiny said, and Franco narrowed his eyes at him, confusion clear on his face. Tiny repeated the name, a name I was all too familiar with. “The dead kid?” Tiny continued. “That’s his name. Augustus Sherman.”