“You a flamer?” the driver asked, suddenly not so friendly.
“A what?” I asked, playing dumb.
“A twink, a sausage jockey…” He looked over his shoulder, and I just stared.
“Are you a fucking fag!” he yelled.
“Fuck no.” I lied. It turned my stomach to lie about myself that way. However, it turned it more to actually admit it.
“No way,” the guy beside me said. “I’ve seen him, G,” he told the driver, whose name I could now assume was G. “He’s always grinding on the same guy, they’re always in the back, and they always disappear into the stairwell.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I spat. “You wanna spew shit, you go ahead and do it, but I’m not gonna step in it.” I hit the back of the driver’s seat. “Let me the fuck out.”
“So you’re saying you ain’t a fag, but my boy here says you are.”
“You know how Johny feels about butt pirates on his turf,” the guy in the front said.
Oh shit, I was on the wrong turf. That meant they likely didn’t like my brother, and judging from their very colorful terms, they weren’t so fond of me either.
I let out a sigh. I really wasn’t in the goddamn mood for this. Putting up with my father had been more than enough for a lifetime.
“Who do you think I should believe, kid? You or my boy?”
“I don’t give a fuck who you believe.” I tossed the words out. “My ride ends here.”
The driver kept driving, picked up his cell, hit a button, and held it to his ear.
“Picked up some trash on the property tonight, Johny,” he said after a few. “Seems he belongs to the west. Says he’s Lorhaven’s brother.”
G listened a few, then whistled and tossed me a look.
“Another thing. He’s a fag. My boy has seen it with his own eyes.”
A beat of silence.
“Oh yeah, right here on your property, wandering around like he owned the place.”
I didn’t say anything, though I was sorely tempted to unleash a bunch of colorful words of my own.
“Will do,” he said, and then the phone disappeared.
Seconds later, the car pulled over, screeched to a stop, and I almost flattened against the back of the seat in front of me with the force of the halt. Both doors opened, and the second the guy in front was out, I shoved the seat up and got out.
I started walking without looking back. These guys were bad news, and I was outnumbered.
The sound of rushing feet behind me clenched my muscles, and I swung around so I wasn’t taken off guard.
Four guys stood in front of me, all looking at me with dark expressions on their faces.
“You a fag?” one of them asked.
“No.” I denied.
“So what are you doing in that stairwell? Baking cookies?”
I didn’t say anything. What the fuck was I supposed to say? Of course, I figured people saw us dancing, maybe even touching, but it never occurred to me someone might actually recognize me, would actually know the reason I went to those parties.
What a blow it was to have something else taken from me. Those parties had become a refuge. A place where I could learn about myself, a place where I had some firsts and no one seemed to care.
Just one more thing to add to the long list of losses tonight.
“Got nothing to say?” One of the guys, the bigger one, the one who’d been driving, took a step forward. “All out of denials?”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “I already said I wasn’t gay. You don’t believe me.”
“Guys like you make me sick,” he spat. “You’re a fucking abomination to everything the male gender stands for. What the fuck is the point of having a dick if you don’t know what to do with it?”
“Don’t worry,” I said, having heard enough. “Your dick doesn’t hold my interest. I prefer ones with size.”
One of his buddies made a sound.
His eyes about fell out of his head. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“I said the only reason guys like you worry about other guys’ dicks is because the one you got is lacking.”
The rude sound he let loose floated behind him when he lurched forward. He threw a punch, but I dodged it, and when he spun to throw another, I lifted my leg and kneed him in the face like he was a soccer ball and I was aiming for a goal.
His nose gushed blood, and he made a sound of distress. He straightened, dabbed it with his hand, and then looked at me with fury in his eyes.
“Hold him!” he roared.
The next thing I knew, I was being pinned by two guys who were bigger than me, older than me, and were a lot more experienced in street fighting.
They dragged me into a nearby alley that was dark, damp, and smelled like foul trash from the giant dumpster nearby.
I fought and struggled. I kicked and squirmed. I got in a couple kicks, but then the third guy grabbed my legs, and I was physically lifted off the ground and carried the rest of the way.
The second my shoes hit the pavement, the fist caught me in the nose.
My head snapped back, and as it flung forward, he hit me again.
Pain exploded behind my eyes, splintering across my jaw, and a burning sensation filled my lower lip. The warm ooze of blood coated my chin, and I felt the splatter of more across my forehead when he hit me again.
I don’t know how many times he hit me before I sagged, unable to hold my weight. I was still held prone, a guy on each side and one at my back. They let me hang, dangling from their grasp.
He kicked me in the side once, twice, a third time. I sank onto the ground, and they dumped my body there as I coughed and wheezed.
I thought maybe they would leave then, that getting my ass beat was the worst they would do.
I was so, so terribly wrong.
One of the other guys (the one I didn’t knee in the face) leaned down, grabbed a handful of my hair, and slammed my face into the pavement. “I’m gonna ask you a question,” he said. “If you lie, I’ll know and I’ll bash your head on the ground until your nose falls off your face.”
His words were muddled in my brain a little. The pain made it hard to focus.
I squinted up at him through a swollen eye.
He spit in my face.
“You a fag?” he demanded.
Somewhere from the side, the toe of a shoe buried in my ribs. I wrenched to the side and fell onto my back, four angry faces peering down at me.
“Are you?” he demanded.
I nodded. Maybe if I told them, they would just go away.
I started coughing, the copper, metallic flavor of blood splashing over my tongue. I rolled onto my side, pain nearly cracking me in half. I spit it onto the pavement, seeing the dark splatters beside my head.
“I told you!” a voice yelled. “I fucking knew it was that gay boy.”
“I hate fags,” a low voice growled. “I think he broke my nose.”
“You worked him over good, G. He learned his lesson.”
“Not good enough,” he said.
I pushed to my hands and knees. I was leaving. I just wanted to go home, wherever that was.
“What are you going to do?” one of the guys questioned.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he yelled and kicked me in the side.
I fell onto my stomach, groaning. Another punch clipped me in the back of my head, and I felt my ear scrape open on the road.
I glanced up, blinking at the dumpster, wondering if there was something nearby I could brandish as a weapon.
I was shoved roughly onto my back. G thrust his broken, bloody face into mine. “You like men, huh? You like taking it in the ass?”
I didn’t say anything.
He grabbed my jaw and squeezed my face.
“You think I have a tiny dick? I don’t know what to do with it? Well, fuck-boy, do I have a treat for you.”
My brain was sluggish. I didn’t quite
understand what he was saying…
Until he reached for my pants.
I started fighting then, like a hellcat with renewed energy. I kicked and screamed. I punched the side of his head.
He cursed and came back, unbuttoning my pants.
His fist buried in my stomach, and all the air whooshed out of me. As I hunched in on myself in the fetal position there in the dark alley, he stood over me. The distinct rattle of his zipper caused a horror of which I’d never known to rise inside me.
“What are you doing, man?” one of his buddies yelled.
“Hold him,” he said.
“Fuck no,” someone replied. I heard a pair of retreating footsteps.
I started to get up. I was getting the fuck out of there.
“I said hold him!” he roared.
I made it to my feet, wobbled, and took a step. Suddenly, I was surrounded. Two guys grabbed my arms and dragged me farther behind the dumpster. I started yelling, fighting, cussing.
It didn’t matter.
I was given another blow to the head, and everything went fuzzy.
It all became clear again when the worst pain I’d ever felt in my entire life ripped me in two. That’s what it felt like…
As if I were being sawed in two.
The pain was excruciating. So bad I almost passed out.
I wished I had.
Instead, I was painfully aware of what was happening to me. Pinned by two men, beaten until I almost blacked out. And the sounds—the slapping of skin, the grunting—and the feel of his fingers digging into my hips from behind.
Tears fell from my eyes, mixing with the blood already on my face.
I stopped yelling out. My voice had already gone hoarse.
“You like that, fag?” his voice grunted as he shoved himself inside my body.
My knees buckled.
“C’mon, man, that’s enough,” someone else said.
He didn’t stop. The arms that held me let go. I sagged, would have fallen if he didn’t hold me up and shove me against a wall for added support.
I don’t know how long it went on. How long I was raped by a hater in the alleyway… It didn’t matter really.
One second or an hour… I was never going to be the same again.
I now knew why my life had flashed before my eyes. I was dying.
I died that night. Again.
Somewhere between the stripper and being raped, Dylan Lorhaven died.
Arrow Ambrose was born. Arrow, a shattered, jaded, and untrusting soul who sometimes wanted to be dead so badly he often fantasized about it. Maybe once, he tried.
But just like his father, death didn’t want him either.
All he could do was exist: bleach his hair, shave half his head, and get a dozen tattoos—all to cover up the boy he was forced to bury.
And though Dylan was gone and dead, his ghost still occasionally rattled beneath my skin. He haunted me just like an insidious demon. The kind there was no exorcism for.
Sometimes when I looked in the mirror, it wasn’t Arrow I saw at all, but the boy who just wanted to be accepted.
To the extreme.
That explains a lot of things in my life. It explains me.
When I do something, I’m borderline obsessive-compulsive about it. Attractive character trait, isn’t it?
No.
Well, it’s who I am.
If I’ve learned one thing in my twenty-six years on this planet, it’s I am who I am and it isn’t going to change. Like it or not.
In fact, one might argue the more time goes on, the more me I become.
I guess I’m pretty good at talking in tongues, too, because sometimes the shit that swirls around my own brain marauding as thoughts confuses even me.
Regardless, I’m trying to learn to accept myself, maybe even give myself a break. Currently, it isn’t something I’m excelling at.
That’s the thing about being OCD. It isn’t just for the world around me, but also for me and the expectations I hold myself to.
It’s those extreme expectations that are my ultimate downfall.
And the downfall of someone who was my infinity.
Five years ago…
Complacency gets you nowhere. Actually, no. You know where it gets you? The same place you’ve always been.
To improve, to make headway in anything in life—like racing—you needed to push the envelope (or the throttle, if you want to make a racing pun). You must be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Being uncomfortable was the new black.
Okay, I don’t know what the fuck that means, but it sounds good. Right?
No?
Whatever.
Change wasn’t easy. It never would be. But nothing worth having ever came easy, and I wanted this. I wanted this so goddamn bad I could actually taste it.
The flavor? Hopes and dreams.
Not.
It tasted a lot like exhaust and felt more like road rash.
I was obsessed with pushing myself. Insistent on being better than I was the day before. Racing was a high, but success, that was an addiction.
I’d been on the pro moto circuit for two years now. I’d debuted with good numbers and fought my way into the top ten motorcycle racers in North America.
It all came down to this moment.
This race.
This bike and this track.
I was dressed in my typical one-piece leathers, which wasn’t as fashionable as it sounded. It wasn’t as comfortable either. It wasn’t like the supple leather pants every rocker wore in the eighties. This kind of leather was thicker, tougher, and didn’t give as much when you moved.
I was used to it, though. In fact, sometimes when I was off the track, I still moved like I had it on.
My leathers were red and white. They molded to my body like a glove because I’d worn them often enough. The elbows, spine, and shoulder areas were heavily guarded—you know, in case I ate the pavement.
My knees were also well protected, something I learned to ensure because I was the kind of racer who liked to get low. So low my knee dragged the pavement as I turned.
I had permanent scars on my kneecaps. I considered them trophies.
The Kevlar gloves I wore, the specially made helmet and boots, it was all part of me. It kept me safe, but it also helped me stay in the zone. Like the way a uniform gave someone an air of authority.
Except leather was more badass.
In my humble opinion, of course.
My body folded over my Ducati exactly as it should, and my legs vibrated with the purr of the engine. I drove at such a high speed, everything around me was blurry. I didn’t focus on it anyway; all I saw were my markers. Markers were reference points drivers used to keep their driving in check, to keep the track from swallowing them whole.
If a driver lost track of his markers, he’d end up like Alice in Wonderland, falling down a deep, endless hole, trying to find his way out.
I used markers for everything. When to brake, when to open the throttle, when to turn. They were my map on the course.
I was pushing myself today, as I did every race, but more so today. It was a calculated risk on my part really, one that most drivers probably would save for a day when everything they wanted wasn’t riding on their success.
It was just me and one other driver on this track.
We were battling it out. Man to man. Bike to bike. This was a match of skill. A match of endurance, and to me, a match of who was willing to take enough risk to get just a quarter of a second faster.
Because winning by even a fraction of a second was still winning.
“Back off just a little,” the familiar voice in my ear instructed.
My next marker was coming, a final turn in the course, and then hopefully I would be able to punch it right through the finish line. If I could push it now, I’d have the advantage around that curve.
“Jay, back off,” the voice growled again. I heard impatience and a sense of anxiet
y in his tone.
I backed off… just a smidge.
If he was getting worried, then I was pushing it too hard.
I wanted this win; I needed it. But I didn’t want it at the expense of everything else.
I took the turn, leaning so far to the side I was practically parallel to the ground. I let my knee kiss the pavement for brief moments, and when my marker came up, I punched it a little early.
It took a lot of strength to keep the bike in a solid line, but I managed, and once I straightened completely, the engine revved, the loud sound of acceleration piercing through the air and vibrating my thighs.
I shot over the line. The other racer was right beside me.
We both kept going, driving all the way through without hesitation. I let up a little and glanced over. He was already peeling away. A wake of smoke rose from his tire burning with the forced U-turn.
I grinned and punched my fist in the air.
He might have been beside me, but he was pissed off. I knew what that meant.
I managed to get that half second advantage.
I was going international! And not just smalltime international; this was top level. I’d just earned the single spot left in my division to invigorate the American motosport with an international spotlight. The next time my tires touched down, it would be in an entirely different country.
I would be racing the best of the best. A gathering of top-notch motoheads all from different countries in the granddaddy of all races.
MotoIntercontinental, here I come.
After my engine cooled a little, I looped around and buzzed over where everyone gathered. I grinned wide, even though they couldn’t see it through my helmet. The second the bike stopped, I ripped it off and vaulted off.
Matt leapt forward with the biggest grin I’d ever seen on his face and smacked me in the middle with his clipboard, his headset still around his neck.
“Fucking yeah!” he yelled.
I felt a little wobbly since I’d just been on a vibrating speed machine, but I shook it off and whooped with pleasure.
Matt came in fast, wrapping his arms around my shoulders for a quick, congratulatory hug. “When I get you alone, I’ll congratulate you properly,” he whispered, then backed up.
Heat suffused the back of my neck, and I tucked away that little promise so I could pull it back out when we were indeed alone.
#Blur (The GearShark Series Book 4) Page 7
