by R Holmes
"I think it was the first time I told your dad if he touched you again I'd make him regret it, and he laughed in my face. Fuck, I hated him so much I wouldn't have pissed on him if he was on fire. Still do, only now, I hate him more."
He nods, tearing his gaze from mine.
His jaw is set in a hard line, clenched so tight I can practically feel it. I feel the anger radiating off of him in waves, and it's the same anger I've felt the entire time he's been in that cell.
"Ez, we're going to find out whatever the fuck is going on, and we'll end it. All of us, together. You're not doing this shit alone. He's going to wish he never fucked with you, or any of us to begin with."
"Never that easy, Sebastian, you know that. I'm the prime example of one of our perfectly thought out plans backfiring in our faces like a fucking bomb."
He's right, but we know better. We're smarter, stronger when we're all together.
The front door opens and Rhys walks through, broody as ever, with Alec trailing behind him.
"I fucking got it," Alec says gleefully.
Only he would have his dick hard about this tech shit none of us even remotely understood.
"What?" Ezra flies up from the chair over to the table where Alec set the paper.
"I went through everything, all of it. I've been working on it for a week and everything is perfect. Nothing out of the ordinary, I checked it over and over. Then I realized what the problem was."
He slides the second paper to the side and points to a line. It's a bank statement with hundreds of transactions.
"Everything is too perfect. That's exactly how he wanted it to look. Your dad isn't stupid, well he is, but not when it comes to covering his ass. I dug deeper, and I found this."
The shit on this paper looks like foreign language to me but what I can make out is countless transactions.
"Nothing. Look, there's nothing here." He's so fucking chipper, I kind of want to punch him in the face.
"Which made me look elsewhere, and guess what I found?" He pulls up a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his gym shorts, and I'm starting to wonder what else he's hiding in there. Jesus.
"Offshore accounts. All in Ezra's name. Ten to be exact."
"Holy fuck," Ezra whispers, yanking the paper from the table to take a closer look. His hand shakes holding the paper.
Of all the things I expected Alec to find, this was on the last of the list.
"So, what does this mean?" Rhys grunts.
"It means whatever fucked up thing Daddy Kennedy is doing, he's got Ezra involved with it without him even knowing. Here's what's even stranger."
He takes the paper from Ezra and points out two transactions dated in the last six months.
"Those transfers are over five hundred thousand dollars, to a woman named Quinn Carter. And when I saw it, it didn't ring any bells. Until it did."
He walks to his room, disappearing inside, reappearing seconds later holding his MacBook which he's already got opened typing into.
"She's a software developer, out of Chicago. The only reason it even registered is because she's all over the dark web," he says, turning the computer around to face us.
"Wait, how the fuck did you even get access to the dark web?" I ask, puzzled. "Never mind, don't even answer that. I don't want to know."
"Good idea. The less you know." He smirks. "Anyway, there's not much about her, she's mostly hidden, hiding behind countless VPNs."
Rhys scoffs, "Alec, drop nerd language and speak to where us little people can understand."
Alec rolls his eyes. "Dude, she's like a fucking ghost. But I tracked down an address through someone who does a ton of dealings on the dark web."
"So, why is my father transferring half a million dollars to a shady ass software developer on the dark web? How the fuck does he even know about that shit?' Ezra's brow furrows in anger and confusion.
"Well, that's the million dollar question." Alec shrugs.
"You know what this means right?" I ask. All of their eyes are on me. "Looks like we're going to the windy city boys."
Ezra breaks out in a sinister grin, Alec whoops so loud the entire fucking dorm had to have heard him, and Rhys face is set in stone.
"Fuck yeah we are, and we're going to figure out why the fuck Daddy Kennedy is dealing in dirty money with Ezra's name on it."
"But tonight, we're going to the ravines, and we're getting shitty for old time's sake. " Ezra walks over to the fridge and pulls a bottle of Patron out of the fridge, holding it up.
"Fuck it, let's do it," Rhys says, slapping the table with a heavy hand. Time to make up for lost time with my boys.
An hour later, we're sitting on a rocky shore surrounding a shallow ravine, only the moonlight from above casting a soft glow on the rocks around us. When we were younger, we'd escape here when there wasn't anywhere else to run. The nights where Ezra's dad was beating him until he could hardly walk over shit that he had no control over, the times Rhys felt caged in and drowning in a system that never understood the loneliness inside of him. I'd come here when I was sick of hearing my parents scream at each other and I'd count every fucking star in the sky, and only then would I return home. Long after they had gone to bed, and they never even noticed I was gone. Alec was desperate to escape a family who judged him for who he was, they pushed religion down his throat, preaching until he couldn't stand to look in the mirror at his own reflection.
All of us were fucked up, and we reveled in it. Let it manipulate us. Used it as a weapon instead of allowing it to drag us to the pits of hell.
We bonded over the lonely ache inside of us that yearned for more than the pitiful shitty hand we were all dealt.
My phone buzzes with a message the second I sit on the huge log next to the water. Pulling it out, I see "Teach" on the screen, a smile tugging at the cover of my lips at her name.
"Awe, Bash, are you blushing?" Ezra taunts me from the water edge where he's tossing rocks into the current.
"Fuck off."
I open the text and read.
Teach: This popped up on my recommendations and it made me think of you ;)
She sent a photo of her TV screen with a Jason Statham movie, and I grin.
Sebastian: Even Netflix knows my girl needs some action in her life ;)
My message wasn't actually an innuendo but it sounded like one anyway.
"I'm not used to this whipped version of you, Sebastian Pierce. Safe to say you're retiring your commitment phobe ways?" Alec asks.
I shrug noncommittally. "Not labeling shit. Taking it day by day. Shit's hard when everything you do has to be hidden."
A look passes over Alec's face, but he doesn't speak, just nods slightly. "Yo, let's hit the Abbey up?"
Rhys shrugs. "I'll text Val, have her meet me there."
"Let's go." Ezra throws the last rock, and we head up the Ravine and into my SUV where we head to the Abbey.
When we pull up, it's packed as usual, but our parking spot isn't taken so I pull my car in and shut it off.
"I'm going meet up with someone, catch you later," Alec mumbles, and is out of the car before I can respond.
He's someone's dick appointment.
"Let's mingle boys, I'm making up for missed time." Ezra gestures for me to follow, and Rhys is gone before I can even fucking blink. He's probably already with Valentina, eating each other's face off.
The atmosphere is wild tonight. I feel it the moment we step across the threshold. Music pounding through speakers set in each corner of the abandoned house. The second we walk through the door, people are surrounding us. It's like Ezra being back has put the spotlight directly back on us.
A cup is thrust in my hand by Greg, another guy on the hockey team who we hang out with occasionally. He's a douche, but loyal as fuck. We shoot the shit for a while, talking about our upcoming game with Three Kings. Our biggest rivals. This year is our year and I fucking know it. Without even realizing it, it's been an hour and I'm shit faced off my ass
. Every time my cup got low, a new cup was put in my hand, and then I was drunk.
I clamber up the stairs two at a time, in search of the boys. I see a few girls I used to hook up with, but I don't look twice. None of them interest me anymore, not when I have Presley consuming my thoughts. Which in turn makes me think of her spread out on her desk, and I'm five seconds away from a semi. Fuck.
I head towards the last door on the right, figuring Alec's up there probably smoking too much fucking weed, and when I find the door up, sans knocking, he's indeed there.
Fucking a girl from behind, her face shoved into the mattress as he pounds into her.
He notices me standing there, but his thrusts never slow and I'm semi impressed by his lack of modesty, but this is Alec we're talking about. He just continues to fuck her so hard she's scooting up on the bed, her tits shaking every time he slams into her.
"You gonna just stand there, or like do you wanna join or…" He trails off, breathless, a look of complete seriousness on his face.
"Uh…I was trying to find all of you fuckers so we can head home. Wait, you'd be cool with me joining?" I ask, my brow furrowing.
He shrugs, completely unaffected by my presence, his thrusts slowing lazily, "I mean… I don't discriminate dude. Love is love man. But, can we talk about it later…" He trails off.
"Fuck, yes, I'm leaving in thirty, be ready." I slam the door shut and try to burn the vision from my memory.
I’m not a guy into sharing, nor watching my best friend have sex. No thanks.
Rhys is sitting on a folding chair with Valentina in his lap, his hand tangled in her hair, the other snaking up the prim and proper skirt she's wearing. Ezra's a few feet from him, his gaze homed in on the fire, his hand wrapped around the neck of the whiskey bottle he keeps taking long pulls from.
"Hey Val," I blow her a kiss while Rhys shoots me a death glare.
"Bash, where ya been?" She smiles kindly.
The thing about Val is, no matter how much I flirt with her to get under Rhys's skin, she puts up with my shit. She's fucking pure. I gave her shit from the beginning, but she turned out to be one of the only female friends I have that isn’t trying to fuck me.
I flop down in the folding chair next to Ezra, who doesn't even glance in my direction. He's lost in his own thoughts.
"You okay?" I ask, taking the bottle from his grip and taking a long drink. The alcohol burns a fiery path down my throat until it settles in the pit of unease in my stomach.
This side of Ezra terrifies me. The one where he's so lost in his own head I don't know if we'll be able to save him, even if we'd give our own lives to do so.
"Same shit, different day. You know, it used to be so hard to pretend. Fuck, I used to feel like people could see straight through my bullshit, and maybe they could. But now, I'm an Oscar nominee with the show I put on. You'd never know how fucked up I was inside." He puts his hand over his heart, his eyes shine with the flames of the fire reflecting in the black, lifeless pupils.
"What if I'm never okay, Bash? What if this shit inside of me, the rotten, decaying parts of me… what if they continue to spread from my head, to my heart? I don't know who I even am anymore. I'm walking around half dead."
His honesty shocks me, and fuck, it makes me hurt. An ache in my chest that seeps its way into my bones.
"You've been through more shit at eighteen than people go through in a lifetime, Ez. You're allowed to feel the pain. You're allowed to hurt," I whisper, unsure if my words even matter right now, but I say them anyway.
"You ever feel hopeless? I mean so fucking hopeless that it doesn't matter whether you wake up tomorrow or not."
"Yeah. Every time I set foot in the presence of my father."
"Fuck him. You're the best guy I know. I don't deserve you, none of us do." He shakes his head. He's completely fucked, but this is the shit he's been keeping inside and I only hope that he feels at all better by spilling the putrid shit inside him.
Rhys and Valentina are lost in their own world which means they haven't heard anything Ezra has said and I think that's what he needs right now. For someone not to have a front row seat to him being broken.
"We're gonna get through this, Ez, I swear to god if I'm breathing in this chair, we will end it. I'm not letting you live this alone."
Finally, he tears his gaze from the fire, his eyes holding mine and he nods. I see them shine with unshed tears, and it fucking guts me.
Imagine one of the only people you love in the world, so broken, feeling so fucking helpless and alone, and your presence isn't enough to take away the bitter ache of pain.
"You bleed, I bleed," he whispers, dragging his gaze back to the fire.
Now more than ever, that shit is cemented deeper than people will ever understand. Only we do. Me, Rhys, Alec, Ezra. That motto has saved our lives, more time than any of us are willing to admit.
The unbreakable brotherhood.
But the knot in the pit of my stomach, tells me that the shit we're soon to face is going to be more than we've ever been confronted with. Our ties, our brotherhood, our loyalty will be tested more than ever.
18
Presley
Stolen glances. Hidden touches. Secret moments.
Suddenly my life has become measured by them. I feel splintered down the middle. One half the same me I had always been, the other half a wild, uninhibited version of myself that I don’t recognize. I am living a double life, one that was full of secrets and veiled desire.
Sitting in the same room as Sebastian is a new kind of torture I subject myself to daily. I feel his eyes on me, the entire time he sits in the desk across the room. My heart hammers against my ribcage, pounding with unresolved lust. I force myself to never let my eyes drift to his because even though I’m dizzy with lust, I am not careless. I won’t let my relationship with Sebastian taint my ability to teach or rob me of the future I have spent so long rebuilding from the charred mess that it was.
"Okay guys, let's read independently chapters one through three and then we'll do a quick pop quiz. All for extra credit."
I scan the room of students, who quickly turned from annoyed to excited. The mention of extra credit is always a crowd pleaser. Once they've opened the book and started to read, all their eyes are glued to the pages. All except one set of eyes, and they set me on fire.
I discreetly press my legs together in a feeble attempt to dull the throb that sits in my core. I'd never felt so… constantly aroused. My body is like a live wire, a current of electrified, greedy hunger. Every single bit of it has everything to do with Sebastian. He’s driving me insane.
Our eyes meet over my desk, briefly, only for the slightest moment and they're full of promise. A small smirk tugs at the corner of his lips, taunting me. I pull my lip between my teeth and drag my eyes from his, although it pains me to do so. This is dangerous. I force my eyes down to the paper in front of me, and forbid myself from sneaking another look for the rest of the hour.
And I don't.
Finally, the bell rings and students scatter out the door like the building is on fire, Sebastian included. Thankful for my lesson planning hour, I plan to spend it working on assignments for next week to get ahead. The second bell rings, signaling the next class period has begun, so I find myself walking down the eerily quiet and deserted hallway. The only sound is the steady click of my heels echoing off the lockers as I walk.
I pull my phone out to make myself a reminder to schedule Hope her vaccine appointments, when I feel a hand close around my mouth silencing the scream that leaves my lips. Suddenly, I'm being dragged backwards into the janitor’s closet. I go into a full panic moment, trying to scream against the hand over my mouth, kicking and thrashing. My heart is beating so hard, I feel like I might faint when I hear his whisper. My palms begin to sweat, my throat seizes in panic. I feel the onslaught of an anxiety attack happening.
"Shh baby, it's me. Calm down, I've got you." His breath tickles the shell of my ear.
> Sebastian.
I sag in instant relief, knowing I'm not actually being kidnapped, but it's quickly replaced by anger. His hand drops, leaving me able to speak.
"What are you doing! Are you insane?" I screech, careful to keep my voice low since we're currently stuffed into a janitor closet so small we can't help but be pressed together.
The lopsided grin, and dimples do nothing to make me any less angry. Okay, maybe a fraction but I'm still fuming mad.
"Needed to see you. Needed to taste these sweet lips," he murmurs, dropping a kiss to my lips, slipping his tongue in and exploring my mouth. When he pulls away I've almost forgotten why I was so angry in the first place. Almost.
"Sebastian, you can't just drag me into a closet and have your way with me! We're at school, this is dangerous. And reckless." He runs his fingers up the inside of my thigh, brushing against the now damp lace at my center. "So, reckless." I moan when he thumbs my clit through the fabric.
"Yeah? Well, I'm fucking obsessed, Presley. I can't stop thinking about you. I'm losing my goddamn mind." His tone is desperate, and it’s the same feeling that seems to have a hold on me. We’re being careless.
Yet, my insides warm at his admission, coating me from head to toe in desire. His eyes lock with mine, neither of us moving, simply panting in mingled breaths. The room around us, however confined it is, is filled with a current so powerful anyone could feel it.
Seconds pass with neither of us moving, until the transparent thread between us snaps, and we fly together in a frenzy. His hands are everywhere. My hair, my hips, down my ass as he hoists me up, never breaking our kiss. My legs wrap around him, and he slams me against the wall with so much force the brooms hanging on the wall shake threatening to clatter to the floor.
"Shh," I whisper.
"Sorry, sorry," he mumbles as he dips his head down to the skin of my cleavage that peeks out through the unbuttoned slit of my shirt, not sounding in the least bit sorry. The way he easily lifts me and maneuvers me, is somewhat shocking, but based on the sheer size of Sebastian compared to me, I guess I shouldn't be as surprised at all.
