Skin (44 Chapters #1)

by B. B. Easton

  But mostly, I thought about my parents. How sorry I was that they might never get to see me graduate, or walk down the aisle, or have a baby of my own. How badly I’d fucked up. How much I loved them. How lucky I was to have two people in my life who loved me unconditionally when most of my friends didn’t even have one. How much I wished that I had told them that.

  Knight suddenly punched the back of his seat, sending shock waves rippling through the cab of the truck, and screamed, “Will you fucking listen to me now?”

  I quieted my sobs to whimpers and hid the exposed part of my face behind my shoulder, trying to protect myself from whatever emotional or physical lashing Knight was about to deliver.

  “Look at me.”

  Fuck no.

  “Open your motherfucking eyes or I swear to God I will pry them open myself.”

  I complied, just barely, and winced up into the face of the man who would decide my fate.

  “Good. Now I’m going to talk, and you’re going to fucking listen. Do you understand?”

  I nodded once, slightly, and held my breath.

  “First of all, I’m not fucking Angel.”

  “Bullshit,” I spat.

  Knight clamped his hand down over my mouth again and yelled, “Stop fucking talking! Just listen to me, goddamn it! Blink once if you fucking understand.”

  Blink.

  “I’m. Not. Fucking. Angel.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and refused to blink, even though they burned from my running mascara.

  “When we broke up she just started following me around, like a lost fucking puppy. I knew she didn’t want me. She just wanted me to protect her from her brother’s fucking crew. She said they never left her alone and she didn’t feel safe at home, so I let her hang out at Peg’s house to get away from that shit. That’s all. Blink if you’re fucking listening.”

  Another one of his fucking strays. I used to be one of his strays too.

  “Blink!” he yelled.

  Blink.

  “But when I saw how jealous it made you to see us together I let it go too far. I just wanted you to hate me so that you would stop ripping my fucking heart out every day with your big sad eyes at my truck. That shit killed me, Punk. It fucking destroyed me. When Angel started riding home with me you stopped coming around as much. That was all I wanted—to be able to get through the day without having to see you fucking cry. Blink.”

  As I blinked, a mascara-filled tear rolled down my cheek, right on cue.

  “I didn’t bring her to your little boyfriend’s party to fight you, okay? I didn’t even know you were gonna be there. Angel called me screaming and crying from a gas station that night saying that she was running away. I fucking left work to go pick her ass up, and that’s where she told me to take her. Now blink.”

  Bitch.

  “Blink, goddamn it!”

  Blink.

  “When I pulled up and saw that fucking pretty boy hanging all over you I couldn’t even see straight. I wanted to make him bite the curb so that I could smash every one of his perfect little teeth out with one boot to the back of his head. I told that motherfucker what would happen if he put his hands on my girl again.”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Then I saw Angel running toward you, and I…I lost my fucking mind. I was so mad I blacked out, Punk. That’s never happened before. I don’t know what I did or where I took her, but when I woke up, I was in my truck, over there,” Knight gestured out the window above my head at an adjacent parking lot, “and Angel’s hair was all over my seat.”

  Knight looked back down at me with a ravine of remorse cutting across his brow. “Blink. Please.”

  I blinked.

  “I decided to just wait there until you came to work. I wanted to see that piece of shit pretty boy drop you off with my own two eyes. I wanted to know if you had spent the night with him, like you used to with me. If you were fucking him. But it wasn’t him, was it?” Knight’s voice rumbled with malice.

  I pulled at my restraints and mumbled something indecipherable into his palm. Knight released his grip on my mouth and sat back on his haunches allowing me to finally speak. The full moon glow and a distant streetlight illuminated his tortured face.

  My jaw was sore from being clamped shut for so long. I opened it slowly, testing it, before I said, “I didn’t fuck Trevor. Or Tony. They were just friends, Knight. Am I not allowed to have friends?”

  “There’s no such thing, Punk.”

  “No such thing as friends? How can you say that? You used to be my friend.”

  “I wasn’t your friend. I was a guy who wanted to fuck you. Same as Trevor.”

  “August was my friend.”

  “August is dead.”

  “Lance was my friend.”

  “Because he’s a fucking homo.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Because he likes to suck dick.”

  Fuck you, Knight.

  “Tony was my friend.” I let the implication hang in the air.

  “I didn’t fucking kill him.” Knight’s scowling face did little to hide the hurt radiating out those crystal-clear irises. He was telling the truth. I was the only person Knight had let see what was underneath his armor, and even I had assumed the worst of him. No, I’d expected it.

  I sputtered and rambled, trying to explain my reasoning. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed...It’s just…I never told you, but I’ve been paying Tony to keep the Kings off your back—”

  “You’ve been what?” Knight interrupted.

  “I was just trying to protect you! Tony said if I missed a payment the deal was off, and I missed my payment on Friday so I thought he was coming after you with Carlos’ crew. I tried to warn you, but you weren’t answering your phone and you didn’t show up at work and then I wandered over to the junkyard and that’s when I saw Tony’s car, right where…you know…”

  “So you assumed I killed him? Did you not read the fucking signs, Punk? The county took over that property and turned it into a police impound lot. If Tony’s car was there it’s because his dumb fucking ass got arrested.”

  Oh, thank God.

  “But, if he’s in jail, then why hasn’t he called Juliet to let her know? It’s been two days. She was so upset she went into fucking labor!”

  “That’s not my problem. My problem is that a man goes missing and you automatically assume I fucking killed him.”

  “Knight, I’m sorr—”

  “Don’t fucking apologize. You were right. I do want to kill Tony—more now than ever. I wanted to kill Trevor with my bare hands in the middle of the fucking street just for lighting your cigarette. I wanted to kill Angel, and for all I know I may have fucking done it. You know what I am. You know it’ll happen again. That’s why I came to see you tonight.”

  I wanted to argue with him—to tell him he was wrong, that he wasn’t a monster—but we were done lying to each other.

  “I came to tell you bye, Punk. I enlisted in the Marines. I’m shipping out on Thursday, right after graduation.”

  All I heard was goodbye, Marines, and after graduation.

  I couldn’t speak. And I obviously couldn’t move my arms or legs. I just had to lie there and absorb the full force of his words.

  “After I put my hands on you last week, I wanted to fucking die. That night I drank an entire fifth of whiskey, drove into the woods, and spent the night with a loaded shotgun pressed under my chin. But I couldn’t pull the fucking trigger. I wanted to, so bad, but I got too much fight left in me to take my own life.”

  Knight stared out the windshield at the back of the building. The moonlight cast severe shadows on his severe face. “That’s all I got left in me. I can’t run from who I am anymore. I’m a killer, just like my grandfather. The only difference is that he killed for his country, to protect the people he loved. I think that’s what I’m supposed to do too.”

  I managed to push a few tiny, squeaky speech sounds past the suffoca
ting lump in my throat. “Where? Where are you going?”

  “Basic training in North Carolina, then Iraq. I want to get as far away from you as I can.”

  His painful words rained down on me like punches, and I had no way to defend myself.

  “Why?” I cried. “Why do you have to send yourself into a war zone? Why do you have to get away from me? Why can’t we just be together, like we were before?”

  “Because look at you!” Knight yelled, jerking the bottom of my T-shirt all the way up to my chin. He wrapped both of his thick hands around my rib cage and squeezed, his fingers digging into the valleys between each bone. “Because you’re fucking dying, and I’m the one killing you!”

  His chin began to quiver, and angry tears glistened, unshed in his mist-colored eyes. I wanted so badly to reassure him that I was fine. That if he stayed we’d live happily ever after. I’d go to college, and he’d open a tattoo parlor, and we’d have a little boy and name him Diesel or Axle and he’d be smart like me and strong like his daddy, but I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t true.

  The truth was that Knight had already hurt me worse than any human being ever had or ever would, and I knew that when the going got tough, he’d do it again. He’d push me away. Torture me to make me hate him. Convince me that he really was the monster he wanted everyone to believe. But even knowing what he was capable of, and how bleak our future together would be, it still didn’t stop a fresh stream of black tears from running down my cheeks.

  “Knight,” I whispered. “Untie me. Please?”

  Knight released my exposed ribs and unwound the nylon straps from my wrists and ankles. As soon as my arms were free I spread them wide and said, “Come here.”

  I’d never seen a soul so broken. Knight’s glistening eyes and pained expression weren’t Knight’s at all. They were Ronald’s—the freckle-faced boy with the soft, fuzzy head who loved animals and drawing and always did his chores. I cradled him to my concave breast, and shushed him like his mama never did.

  Shh-shh-shh-shh-shhhhhhhh…

  While I rubbed Knight’s broad, rippled back with one hand, I raked my fingertips over Ronald’s velveteen head with the other. While the arms of a bulletproof man wrapped around my body, pulling me to him, the soul of a boy shuddered softly in my embrace. Because of Knight, Ronald had to go away. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay there and let me love him.

  I wanted that too.

  I pulled his frowning face to mine and kissed him for the first time in what felt like centuries. His lips felt like home. His cinnamon musk smelled like heaven. And in my mind, I was transported to an itchy brown couch in my ex-boyfriend’s living room where, together, Ronald and I taught Knight about love.

  Ronald may have been the one kissing me, but it was Knight who shoved my pants down around my ankles and entered me in one desperate thrust. Followed by another. And another. I wasn’t ready for him. It was too much, too fast. And he knew it. It was as if Knight was taking control back from Ronald. Ronald may have wanted a sweet goodbye, but Knight would rather burn what we had to the ground.

  I wrapped my hands around his hipbones and pushed against him to keep his next thrust from entering as deeply. Then I looked up, into his conflicted eyes, and said, “Hey, Ronald.”

  His body stilled. His breathing stopped. And the voice of the boy whose drawings hung next to mine all those years ago answered back.

  “Hey, Brooke.”

  Smiling, I said, “Guess what?”

  Knight’s brow furrowed in confusion, but Ronald knew what game I was playing, “What?” he asked.

  “I love you.”

  Smiling back, Ronald said, “I love you, too, Punk.”

  I sat up and kissed him, guiding him backwards until I was able to straddle him, my jeans still bunched around the tops of my boots. In that position, neither Knight nor Ronald were in control. I was. And I wanted to love them both. One last time.

  We came together—all three of us—and for one generous moment, time stopped. We stayed like that—joined in every way, foreheads mashed together, heartbeats synchronized—and just breathed, until the silence was broken by the sound of my phone ringing from somewhere outside the truck.

  “My mom’s probably wondering where I am,” I whispered, the imminence of our goodbye starting to sink in.

  “What are you gonna tell her?”

  “I’ll just tell her that I ran into a friend,” I said.

  “You’re not my fucking friend, Punk. You’re my everything. You will always be my everything. I just hope you can find somebody better than me to be yours.”

  That was the last time I saw Knight before he left for basic training. The next day I went to school for the first time in a week, actually hoping to see him, but he wasn’t there. Angel wasn’t either, and I wondered if she was okay.

  Juliet was at home with Romeo. I’d called her after Knight dropped me off the night before and suggested that she call the county jail to look for Tony. And that’s exactly where she found him—alive and well.

  Juliet found out that Tony had been arrested for selling crank to a NARC, but they’d been able to connect him with a whole lot of other drug sales—including one to August Embry that they were trying to use as evidence that he contributed to the death of a minor. Tony was being held without bail and was facing major jail time. He hadn’t called Juliet to tell her because he’d left his phone in his car when he got arrested and his dumb ass didn’t have a single phone number memorized. Classic fucking Tony.

  On Wednesday, I took my final exams. I’d missed the entire week of review leading up to them, and was in no frame of mind for a cram session, so I just used the copy machine at work to shrink all my study guides to the size of large note cards. I stashed them under my thighs while I took my tests. Any time I got to something I didn’t know I’d spread my legs a little bit and look down. Worked like a charm. My four point oh GPA was safe.

  Thursday was the last day of school. I only went so that I could pick up my report card and proof of attendance. You had to have both to get your driver’s license, and my sixteenth birthday was less than two weeks away.

  I also went because graduation was that afternoon.

  I sat by myself in the bleachers, baking in the late-May sun and rubbing the tattoo that was now almost completely gone. I wondered what Lance was up to. I missed him. The sting of his unrequited love suddenly felt like a fun little distraction compared to the agony of true love lost.

  All my other friends were gone, dead, or at home with babies. But Lance, he was still a big fat question mark. Was he still in Las Vegas? Were he and Colton in school? Did I have enough money for bus fare to go live with them?

  I hadn’t heard from either one of them since they’d moved. They didn’t even come in town for August’s viewing—not that anyone else did, either. And not that there was anything to view. August’s “service” consisted of a half-dozen lawn chairs clustered in the overgrown weeds next to his mama’s trailer, filled with the asses of a few aunts and uncles who were drinking Natural Ice out of the can and arguing about NASCAR.

  August had been right.

  Nobody fucking cared.

  I scanned the sea of graduates down below—looking for one in particular—but I knew without even straining my eyes that he wasn’t there. I could feel it. Or rather, I couldn’t feel it. There was no sizzle in the air. No waft of cinnamon on the breeze. Only the heavy humid summer heat, smothering me.

  I needed shade, a cigarette, and a good cry. I slinked off through the parking lot, through the woods, and didn’t stop until I felt the familiar crunch of gravel under my feet. I dug a Camel Light out of my purse and lit it, inhaling a little deeper than usual. When I exhaled and looked up, what I saw startled the cigarette right out of my hand. Its red-hot tip burned through my flesh on its way to the ground.

  The entire side of the church bore the black silhouette of a knight on horseback, identical to the tattoo that had once been on the inside of
my left ring finger. Black spray-paint cans littered the ground. I didn’t even bother to look for him—I knew he was long gone.

  I sat on the railroad ties on the edge of the parking lot and stared at the image, trying to determine whether or not I was hallucinating. Although I felt much saner than I had the day I took Juliet to the hospital, I still had moments every day where I wondered if I was right yet. If time was racing for everyone, or just me. If watching myself from above and feeling like an amateur puppeteer was normal, or if that was my own special brand of psychosis.

  I was definitely having one of those Am I still crazy? moments, because not only was the image of my tattoo spray painted across the side of the church, but there also appeared to be a steady stream of smoke drifting out of a broken window just beside it.

  I hope it’s real, I thought, picking my still-lit cigarette out of the gravel.

  When the temperature began to rise, I decided I wasn’t crazy. And when the sad old building began to creak and moan as its insides burned, it spoke to my soul.

  I feel you, old girl. It’ll all be over soon. Just let it happen.

  A rustling in the woods near the back of the church caught my attention. I looked over, expecting to see another bored graduation attendee sneaking away for a smoke, but it wasn’t.

  It was Lance Motherfucking Hightower.

  Goddamn it. Now I know I’m hallucinating.

  I would have been elated to see him, had it been the real him, but I was pretty sure this version was just the product of my stress-scorched synapses misfiring. Something about him was off. Different. I didn’t trust this apparition.

  For one, he was wearing normal clothes. No, not normal. Fancy. He looked like he’d just stepped out of GQ magazine. The dyed part of his Mohawk had been cut off—leaving him with a shorter, perfectly coiffed, dark brown ‘do—and on his head were a pair of expensive looking sunglasses. Lance was still wearing all black, but his slacks and T-shirt were crisp and looked like they’d been tailor-made for him. But the biggest change was the pair of leather sandals on his feet where his boots should have been.