by B. B. Hamel
“Maybe,” I concede. “Maybe that’s not what you intended that night. But now, that’s exactly what you want.”
“How much do you know about that girl you’re dragging around with you?” he asks suddenly, dropping the pretense. It catches me off guard.
“Not a lot,” I admit. “Not that it matters.”
“It should matter, Julian. She’s a liability, a distraction.”
I put my palm flat against the glass. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because the bitch’s boyfriend owed me money and I felt like making it interesting.”
His words are so casual and cavalier, it sends a spike through my heart. “I get why you wanted him dead, but why involve me?”
“Oh, come on, Julian,” he says softly. “You know me better than anyone. I think you can figure it out.”
I stare at the phone, at the scratches in the metal, the lettering slowly fading to nothing, a relic of a world gone on to something else. I briefly wonder about all the conversations this phone has had over its years and I wonder if it’s ever had something as strange as this one.
“We’ll leave town,” I say softly. “Leave Avalon, hell, all of Jersey. I’ll bring the girl, drag her along if I have to but I doubt I will. We’ll never come back to this state. We’ll never come back to this damn country, if that’s what you want.”
I hate saying these words. I hate asking for this chance. The fact that Hunter has this over me drives me fucking crazy, but I can’t deny the situation we’re in.
Hunter is insanely rich, wealthy beyond rational means. His family is descended from the old school mob, and they turned that money into more money. They own most of Avalon, and Hunter is the heir apparent to the family crown. He’s been building up his own little empire of thugs, thieves, and killers, running drugs and illegal card games and selling girls. If there’s money to be made at the Jersey shore, Hunter Oakes has his sticky, dirty fucking fingers in it.
The guy’s everywhere. And the worst part of him is, there’s no remorse, no feelings. He’s a psychopath, pure and simple. He hides it well, walks around in human clothes and says human words and even laughs and smiles like a human, but there’s a serpent behind those twinkling eyes. I knew it the day I saw him beat a guy just for accidentally stepping on his foot, beat the guy into a bloody pulp and laughed about it afterwards.
He’s a horror, a terror. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that he’s slowly taken over Avalon, and it won’t be a surprise to me if he takes over much more.
“No.”
I wince at the word, like it’s a knife in my eye. “No?”
“That’s not a deal I’m willing to accept.”
I sit there in silence for a second. I didn’t really think this would work, but there was hope, and hope can fucking hurt.
“He’s already dead,” I say softly. “The guy that owed you money is dead, I killed him. He’s the one you really care about, right? Why push this?”
“You think I cared about that dumb junkie fuck?” He laughs, almost hysterically. “You think that dumb fucking waste of air was important to me at all?”
“He’s the one that owed you money,” I say softly.
“Fuck money! I have enough money to buy the whole goddamn world. I don’t need money.”
“What do you want from me, Hunter?”
“I wanted him to kill you,” he says viciously. “I sent that dumb junkie there and I riled him up and I hoped he’d kill you for me so I wouldn’t have to. Believe it or not, Julian, I still have a soft spot for you.”
“Why?” I ask, nearly whispering.
“Because you know too much.”
I flash back into the past, back to when we were best friends. Just teenage kids, the rich boy and the poor boy, getting into trouble and flirting with girls. Except in Julian’s case, he wanted something else.
I open the door, heart beating fast. I hear muffled grunts, a gasp. I think they’re wrestling for a second, until Hunter looks up. “What the fuck, Julian?”
It takes me a second to understand: Hunter and Michael Banks, tangled up and sweating in a broom closet. Michael blinks, his cock hard and in Hunter’s hand. I back out of the closet and let the door swing shut.
“We were kids,” I say to him. “Fucking kids.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He laughs again, unhinged and cracking even more. “It was nice hearing from you, Julian. Tell the girl I say hello. I hear she’s very pretty. Maybe you should get a taste before you die? Heck, what am I saying, I bet you already have.”
He hangs up and the line goes dead.
I stare at the receiver in my hand before slowly hanging it up. Hunter, bastard, psycho, wants me dead. He wants me dead, specifically, not some junkie, not the girl, but me. I’m the fucking liability. I’m the danger.
All because of what I know. All because of the past. I thought it was gone, buried, forgotten, but no, it’s still lingering and fresh and crawling its way back into my life.
I walk slowly back to the motel. I’m in a daze, half broken, half alive. I crawl up the steps, slither toward the door, and slowly head in.
The bathroom’s empty. There’s a little blood on the floor.
I stare and stare and I think I’ll never understand what’s happening until it all clicks into place.
Kaylee escaped, and I’m fucked if I can’t find her.
10
Kaylee
I twist and twist and it hurts so much I nearly start crying. But I don’t cry, I keep it together, and the cuff actually starts to slide. I’m bleeding, little droplets raining down onto the tile floor, and it hurts so freaking much, but I yank and twist my left wrist, pulling and sliding until my hand comes free with an audible pop.
“Holy crap,” I say out loud, staring down at myself. I wad up some toilet paper and stem some of the bleeding the best I can before standing up.
I really didn’t expect that to work. I figured I’d end up breathing deep face-first on the floor or something, but still stuck in this stupid bathroom. Instead, I’m actually free, and now… now I don’t know what to do.
I’m almost afraid to run. Or maybe fear isn’t the right emotion. Maybe I just don’t want to abandon him, not when he clearly needs me to stay. But that’s some stupid Stockholm syndrome thinking right there, and I’m not staying here, no way, no freaking way. This is my one and only chance.
I take a deep breath, charge toward the door, and bust myself out.
Nobody’s there to stop me. Julian’s nowhere to be seen. I walk down the steps and into the parking lot, and I hear nothing. No feet chasing after me, no yelling, just seagulls in the distance, cars on the road.
I walk down the street, heading back toward town. I figure out where I am relative to where I’m going before I pick my pace up a little bit, still walking, but walking faster. My heart’s beating fast as I keep thinking about last night, Julian’s lips against mine, his body against mine, forcing pleasure along my skin where I haven’t felt pleasure in a long time.
It’s like I’ve been asleep, and now I’m way more awake than I ever wanted. The birds are loud, the cars are loud, people just talking seem like they’re screaming. I’ve been hidden away in that motel room, so I haven’t had to experience all this too much, but the real world is overwhelming. I used to drift so much, everything brought down to level with the drugs, made easy and flat and simple. Nothing felt good, except for the heroin, and I floated through the days waiting for that next fix.
Now though, the craving is gone. At least, the physical craving. I can still remember how it felt, those fixes, those shots. They felt so freaking good, like ice and diamonds and candy in my veins, like a million orgasms. Although that’s not really it, not exactly. I don’t know how I can explain it, even to myself, without feeling it again.
I keep walking. The day slowly ticks past, hours slipping away, day moving on. People keep going about their business, going about their lives, and I just walk. I just move, one foo
t in front of the other. I keep expecting Julian to come out of nowhere, or one of those thugs from Isaac’s place to show up and grab me, or any one of a million possible things, but instead I just walk. Nobody talks to me and I don’t talk to anyone. I grab a drink from a fountain outside of a park, and then I keep going.
I make it to the apartment as the sun stands tall in the sky. It’s beating down on my skin and I hesitate, not sure if this is a big mistake, but whatever. I have no other choice. I need clothes, a toothbrush, some cash. I need to go in there.
I can see Leo’s face still. His mocking, stupid face. I can see him punching me in the eye.
Screw him. I’m glad he’s dead.
I find a spare key hidden under a ceramic turtle in the grass outside the building. Leo was always forgetting his key, so we hid this one here. I head upstairs, up to the familiar door, and go inside.
The apartment smells so familiar. I take a deep breath, but it only makes me frown. That was my old life, my dead life. It smells like burnt ends, broken glass, melted plastic. I shut the door behind me.
Everything looks the same, nothing out of place, nothing touched. It should freak me out, being in this place again with Leo dead, but it doesn’t matter. I have a new life ahead of me, a new future. I can get started whenever I want.
I head into the bedroom. At the bottom of the lower drawer is two hundred dollars in cash. I grab that and a duffel bag from the closet. The bag was Leo’s, but he doesn’t need it anymore. I fill it with clothes, socks and underwear and shirts and hell, I throw in a bathing suit. I grab toiletries, anything I might need. I linger in the bathroom, staring at my face in the mirror. The bruise is nearly gone now.
I find more cash under the bed and throw it in the bag. Leo has a gun in the bedside table, and I consider taking that, too, but I decide against it. I’d probably just shoot myself in the foot.
I stand there in the bedroom and breathe deep, letting it out. I’m free. I’m finally free.
But something tugs at me, something primal, something I’ve been ignoring but can’t ignore forever. It leads me into the kitchen, where I tell myself I just need a glass of water, but then I’m opening the empty Pop Tarts box in the cupboard and pulling out my old gear, plus two baggies we never got around to using. I put the stuff and the drugs down on the counter and I stare at it, not sure what I’m doing.
“I don’t need it anymore,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. “I don’t need it.”
But that’s not how it works, is it? I went through withdrawal, but I’m still a damn addict. I started doing this stuff for a reason, and I can still remember it, still feel it.
“What am I doing?” I ask again as I pick up my gear. I can do this with my eyes closed, prepare it all, get the needle filled, the dose perfect, my arm ready. I can do this in my sleep, in my dreams. I sometimes do.
I pick it up and I carry it into the bathroom. I don’t know why, maybe I’m like an animal, seeking a small space to curl up and die. Because that’s what this is, shooting up right now: it’s killing myself, even if I don’t overdose, it’s dying. It’s choosing death.
I sit on the toilet. I stare at the heroin in my hand. I know how it could feel.
Like a pianist, I cook. I set up my dose, get my fix ready. Once it’s prepped, I tie off my arm, pulling the rubber hose tight with my teeth. My veins throb out though not as much as they once did. It’s not easy to find a vein in my arm these days, but I can still do it. Leo couldn’t, not anymore. I don’t want to think about Leo.
I stare at the needle as I pick it up, hose in my teeth, nice and tight. My arm throbs. My body thrums.
I think about Julian. I don’t know why he comes to me, his face and his voice, but he does. I think about last night, his cock inside of me, his palm against my ass. I felt so much last night, so freaking much, a bunch of things I forgot I could feel. He brought it all back to me, viciously, mercilessly, intensely. He never relented and he pushed, he fucked, he made me come so hard I thought I might cry. It was incredible, impossible.
I’m going to throw that away. I let the tube drop out of my teeth. If I do this, if I shoot up, I’ll lose all that. I’ll lose those feelings, that intensity, that incredibly heady rush of pleasure and need and desire and longing. All of that will be gone, all of it.
I stand up like I’ve been shot. I let the tube fall off my arm. I press the plunger down and squirt the heroin into the toilet. I grab the rest of it, rip it open, dump it into the messy water. I flush it without thinking, trying to keep my mind focused on Julian, on what I felt.
And then it’s gone, all gone. It disappears and I stare at it, dumbfounded.
I’ve never voluntarily given up drugs in my life. I’ve never set up a fix and not gone through with it before. In all my time as an addict, I’ve never done that, but now I have, all because of the way Julian made me feel last night.
I’m dumbfounded.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror and I realize something. I look… healthy. It’s strange, but I do. I have a faded bruise on my eye still and I’m thin but I’m not sallow. I don’t look like I’m going to pass out at any moment. I look… healthy, alive, like part of the world.
I take a breath, let it out, and head back into the kitchen. I grab the bag I packed and I walk to the door.
I’m not high. I’m stone cold freaking sober.
I push open the door and I walk back downstairs, back into the sun, and I start walking again.
Back to Julian. Back to the motel room.
I don’t want to know what this says about me, that I’m running back to my captor. This is really some Stockholm syndrome stuff but I don’t care. I keep thinking about that feeling from last night, the way he looked at me, the way he fucked me, the way he dominated me. I need more of that.
I need life. That’s what this all boils down to. I need life, and Julian gave it to me, and I think he can give me more. I choose to live and I choose Julian to keep me alive.
I walk even faster back to the motel. I cover the distance in half the time, my heart beating fast, sweat beading down my skin. The duffel is heavy on my shoulder as I hurry toward my future, my mistake, my pleasure. Toward life.
I don’t know what he’ll say. I keep picturing him angry with me, yelling at me, maybe even hitting me. He doesn’t seem like the type, but you never know. This could be a huge mistake. I could be walking right back into the fire. I should take this chance to escape.
Instead, I head back up the steps and I knock on the door.
There’s no answer at first. But after I knock again, it cracks open, and he looks out at me.
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. Julian unchains the door and pulls it open all the way.
“You’re back,” he says softly.
“Yeah, I’m back.”
He smiles a little. “Good. Come in.”
I follow him inside, and I can’t tell if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life or choosing something better.
11
Julian
I didn’t expect to see her again. I figured she was gone, and I was preparing myself for the consequences. I was sitting there at the table, staring at a bottle of vodka I’d bought. It was a stupid risk, but I guess I didn’t care.
And just as I decided to drink, she showed up again, a bag of clean clothes on her shoulder, anger in her eyes.
“This doesn’t mean we’re, like, a team,” she says as she sits at the table.
“Yeah, I get it.”
She eyes the bottle and looks at me, eyebrow quirked. “Decided to get drunk?”
“Figured, why not, since I was dead anyway.”
She frowns a little. “You really think he’d be able to get to you through me?”
“Yes,” I say seriously. “How much do you know about him?”
She shrugs as I sit across from her. “He’s rich, powerful, and vicious. Leo talked about him like he’s the boogeyman, you know? I always wondered why he got involv
ed with the guy, but whatever.”
“That’s a good way of describing him,” I say softly. “I’ve known Hunter for a long time, and I can promise you, he doesn’t feel anything but a thrill when he gets what he wants.”
She watches me careful for a second. “How do you know him?”
I take a breath and let it out. “We went to school together. I was the poor kid they let in out of pity, and Hunter was the rich kid that owned the school. We were friends, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I look away from her. “Best friends until he left for college and I stayed behind.”
“Huh.” That’s all she says, just watching me.
“He was dangerous, even back then, but he’s more dangerous now. Everything you’ve heard is true, and then some.”
“Come on, he’s just one guy.”
“I know.” I rub my eyes a bit. “But trust me, Kay, he’s not someone we want to mess with.”
“Okay. So what’s the plan?”
“I called him, talked to him, but it doesn’t sound like he’s in a forgiving mood.”
“You did… what?”
“I called him.” I arch an eyebrow at her, smiling a bit. “Told you we were friends.”
She sighs. “We have to be able to do something.”
“I’m working on it,” I say. “Truth is, Hunter’s after me, and you’re just in the way. He won’t let you go now, in case you’re curious, just because it’s a sport for him.”
“Why does he want you?”
I take a breath and let it out. I don’t know how to explain this. “He comes from a world where you’re expected to be a certain… way. You have to… fit in. You have to be what the family wants you to be.”
“Okay,” she says, a little skeptical.
“He’s the heir apparently to his father’s fortune, and I suspect… I think something’s happening. I know some things about Hunter that he doesn’t want anyone to know… and I think he’s willing to kill me to make sure those secrets never get out.”
