Bully (Angel & Demons Trilogy Book 1)

by Ashley Love

  Zane walks forward towards him. "Dad, let me," he says, stooping down and gently pushing his father's hands away from the sharp glass and spilled hot sauce. "Why don't you go watch TV or something?"

  Mike ignores him and continues trying to rake the hot sauce up with his fingertips. Zane works around his hands, picking up the bigger shards of glass so his father doesn't cut himself. Mike glances into the fridge.

  "Did you drink all the beer?" he demands, reaching in with a hot sauce covered hand and shoving things aside, making a mess of the fridge, searching for the six pack Zane drank last night.

  Zane grits his teeth. This isn't going to end well. "Yeah, sorry," he replies. "I'll pay you back."

  Without warning, Mike turns and his fist connects with Zane's face. Zane cries out, more out of surprise than anything else, falling to the side with the impressively hard hit and landing sprawled in the most undignified way on the floor. His face lands in his open palm, and the handful of glass from the hot sauce bottle slices into his chin and lip. Fuck. Mike usually waits a few minutes before throwing punches.

  "What'd I tell you 'bout fuckin' drinkin', ya little shit?" Mike snaps, pushing himself up and kicking the remaining shards of glass on the floor at Zane before slamming the fridge shut. "Clean this mess up."

  His father goes stalking unsteadily out of the room, and a few seconds later, Zane hears his door slam down the hall. There are a few more crashes from inside his bedroom as he probably throws things around. Mike gets angry sometimes, for no reason. It never really ends well for anyone.

  Zane blinks a few times, groaning, shaking away the dizziness vibrating through his head from the punch. He sees drops of blood falling from his lip and chin onto the floor from where the glass cut his face, mixing with the hot sauce in an orange-red puddle on the linoleum. He can taste the iron tang of blood running into his mouth from his cut lip. Damn it.

  He pushes himself shakily to his feet, dropping the bloody glass pieces in his hand on the floor. He has to catch himself on the counter as he slips a little in some Tabasco when he tries to take a step. Liam chooses that moment to peer around the corner, right as Zane is spitting blood out of his mouth into the sink.

  "Zane?" Liam calls, his voice quiet and sounding about half his age. "You okay?"

  Zane spits again. "I'm fine, Liam," he grumbles, prodding at his quickly swelling cheekbone. He wonders if this is what Ariel feels like every time him and his friends hit her. "Can you hand me the dish towel?"

  Liam's footsteps are practiced and nearly inaudible as he makes his way across the crackling linoleum, pulling the dish towel off the handle of the oven and handing it to him. Zane presses it to his sliced up chin and lip before Liam can see the damage. He doesn't think he'll need stitches this time. They're not that deep, but they burn like a son of a bitch with all the hot sauce that got in them.

  Liam takes his arm and pulls him towards the hallway. "Come on, let's go do your biology."

  Zane huffs a little, looking down at his brother, and then he loops his arm around the kid's shoulders, ruffling his hair with his free hand. "My book's in my room. Meet me there," he says. "And grab your stuff out of here before you go. I don't want it getting ruined."

  Liam nods and walks over to the table to gather up his stuff. Zane wanders back to the only bathroom, glancing at his dad's door where he hears Mike cursing under his breath and pacing. He slips into the bathroom and doesn't even dare look at himself in the mirror. He'll hate what he sees anyway; it won't help anything. He drops the dish towel on the counter and splashes water over the cuts on his face, washing away the hot sauce, hissing at the sting.

  He grabs a washcloth and holds that to his face for a few minutes until the wounds stop bleeding, and then tosses that aside as well, turning away from the mirror and walking to his room. Liam is already sitting on his bed flipping through his biology textbook, marking things with sticky note tabs, and Zane gives him a little smile as he closes and locks the bedroom door.

  When Zane sits down next to him, Liam stops marking the pages for a moment, looking at his face. He reaches up and takes his chin, tilting it to the side to get a better look at the cuts and his swelling cheekbone. He swallows. "Sorry I made him mad."

  Zane ruffles his hair. "You didn't make him mad. Jack Daniels did."

  Liam purses his lips with a sigh and releases Zane's chin, looking back down at his book. Zane pulls out a list of all the assignments he's missed that Liam made him get from his teacher, and they spend the next few hours trying to catch him up in his class. At one point, they hear Mike come out of his bedroom again and stumble into the kitchen. Zane grits his teeth as he realizes he didn't clean up the Tabasco and blood all over the kitchen floor, but Mike doesn't come bang on the door or anything. They hear him sit down at the kitchen table eating something.

  Liam's stomach growls right on cue, and Zane grins down at him, ignoring the sting in his lip from the cuts. "Hungry?"

  Liam swallows and eyes the door, and then shakes his head no. Zane narrows his eyes at him.

  "Yeah you are, Grumbles. Your stomach is singing us the song of its people," he says, rolling his eyes and pushing himself to his feet, making for the door.

  "Zane, wait," Liam says, and Zane turns back to Liam's pleading face. "Don't go out there, please. I'm not that hungry, let's just leave Dad alone."

  Zane swallows as he looks at Liam, and then he looks back at the door, staring at it. After a moment, with a hard sigh, he turns and sits back down on the mattress next to him. Both of them ignore Liam's growling stomach for the rest of the night. And when Zane's stomach starts protesting how empty it is, they ignore that too.

  It's late by the time Liam curls up and falls asleep against the wall without any dinner, and Zane packs up his school books. That may very well have been the longest time he's ever spent on his homework in one sitting in his whole entire life.

  He hears Mike go stumbling back to his room shortly after, and he raises one arm, sniffing his armpit and cringing at the ripe stench. He needs a shower. He doesn't know how Liam stands being around him sometimes.

  He waits a few more minutes until he's sure Mike won't come out of his room again, and then crosses to the door. He opens his bedroom door as quietly as he can, yanking it a little quicker at the part where it creaks really loudly so the sound doesn't get drawn out.

  He musters enough courage to look at himself in the mirror when he gets to the bathroom and locks the door. His face is a fucking mess. His cheekbone is swollen and beginning to glaze over in a dark bruise. Even when Mike is drunk—or maybe especially when Mike is drunk—his punches are impressively hard. Zane's chin and part of his cheek have three decent sized gashes on them from the glass, and there's a slice right up over his lips like the Joker from Batman.

  Zane stares at his fucked up face for a long moment, and then tears his eyes away in disgust. He turns and twists on the shower, and it takes a few minutes for the water to heat up. Shedding his clothes, he steps in and pulls the plain clear plastic curtain shut, sliding under the water and closing his eyes as it pours over him. He ignores the sting as the water washes over the cuts on his face, and scrubs his hair clean with the cheap store-brand shampoo he gets at the grocery store when he goes for eggs and bread every month or so. They can't really afford much better in the way of hair products. Zane had a girlfriend several years ago who let him use her shampoo, and his hair was so shockingly soft and fluffy he couldn't stop running his fingers through it.

  It doesn't take long for his mind to wander back to Ariel. It never takes long. When there's nothing else to distract him, Ariel automatically fills in that space in his mind. And thoughts of Ariel, plus warm water, equals a bad reaction.

  Zane opens his eyes and looks down at his dick, which is now half-hard and growing fast. He just stares at it as he washes the shampoo out of his hair, willing it to go down. Because, no, he cannot start jacking off to thoughts of Ariel. If he starts doi
ng that, then he'll start thinking about her more, and then he'll never be able to get over this stupid crush. He can't allow himself to lust after a girl he can never have. It hurts too much.

  He stares at his dick for a good five minutes, but it only gets harder, until it's settled at a proud curve up towards his belly.

  Goddammit.

  "Fuck," Zane curses under his breath. His erection is not going anywhere.

  Gritting his teeth, he reaches down and wraps his hand around his cock, squeezing it once in a last ditch effort to make it wilt, but that only causes a bead of precum to leak from the tip. Zane groans before he can stop himself, and then clamps his lips together to keep from making noise. Their house is small, and the walls are thin. The last thing he needs is Liam or Mike hearing him jerking off in the bathroom that they all share.

  He moves his hand up his dick, passing over the head and rubbing his thumb over the slit before moving his fist back down. He sets up a steady pace, leaning against the wall as his legs start to tremble. Damn it, fuck. He can't stop his mind from wandering to Ariel, and when he's this turned on, he's not strong enough to fight it. Before long, he's picturing her naked beneath him, miles of pale skin stretched out, his hands running down that smooth stomach. He sees her big gorgeous blue eyes staring at him, watching him as he comes undone.

  He imagines what it would be like to sink into Ariel's heat, fuck her slow and gentle at first, and then hard and fast the longer it goes on, until she's a writhing sweating mess beneath him. Zane's hand moves faster and faster along his shaft, and he has to bite his forearm as he gives one last squeeze at the sensitive area beneath the head. He cums in an embarrassingly short amount of time, and the moan he muffles by sinking his teeth into his arm sounds suspiciously like Ariel. His cum shoots in ropes across the wall, and Zane huffs out a loud gasp, his eyes falling closed as he runs his hand up and down his dick a few more times, milking the last of his orgasm.

  He leans against the wall for several moments, catching his breath, and when he comes down from it, he's hit instantly with a wave of self loathing. What the fuck is wrong with him? He can't even control his own dick enough to not jerk off to thoughts of Ariel? With a disgusted shake of his head, he cleans himself and the shower wall off quickly, scrubbing his skin raw, almost scraping his skin off in some places because he's suddenly so angry with himself. This needs to stop. This can't go on anymore. He can't like Ariel. He can't.

  His skin is red and just about as clean as it can possibly get when he finally gets out of the shower, and he throws on a fresh pair of boxer shorts, wandering back down the hall to his room, ignoring how loose and pliant his body feels post-climax. He drops his dirty clothes in his hamper and looks over at Liam curled against the wall still asleep. Running his hand through his wet hair, trying to swallow back the anger at himself for now, his heart pounding furiously, teeth marks on his forearm, he walks over to his bed and scoops Liam up. The kid doesn't even wake up as Zane picks him up and carries him next door to his own room.

  He lays Liam down against the wall the way he likes to sleep, and then lays down next to him, putting a pillow in between them so Liam doesn't roll over onto him in his sleep like he's prone to do sometimes. Zane will sleep in here tonight again, just in case Mike decides to get difficult.

  Only it turns out, Zane doesn't sleep at all. He lays there on his back, staring up at the glowing stars and moons and planets on Liam's ceiling, and he thinks. He can't stop it. He can't stop his brain from thinking about Ariel. He feels guilty and dirty and awful. He just jerked off to thoughts of Ariel Riley. And it was one of the most satisfying spank sessions he's ever had. All two minutes of it. What the fuck?

  He lays there for the entire night, just thinking. When the sun starts to come up, and Zane's stomach growls particularly loud, he tries to forget about Ariel long enough to whip up breakfast for he and Liam. He throws together some eggs and hash browns, and cleans up the blood and hot sauce and glass still littering the kitchen floor in the process. He brings Liam breakfast in bed, and they sit there in relative silence, both exhausted in the early morning.

  Liam stares tiredly at the cross necklace he gave Zane that he never takes off, hanging around his neck and against his bare chest. His eyes skip from that up to Zane's face, where the cuts on his chin and lip feel stiff as they scab over, and the bruise on his cheekbone is tender, making it somewhat painful to chew. Zane's used to this sort of ache though, so he ignores it.

  "You gonna be okay?" Liam asks. He's referring to the wounds, Zane is sure, but Zane still takes the question as meaning more. He stares at Liam for a minute, chewing a bite of hash browns thoughtfully, and then swallows. He thinks of his idiot father down the hall, and the feeling of Ariel's beating heart under his palm in the bathroom at school yesterday, and the stupid nagging crush he has on this person he can never have. He gives Liam a weak smile.

  "Yeah, I'll be fine," he lies.

  19

  A few days after my phone call with my mother, I'm distracted. I've been distracted a lot lately, with Zane, and school, and now that man's voice I heard in the background of my mother's call. I know I heard a voice, and it wasn't the TV like she claimed before abruptly hanging up.

  I'm probably overthinking it. It could have been anyone—maybe a coworker of my mother's, or someone she's met in Central America while working on her study. But then why would she claim she was alone, when I clearly heard a voice? Why did my married mother have a man in her room?

  My head aches the more I think about it, so I try not to, but I can't help it. Me and Kira are sitting in the library at school now during a free period, working on homework, and she seems to notice my distraction. She tosses a gum wrapper at my face to get my attention and leans in so she doesn't speak loud enough for the librarian to yell at her.

  "What's eating you?" she asks. "You've been staring off into space for the last ten minutes."

  I blink at her and then shake my head a little. "I'm just tired," I say, mustering up a small smile.

  Kira eyes me. "You sure?" she questions. "You seem a little off. Are the Cancers bothering you again?"

  I snort a little. "They never stop bothering me," I reply. "But that's not it. I'm alright, really. I'm just tired."

  Kira hums a little, biting the inside of her cheek as she eyes me. "You wanna get everyone together tonight at your house? We could cook dinner and watch some movies or something."

  The corner of my mouth quirks up in a half-smile. "Really?"

  Kira chuckles. "Yeah," she says. "I mean, it's the least we can do. It'll get your mind off of being tired and all that." She makes air-quotes around being tired, clearly calling me out on my bullshit.

  I snort, glancing down at my hands, fiddling with my pencil. I'm once again taken aback by the concern my friends show for me. When has anyone ever shown this much concern for me? Even such a small gesture as offering to hang out to keep my mind off of my problems. It's overwhelming, but I have to keep reminding himself of what Charlie told me in the green room of the theater the day the Cancers pushed me in the mud. This is what friends are really like, and I'm just going to have to get used to it.

  "I have work until seven, but afterwards?" I say. "Maybe you guys can come over at 7:30?"

  Kira grins. "Sounds awesome," she replies, pulling out her phone and shooting a quick text off to Charlie and Mason to let them know the plan. She receives a reply from both of them within a minute and scrambles to turn her cell phone ringer off, not having realized it was turned all the way up. The librarian shoots her a dirty look over the brim of her glasses.

  "Alright, they're in," Kira says, showing me the texts. "7:30?"

  I nod with a smile. "Sounds good."

  I look back down at my homework, scratching the back of my head with my pencil as I read over the last few sentences. I've always been a good student, so these particular assignments don't challenge me all that much, but I'm in several AP classes, which mean
s a gigantic workload and not enough time in the day to do it. Kira is in AP as well, and she and I have taken to studying together like this several times a week. I've never had a study buddy before, but I find that having someone there working with me is motivating.

  However, today, I just can't. I can't concentrate. Not only is there the constant nagging memory of a man's voice in my mother's phone call vibrating through my head, but there's also the fact that I have math class with Zane next, and ever since the incident in the bathroom, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the way his hands felt shoving me against that wall, or the strangely gentle way he'd traced the wound on my forehead.

  I've been very vigilant with following all the guidelines of Project FAZ however, and with Charlie and Mason enforcing it every chance they get, I think maybe it should be working by now. But it's not. Even if I force myself not to look at Zane in math class, and sit with my back to the windows at lunch so I can't stare at him at The Docks outside, I still spend the majority of my time thinking about the guy. I'll see a browning patch of grass on my way home and have the fleeting thought that it's almost the same color as Zane's eyes. I'll run my hand over tree bark as I walk through the woods and think that it's the same consistency as Zane's rough voice. I feel hands and fingers on me, and I'll lay in bed at night resolutely ignoring the wetness between my legs, because I'm more than certain it's against the rules of Project FAZ to touch myself to thoughts of Zane.

  It's frankly ridiculous how screwed I am.

  Kira starts gathering her books and papers together about ten minutes before our free period is up, saying she has to run to her locker and the bathroom before class. I decide just to leave then too. I'm not getting any work done anyway. I've been reading the same sentence in my textbook for fifteen minutes straight.