DECEIT (B723)

by Hazel Grace

  “Fuck, Em,” I ground out. “Your pussy is perfect. And this ass, baby…”

  Her tongue darts out, tasting the sweat off my skin before laying her palms flat on my chest.

  She straightens her spine, long strands of whitish-blonde hair falling down her shoulders, and with this position, I’m straight to the hilt inside her.

  My balls clench at her taking what she wants. That crush or liking me thing she mentioned earlier shows me exactly what that flame she carried for me really desired.

  And I want more.

  Flipping her onto her back, I don’t waste a moment embedding my throbbing cock back into her. Emmy grips at the white sheets and arches her back as I painfully thrust in and out, careful not to bust my load too quickly.

  I want to savor it for at least another moment. The first time I fucked Emmy Lou Rhodes as my partner and the beaming sunlight to my dark world.

  She makes me feel alive.

  She creates a shift in my existence. I’ve never felt so safe in a decision after she said, “I do”.

  Emmy’s brown eyes crash into mine, and my desire for her quickens in my head and chest.

  Hurling deeper and faster, Emmy reaches for me, and I grant her the lack of closeness between us.

  “Christ, Emmy.”

  Our mouths collide as we fuck and devour each other. Every one of Emmy’s moans produces me to take her deeper and harder until she calls for God and then comes over my name.

  I swallow her exhales as she falls down off her orgasm, and my balls constrict as my stomach flutters.

  Emmy’s hand trails down the side of my face and drags my mouth open when her thumb tugs down on my lower lip.

  “I’m on the pill,” she mutters. “Come inside me.”

  “Fuck, baby…” After a few more plunges, I growl out, claiming her like an animal against the softness of her touch and the need to declare her as all mine.

  Our foreheads join as I regain my racing heartbeat and quavering breathes.

  “Forever?” Emmy inquires gently. “Is this real?”

  I drive another kiss to her lips, taking my time and inhaling her scent of peaches. “It’s the most authentic thing in my life.”

  “Mine too.”

  I nestle my nose with hers. “Let me feed you. We’ll look over the lights and get some carbs so I can get you back into bed again.”

  “To sleep?” Her voice is teasing, and I chuckle at how she really doesn’t understand how much I’m going to cherish her at any given opportunity I’m offered.

  How I will protect her at any cost.

  “If that’s what you wanna call it, baby.”

  My chest heaves erratically as I deliver another punch to the face of the man in front of me.

  I can’t feel my knuckles, just the blinding rage and despair that has been eating me alive for days.

  Emmy’s pregnant and the baby isn’t mine.

  I don’t know how she knows or how far along she is, but it’s clear.

  Everything is so crystal fucking clear now that when I think about it, raising a baby alone or with that Alexander fucker, I spiral down again into an even darker hole.

  “Leave him alone,” I hear Kyson say to one of the boys behind me.

  Leave me alone.

  I want to be.

  I need to be.

  Emmy is gone, and I can’t force myself to chill in ways that I had before.

  A baby changes everything.

  I deliver another shaky fist and feel the warm liquid of blood splatter along my face. I can’t see him anymore, not when my vision is blurred and I don’t want to come out of my stupor of bleakness.

  No, it’s better to be here.

  It’s grander to hurt someone else when all I really want to do is tear Emmy’s boy’s limbs off and watch him bleed out while I use him for target practice.

  She’d never forgive me.

  But she’d never have to know.

  It’s too bad that when Emmy cries, I feel like utter shit. That I have somewhat of a conscience.

  He isn’t good for her. I can tell just by how he acts.

  She’s not a princess that desires.

  She’s a queen that needs to be kept in her lane but given the freedom to keep you in yours.

  You can’t hold Emmy for long, not when she’s a beam of sunshine. You can’t pocket that shit. You can’t own it. You can only bathe and experience the warm rays along your face.

  Now there’s a black cloud in my fucking way.

  “Need the name of the dude that you work for.” Marty comes to my side; I can see the outline of his frame out of my peripheral.

  He’s not going to get it.

  This is Kyson’s mission, I just tagged along. Something about guys selling guns to underaged kids, which is a lesser assignment than what we’re used to. However, I did hear kidnapping and a senator’s daughter in the same sentence or some shit.

  Don’t know, don’t care.

  “Nah, I’m not a rat, bruh.”

  The dude’s voice irritates me.

  He’s young, but he can take a few punches and heal with no problem.

  Except, he reminds me of Mac and my first kill.

  “But you look familiar.” I peer up to find dark eyes staring back at me.

  Actually, no, they’re green.

  Like Alexander’s.

  My hands flex at my sides but my pinky doesn’t move, an uncomfortable pain shoots up my hand afterward. I think I broke the damn thing off this dude’s fucking head.

  “Were you with him Saturday night? He likes to dabble with tall guys and beards.”

  “Aw, shit,” Mills groans before my jacked-up fist goes sailing into the dude’s face again.

  I don’t stop.

  Again and again, I hit where I can. I feel every hit just like he does. The shooting discomfort making my balled-up hand numb and throb.

  He’s gonna die.

  This kid isn’t walking out of here.

  “Still need some more answers,” Kyson mutters behind me. “Back off a second.”

  He can fuck off a second but do what he asks, taking a needed step back and tucking my chin into my chest so the boys can do whatever it is they want or ask.

  “Need to know where the girl is,” Marty presses. “And you got thirty seconds before I let this fuck go another round with you.”

  I’m assuming he’s speaking about me, but I don’t acknowledge it.

  However, I do recognize the empty pit in my stomach that’s slowly digesting my organs inside and the slowing beat of my heart.

  We didn’t need to end like this. I wanted to give her everything, but it’s too late.

  You weren’t good enough.

  She needs more than you.

  You’re too fucked up.

  You have emotional issues over a fucking relationship that happened over a decade ago.

  I guess I never fully got over it. I’m a bearer of things that I keep in my closet that I don’t want to collect but never throw out either. A hoarder of emotions and memories that I let run my life and shit.

  The kid known as, Mad Dog scoffs, his cockiness breaking through my self-pity. “Fuck you, man. That’s not my business, and if you kill me, you’ll be dead within the next twenty-four hours.”

  “By who?” Marty taunts. “Some of the street shitheads you hired to walk around with Glocks? No one is shaking over here.”

  “Don’t underestimate me,” he retorts. “I’m not any normal gangsta who runs drugs and guns. I have a lot of power backing me.”

  “Did this asshole say, gangsta?” Mills mutters at my side, a lit blunt showing up next in front of me. “Here.”

  I pluck it from his fingers and inhale deeply, the smoke lodging in my throat, but I hold back on coughing.

  Nah, if I die right now from lack of breathing, at least I won’t have to go one more week like this.

  “Go do a round,” Kyson utters low to Mills. “Make sure we don’t have any extra company. Keep
the police scanner on.”

  He takes off, leaving me his joint as I help myself to another hit.

  Then another.

  Maybe if I hold it in long enough, my brain will shut down.

  I’d like everything to shut down.

  Thinking of Emmy with a growing belly, her skin bright and smile affectionate. She’ll be a perfect mother. She’ll love him or her with all she has in her.

  With every molecule in her being, she will be there for her whole life and through each trial and tribulation. She’d never let them fall—not for long anyway. She’s mothered all of us on B723.

  I just got to experience more.

  More than I should’ve.

  It was like catching a beautiful butterfly but not feeding it because you didn’t know how or what it needed.

  I gave Emmy nothing but my dick, but I tried. I couldn’t make her stubborn ass budge with allowing me to openly announce who she was in my life.

  Now I feel every scrape and bruise as I fall, over my head and slamming into the concrete of what is her patience running out.

  “Wanna get some practice in?” I glance over at my best friend, holding my compound bow and arrow in his hand.

  I don’t hesitant, taking it because it’s a weapon. My weapon of choice when I have the time to use it.

  Balancing the lit blunt between my lips, I position my arrow in its spot.

  “What are you fucking Pocahontas?” Mad Dog storms, his weight making the basketball rim he’s bound to whine in protest.

  We’re at a high school, how fucked up is that?

  Pretty jacked if you didn’t clean the blood he’s going to be spilling off the oil-based polyurethane floor.

  “Nah, I’m sure she was better looking,” Marty replies, then tosses an aerosol can at me. “Might be a little more satisfying.”

  Motherfucker knows me like the back of his hand.

  That, and he heard the story of my first kill.

  A flick of a Zippo light illuminates at my side and Kyson is holding it, giving me silent permission to do what I want.

  What I need right now.

  If it hasn’t been apparent already, I’m not myself. I’m going through something. I feel disoriented and off-track.

  My heart is breaking, there’s no other name for it. I can’t deny it or change it. I’m not able to let it go. I have to watch it until one of us leaves—Emmy or me.

  “Listen...” Mad Dog squirms and Marty steps aside from him to keep from getting any of whatever the hell he gave me off his clothes.

  Highly flammable shit—just like my wife and me.

  We were fire, never quenched or sated but hungry for more. We destroyed and enveloped everything—each other, our feelings, the way we tried to keep away.

  Now, it has to be smothered into embers and eventually die.

  “Should we ask again?” Marty proposes.

  “I don’t know, man,” Mad Dog rants, jerking on his bindings. “We don’t give names. I just show up at a location that we’ve been holding for over a decade.”

  “Funny,” Marty claims with his hands clasped behind his back. “You weren’t even born a decade ago.”

  Mad Dog glares at him, confident that he won’t be ratting anyone out tonight, when a second scream fills the air by Kyson’s jagged blade.

  He begins to peel away the skin at the shoulder of one of the other dudes that we caught along with him.

  Mad Dog immediately snaps his attention to me, skin tone paling a tad, and—damn, I really fucked up his face.

  Purple bruises are already forming under his eyes. His nose is still seeping blood and I busted his lips twice. From his nostrils down is a crimson veil of my actions, and it’s only about to get worse.

  Snapping the sparkwheel, the spark from my Zippo light comes to life, and talking is beyond overrated at this point.

  I shake the can in my hand twice and aim, spraying the strong-smelling substance in the air. Then I hover the flame underneath, creating my own flamethrower. The element reeks of WD-40, and once some of it gets on Mad Dog’s shirt, so do the flames.

  He shrills out in horror and surprise, thrashing around to put the small blaze out of his clothes but I shower more...on his skin.

  The smell of burning flesh fills my nostrils a moment later and Mad Dog’s screeching is so loud that it makes it even more annoying when it echoes off the gym walls.

  I stop squirting to keep some of my flammable liquid and hold out a hand for Kyson.

  “Arrow,” I say through our hood victim’s hollers and pleas.

  Kyson holds the pointy tip and I spray it with my reactor, then light it on fire. My bow is handed over, and I step back, giving me more space to make my next shot something I have to focus on.

  Inhaling a hit off Mills’s blunt, I hurl back on the cord of my bow. Mad Dog lowers his voice as he seethes air through his clenched teeth.

  Then his eyes crinkle in challenge and I let it go, allowing the arrow to fly and pierce the top of his thigh.

  He growls loudly, tucking his chin into his collar bone to attempt to keep his agony muffled.

  “Ready now?” Marty asks as I snatch another arrow, listening to another male voice squeal out in pain.

  Kyson is having his own fun and this is therapy for me.

  “These streets don’t talk, motherfucker,” he seethes through his teeth. His chest heaving unsteadily from the pain. I answer him with an arrow to the ear. “You missed.”

  Humor laces in his tone as Marty tears it from the red mat off the wall behind him and bayonets it into his back.

  “No, he didn’t,” Marty muses in his ear, chuckling that eerie little tone that he does when he’s delighted at the torment of others.

  Mad Dog bows over for the first time, the ropes around his wrists keeping him upward. He’s gone whiter, his brown curls alluding sweat along his brow.

  Mad Dog’s dark eyes flutter as he struggles to catch his breath. Kyson steals a glance at me, another unsaid message that we’re going to have to start eliminating bodies pretty quickly here if we don’t get anything else.

  Mad Dog’s mouth curls into a sinister smile. “Fuck you, Pocahantas.”

  My cell goes off in my pocket and I pull the blunt from my lips, hoisting my bow over my shoulder to answer it in case Mills needs us.

  Emmy: I’m sorry. You’ll never know how much.

  Emmy: Forget me and all the things that we did. You’re too special to mourn a girl who couldn’t let it go and accept you for who you are.

  I stare at the white letter on my phone.

  Her plea for me to let her go. That she realized my thoughts and fears but couldn’t live with them.

  She doesn’t know how much I want to block her from my mind. That it’s not something I can snap my fingers and do.

  I loved you and now you’re gone.

  I want to send those words so agonizingly so, but it’s not worth the response or the lingering thing that is us. That she still needs to have the final word and decision in this. How she couldn’t just fucking love me and allow me time.

  “I’m not spitting shit!” Mad Dog roars out, causing me to shove my cell back into my pocket.

  Forget me and all the things we did.

  Sure, no problem.

  And two seconds later, I’m piercing my own makeshift heart to make it stop beating when I pierce the tip of my arrow into Mad Dog’s chest.

  Our love is dead.

  And so is Kyson’s informant.

  “What is the color of your sister’s bridesmaid’s dresses?” I yell at Alexander who is showering in my bathroom. “I don’t want to clash.”

  “You’re talking to the wrong person,” he hollers back as the shower shuts off. “The only reason why I remembered her actual wedding was because she asked me if I’ve spoken to our mother about it.”

  “Do you normally not speak to her?” I continue rummaging through the dresses in my walk-in closet, realizing then that I don’t know too much abou
t Alexander’s family. Which makes me feel like a selfish bitch.

  He asks me about everything like he’s writing my autobiography—my favorite food, restaurant, holiday, and biggest pet peeve.

  Meanwhile, I know the bare minimum, and I never spent considerable time asking. It’s not an excuse but I’ve been elsewhere in my head.

  When we’re together, I recognize I’m turning a new leaf. I’m aware that moving on with him gets me further away from Bishop.

  And I’m scared.

  I emailed my husband divorce papers today, ripping the Band-Aid off but I still feel sick about it.

  I’m being a grown-ass woman and I’m making necessary moves but still used the wrong words—that’s what I keep telling myself.

  I’m pregnant and it’s not yours.

  Well, how the hell do I know?

  Bishop and I never spoke about kids. I never even gave him a chance to tell me if he wanted to support or even be in the baby’s life.

  I have a man who wants to give me everything. And another who chooses a hot night in the sheets and to take care of his ex-girlfriend.

  It seems that both of us like to torture ourselves with people who don’t or can’t love us back.

  “You wanna order in tonight?” I pull out a black lace gown that goes all the way to the floor and exposes most of my back. “I wanna watch the Curse of Oak Island.” Silence answers me and my eyes flick to the closed door. “You okay in there?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “I didn’t hear you fall.” Not a peep comes from the other side. I begin to make my way to him when the door swings open, exposing Alexander in a tan towel at his waist and my pregnancy test in his hand.

  Fuck.

  “Please tell me that you would’ve eventually told me?” he conveys slowly, staring at me like I just grew a second head.

  I mean obviously, I would’ve gotten as big as a house in the next few months.

  So, all I do is just nod at the sadness and betrayal in his voice.

  Though, the things I want to say are smart ass as a defense mechanism. And the others are only matters that I don’t know yet.

  Like I’m not sure if this is your kid.

  This would be the perfect time for Alexander to run. To dip out as quickly as he can because when he may have thought I was kidding about my being mentally and emotionally unstable, obviously I’m not.