by R. J. Lewis
Once inside, he didn’t have to hide his shakes. His entire body erupted like an earthquake, even his teeth chattered. He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He was alone in the silence, two things he would have done anything for just yesterday.
The bedroom was clean and tidy. The detergent smell reminded Thames of the laundry room back in prison. The only good memories came from doing that job and being surrounded by prisoners outside the Raven crew. Like him, everyone in prison played their part. They were enemies outside that laundry room, and you wouldn’t dare fuck with them or anyone in their crew. But once inside those hot as fuck laundry quarters and away from that identity and their crew, their true nature crept out, and it was nothing like the persona they played.
Why did he feel like he missed that? That life was hours behind him, and it seemed suddenly so much simpler.
The hell you know is an easier place to be in.
Like Holden had mentioned, there were clothes with tags on them splayed over an armchair beside the queen bed. To his surprise, they consisted of jogging pants and loose plain tees. Just his style.
He entered the bathroom and shut it behind him. He looked around him, feeling like he was on a different planet. He almost felt uncertain of how to behave in his own company.
He stripped his clothes off and entered the small shower stall. He blasted the water on the hottest setting and stepped in. He was so broad, he hardly fit. Resting each hand on the wall in front of him just below the showerhead, he dropped his head down and felt the water cascade over every inch of him.
All at once, memories invaded him, too powerful to stop.
“You look so delicious wet,” she murmured, sucking at his lips as she wrapped her arms around him. “Washing off all that grime.”
“I thought you liked a dirty man, dove,” he replied, smirking into her mouth.
“Oh, I do. Believe me, every time you’re in those overalls, I go cross-eyed.”
“That’ll be often. Gotta take care of my girls now.”
He grabbed her pink fluffy loofah and lathered it with feminine scented shit. This girl had invaded every corner of his house and filled it with her girly touch, and fuck, it did something inside him every time he saw it.
He ran the loofah down her front, mesmerized by her swollen breasts before trailing it to her cute as fuck belly. His little girl was in there. They had only just discovered her gender a few days ago. He pressed his hand against her stomach, right under her belly button, and then he stared into Charlotte’s eyes and said, “You think I can do this, pup?”
She smiled softly. “I think you can do it just fine.”
“I don’t know how to be a father.”
“You think I know how to be a mom?” She let out a hysteric laugh. “I’m nineteen, Conor. What the hell do I know about anything?”
She was wrong, though. He looked at her solemnly just then because he wished he could tell her just how much she had taught him in the last year they’d been together.
“You’d be surprised,” he whispered, watching the way the water streaked down her face. Her eyes glowed as she looked warmly at him.
“So would you, Conor.”
Thames felt pressure behind his eyes, but nothing else happened. Not a tear, not an ache, nothing. Was he so dead inside that not even the memory of cupping her belly where his child sat stirred him? He swore that couldn’t be it. He felt something in the depths of him, but that something was too far out of reach.
It was because she was gone, he knew. He could feel it in his bones. She was out there, living, breathing, smiling. She was in someone’s bed, or he was in hers, or maybe they shared it. There was a smiling little girl somewhere in the mix, and she was probably calling him Dad.
There was no place for Conor Thames in that life.
No wonder his soul abandoned him. It had no body to house itself into. Just a fucking empty bag of blood and bones.
With a shaking hand, he turned the water off and stepped out. Only, he stepped out feeling like he weighed more than he did when he’d entered that stall. He grabbed a nearby towel and ran it over his face, scrubbing at his skin hard to alleviate the fact that HE COULDN’T FUCKING FEEL HER.
So, why couldn’t he let her go?
Why did she plague his every thought?
Still soaking wet, he stepped out of the bathroom. He wasn’t aware the lamp in the corner had been turned on, nor did he notice the naked figure lying seductively in the bed, until he turned around and abruptly came to a halt.
She was the young thing Holden had grabbed and thrown at him earlier. She lay there, unabashedly naked, smiling at him, her cheeks rosy, her eyes alive at the sight of him. Her gaze trekked down his naked body, and she liked what she saw. He recognized the look of want even after all this time. Lust pooled in her eyes. She was confident, unused to rejection.
Now was a good start.
“Who sent you?” he asked, his voice sounding harsher than he had intended.
Her smile wavered, like she wasn’t expecting that reaction. “H-Holden.”
Thames blinked away from her and stared at a nearby spot on the wall. “What for?”
“He said you might need this. Eight years in the slammer would make a man go wild.”
He swallowed the acidic taste of shame. Repressed moments from prison flooded him. Never the images, but the feeling of what some of them did to him, and what he had to do in return later.
“Would you rather someone else?” she asked, uncertain now. “Am I not what you want?”
He kept his gaze firmly locked away from her. “It isn’t that.”
“What is it then?”
Charlotte’s face flashed before his eyes. Her body in his arms, his mouth grazing over hers. Technically, she wasn’t his, and he could do as he pleased, but…he didn’t feel that desire. Not at all. Because he was still hers.
“I got someone,” he finally said.
She paused in response. “A girl?” She sounded surprised. “Waiting for you this whole time?”
When he didn’t answer, she sat up and quickly scrambled to her clothes. He could feel her humiliation, and he knew he should feel bad for it.
“It isn’t you,” he told her, finally looking at her as she dressed.
She shot him a fake smile. “Oh, I know. I get it.”
“You think I’m lying.”
“No, no. I think…I think it’s sweet you got someone.”
She stood up and wrung her hands together. She eyed the door, but then looked back at him like she was hoping he’d ask her to stay. As she studied him, her eyes fell to his neck and stayed there a while.
“Is that her?” she then asked, curious.
He stiffened a nod, saying nothing.
“I guess it must mean something if she’s inked on you,” she mumbled.
Yeah, it meant everything. Because he put her name in a place he would have been hanging from during his lowest moment. But that was too heavy to admit, even to himself.
“It’s just such a shame,” she whispered, chuckling dryly as she looked him over again. “You’re real nice on the eyes, Thames. Whoever she is, well, she’s lucky.”
Without waiting for a response, she left in a hurry; no doubt eager to nurse her humiliation out of sight. He stared at the door once she left, buried in thought.
She called Charlotte lucky. He scoffed, shaking his head once as he absorbed that. Lucky for what? If he had never met Charlotte, she would have fled to the city after she had graduated. She would have started her own life away from Billy, away from Blackwater. Thames would have circled the drain without taking her down with him.
He had so many regrets. Time had given him just that. Time. Time to recall every moment with the perspective of an outsider.
He hadn’t been worthy of her. He had been nothing but a fucking bully with a short fuse and fists that were powerful enough to fight the battles he took too personally.
“Charlotte,” he whispered to himself,
tasting her name. He hadn’t heard her name out loud for a very long time. There was nowhere he could say it before without feeling heard.
Tormented, he nodded to himself, understanding what he needed to do.
He had to see her.
He needed closure.
He needed…
God, he just needed to see her.
Knowing he couldn’t hide out here for long, he dressed and left the room. He didn’t go far before he spotted Holden. He came bounding to Thames with a troubled look on his face.
“Man, I am so fucking sorry,” he apologized, an ache in his voice present. He got too close-up to Thames than he would have liked and grabbed at his shoulder, digging his fingertips into him. “I had no fucking clue you had a woman. I would never have done that, man. Why didn’t you say anything? All those years…”
Thames stared down at Holden, and for a second, a familiar flash of anger tore through him. How could this fucking worm, who was shorter than him and practically half his size, have intimidated him so much once upon a time?
With a cool expression, Thames shrugged his hand off him. “Because it didn’t matter. Did it, Holden?”
He levelled Holden with a hard look. Holden went mute, understanding what Thames was referring to. When Thames had made enemies that first year, Holden hadn’t come to the rescue, even after he’d been brought into the crew.
“You walk around like you’re a fucking human and people give a shit about it. Who you are, it don’t matter in here,” Holden growled, looking him over like he was still a new fish. Blood flooded out of Thames’ neck; the two-inch make-shift blade was still freshly lodged in there. “Now tear that fucking knife outta your neck before I finish what the other fuck started.”
Holden looked away from Thames, his face reddening. He was thinking exactly the same thing. Thames could tell he didn’t want to address that former dynamic. Holden acted so high and mighty, but he never liked to mention how often he had relied on those beneath him to carry out his dirty work.
Maybe Holden didn’t offer full protection that first year because of how impressed the men in the crew were by Thames’ unyielding power. He was stronger than Holden in every way, and stronger than any of the men that had come to face him too. He clawed his way out of every brawl, every attack, no matter how many of them there were.
That strength was born from somewhere very dark, and the fear Thames instilled in his opponents spread like wildfire swiftly before the year was out. It became suddenly a dare to jump him. A quest that fresh fish in prison had tried to commit to ensure their own safety, but all it did was result in endless broken bones, until trying at Thames was out of the question and you’d be a fool to think you’d be respected for it.
Holden’s power waned. His intimidation became no more. But that first year of brutal hell had sustained mental damage in Thames in ways he would go to the grave before admitting.
When you demanded respect, you had to do things. Dear fuck, you had to do things that were far from human and scary even to monsters.
Holden feared Thames, which was why he was this grovelling, pathetic mess. It filled Thames with bitterness. It was so easy to act sorry after the fact. A lot of people did that. They watched you struggle without offering a hand, but once you got out of the hard times it suddenly became how you should have asked for help. It was such utter bullshit because that was what Holden was all about. Sucking up to Thames like he was the next messiah, but he never gave a single fuck back in max. He wound up drowning in his own envy, watching as Thames superseded him in every single way. And now he was acting like he should have been privy to Thames’ personal life? Fuck him and fuck his fake bullshit.
Thames needed to get the fuck out of here.
“I need to borrow a car,” he said.
Holden nodded. “Does it matter what kind?”
“No.”
“You gonna go for a ride or something?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t going to elaborate. He wouldn’t offer more than a simple response, a good fuck you to Holden without actually saying it.
He needed this.
He needed privacy.
He needed to go to a quiet place.
“Want me to come with?” the fucker asked. “Just in case, you know, you get pulled over or something.”
Thames studied his tentative face before responding, “I should be fine.”
Nobody asked questions when Thames took off out of there with Drew’s keys to the SUV in hand. Everyone was so busy getting drunk to pay attention. The first thing Thames did when he got into that car was drive as far from that house as possible. He kept going, putting the distance between him and that place like it was chasing him.
But it didn’t matter how far he went; he still felt its claws swoop in from under him, tethering him to it. There was no escape from them unless he said so, and he knew enough to understand walking away from the crew wasn’t something you could just do without repercussions.
He owed them.
He didn’t argue that, either. Because as much of a cunt Holden was bringing him into their world, they had served their purpose and saved him from what he knew was a horrible death. Thames wasn’t a likeable guy, and in a testosterone fuelled place riddled with abusers, murderers and paedophiles, he wouldn’t have lasted long.
You never last long alone. Dominic had warned from the get-go.
Dominic.
Thames briefly shut his eyes, feeling the ache in his chest for the poor soul.
Scattered memories hit him fast and sudden. Dom’s words raced through his mind, overlapping one another.
One.
“Stop with the tough guy act, Thames. We both know why you do it, and it’s nothing to do with your dad.”
After.
“We were just kids. It happened but it’s never really left us, has it?”
The.
“He pleaded to play a different game. Sometimes I ask myself why we didn’t listen to him.”
Next.
“I don’t know what the point of living is anymore, Thames.”
Just yesterday Dominic had grabbed Thames’ shoulder and squeezed tight, begging him to ease his suffering.
Dominic, who had endured the worst abuses, finally reached out to Thames for help. And Thames, unbeknownst to him, had abandoned him hardly twenty-four hours later.
Freedom was coated in cruelty.
The Hole
The weather had turned suddenly when the four boys arrived at their destination. Like clockwork, they dropped their bags and played a bit of tag. The vicious wind knocked Max down, and Jem cackled as he tagged him and took off, running through the knee-high grass.
Max would spend the next ten minutes out of breath and unable to tag a single one of them, and by then the boys lost interest. They dropped into the long grass, Max on his knees to gather himself, Dominic already munching on a chocolate bar he’d retrieved from his pocket, and Jem plucking out the thick weeds with a scowl. Conor was the only one standing, staring out at the darkening sky, aware as ever that a thunderstorm was imminent.
“I tried,” heaved Max, out of breath. “I really did.”
Jem cast him a dirty look. “If you can’t keep up, what’s the point playing, Max?”
“Leave him alone,” growled Conor, resting his hands on his hips as he looked down at their bored faces. “The weather’s turning.”
“We only just got here,” Dom cried.
“Yeah, I know.”
Jem shrugged. “It’s just a bit of rain, unless –” he cast Max another dirty look “ – one of us is scared of a little rain.”
Max frowned, aware of the slight. “I’m not scared of a bit of rain.”
“What about thunder?”
He looked away, not answering. Jem laughed, and Conor narrowed his eyes at his good friend, shaking his head at him. Stop picking on the kid, he wanted to say.
“I say we turn back and watch a movie at my place,” Dom sugge
sted with a shrug.
“What movie?” Conor asked.
“Star Wars.”
“I hate Star Wars.”
“No one hates Star Wars.”
“Well, I do.”
Dom’s mouth dropped, and he looked seriously offended. “You don’t know what you don’t know about Star Wars. Give it a chance.”
“I did.”
“We can play a different game,” Jem intervened just then. “Hide and Seek.”
“We’ve done that already,” Dom replied, glancing briefly at Max. “Some of us aren’t the best hiders, Jem.”
“We came all the way out here, we may as well do something, that’s all. And if Max wants to hide behind that rusted out car, that’s on him for being a crappy player. What about you, or Conor, or me? We can wipe the boundaries clean.”
“What do you mean?” Conor asked, curiously.
Jem shrugged. “Like if you wanna hide in that haunted house for example, you can.”
They looked at the white abandoned house behind them. Dilapidated and barely standing, its dirt stained walls shuddered against the force of the wind.
The three boys smirked, but the fourth boy shuddered.
Jem grinned at Max. “What’s wrong, Max? Too scared?”
“It’s not that…” he started.
“Then what?”
“That house might collapse.”
Jem rolled his eyes. “It won’t collapse.”
“It’s a valid reason,” Dom said, shrugging. “It may.”
“Valid, huh?” Jem repeated. “Dom’s reading the dictionary again, guys.”
“Shut up, Jem.”
“Hey, Conor, you still have that pocketknife you stole from your old man?”