by E. M. Moore
“There goes going to school.”
Magnum sighs, too. “We can’t keep it from him. He probably already knows.” He gives me a sideways glance as if he wishes we could keep this one to ourselves. “Let’s swing by your apartment. Didn’t you say you needed something?”
I shake my head. “Brawler already got it. Thanks though.”
My phone rings. I pull it out, already knowing who it will be. Except, it’s not who I thought it was. I answer it, and his panicked voice rings through the speaker. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, angling my body away from Magnum to make the call as private as possible. “Mag came in.”
“I know. The whole school is talking about it. They’ve already taken Oscar away.”
“It’s bullshit,” I say.
“Yeah, well, that’s what fucking happens when you get mixed up in the Crew.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I wholeheartedly agree with him, but also, the whole Oscar fits the description of someone stealing gas was just an excuse to get him out of the way, so they could get to me. I rub my neck. That means they know too much about who’s watching me.
My phone beeps. I pull it away to see who’s trying to call through and see Johnny’s name. I put the phone back to my ear. “I have to let you go. Johnny’s calling.”
“Text me if you can get away,” Brawler orders.
“Yeah,” I choke out. I let out a breath before answering Johnny’s call. “Hey.”
“I’m going to kill that detective. I’m going to chop him up into tiny parts, starting with his hands so he can never touch you.”
“I’m fine,” I grumble. I consider myself a strong person but being in situations like what just happened is like having your hands handcuffed behind your back. You’re stuck. There’s nothing you can do.
I just want to punch something. Or someone.
“I’m going to take care of it,” Johnny says.
I nod absently. As we drive, the blocks are ticking away. Before I know it, I’ll be back at Johnny’s suite for the rest of the day, and who knows for how long after that.
“Can you put me on speaker?”
“Sure.” I take the phone away from my ear. “Johnny wants to be on speaker,” I tell Mag, then hit the button so we can both hear Johnny.
“Take Kyla back to school. It’s clear. Give her a weapon. I’m sure you have at least one extra on you. Kyla, if anyone tries to touch you, use whatever Mag gives you. I don’t care if it’s a teacher, policeman, or another student, use the weapon first, ask questions later. We’ll clean it up if something happens.”
I blink, taken aback by this whole conversation. I expected him to tell Magnum to hurry his ass up back to the tower. “What?”
At the same time, Mag says, “Turning around now.”
“Wait,” I say, still trying to wrap my head around this. “You’re letting me go back to school?”
“Take me off speaker.”
I hurry to press the button and then bring the cell back to my ear. “Really?” I ask.
“You’re not a Kardashian. I get you loud and clear, Kyla. I listen. It might take a while to get it through my thick skull, but I want the best for you. Do I think staying in my suite is the safest place for you? Yes. Of course. I get you can’t do that, though. That’s one of the reasons why I like you so much.”
My cheeks burn. Johnny has said a lot of things to me. He’s called me beautiful. He’s told me I’m his. I’m not so sure he’s ever said he likes me though. Not the actual words.
“You still there?” he asks when I don’t respond.
“Yeah.” I struggle with the emotions bubbling to the surface. “Thank you.”
“I mean it though. I don’t care what you have to do. Stay safe. At all costs. You understand?”
“Yes,” I tell him, my voice clear and concise, so he knows I mean business as well.
“I’ll call Brawler. They won’t release Oscar for a few hours.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “You’re going to help him, right? Oscar? He didn’t do anything.”
“I’ll call the Crew’s lawyers. They’re just being dicks. I’ll see what they can do, but he might just have to ride it out for a while. We’ve all been there.”
All been there? Yeah, not me. I couldn’t make it in prison.
“Can you cut your training short tonight? I’ve got something to discuss with you. You left before I was even up this morning.”
I angle away from Mag again. This time when I glance outside, familiar landmarks of the ride to school rush by. We’re only a few blocks away now. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“So, you’re not avoiding me?”
I grin at the worry in his voice. “If I say no, does that mean you’re going to make me come back to the suite?”
He laughs. The sound free and contagious. “No, I didn’t tell you to go back to school just because I thought you were mad at me.”
“Good,” I tell him.
“See you tonight, babe.”
“Tonight,” I promise. “I’ll be there.”
“You better be.” He hangs up the phone at the same time Mag turns into the school parking lot. He parks the car outside the front entrance again, only this time, there aren’t droves of bodies also making their way into the school.
Mag pulls a knife out of his pocket and hands it to me. I take it, making sure I can open and close it on my own. “Can Johnny really clean anything up?” Not that I’m going to go stabbing a bunch of people. I only have murderous thoughts about one person, but it’s information to stow away for later.
“He’d turn the world upside down for you.”
My heart flutters. Stupid, deranged blood-pumping muscle. Those words should not bring me the warmth of joy that they do.
“You actually like him, don’t you?”
My heart thumps one exaggeratingly long thump, like the final toll of a bell. “I do,” I tell him, then I push the door open and stride back into Rawley Heights High, the knife secure in the waistband of my pants.
13
Mid-period, I stroll into Brawler’s classroom and tell the person sitting next to him to find another seat. Actually, I don’t have to say anything to the guy at all. I stand there, and he moves. The whole time, Brawler tries to not look at me.
The teacher lectures for only ten minutes more before letting the class do their homework for tomorrow in class today. Students leave the room, so I stand and make my way out, too, hoping Brawler will follow. I head toward my locker. Before I even turn the corner, footsteps thud behind me. I’m almost to my locker when Brawler takes my hand, pulling me into an empty classroom. He keeps the lights off and carefully shuts the door behind us. “Shh,” he says. He steers me around several lab tables and opens a door in the back of the classroom. We step inside, and when he closes the door, he turns the light on, illuminating the tiny room. I look around, only to find an old desk on one side and rows of cabinets on the other. The room is long, but narrow, spanning the length of the classroom.
“I had lab in that room last year. This is where they keep all the slides and specimens.” He turns me around and scans the length of me. “You’re sure you’re fine?”
I nod. The concerned look in his eyes mixes with his badass tattoos until I’m putty in his hands.
He pulls me to him, pressing my head against his chest. I wrap my arms around his waist, savoring the moment. Brawler is—well, I can’t believe I’m saying this—but Brawler is safe. Nice. He doesn’t belong here anymore than I do. If you look at the two of them—Brawler and Johnny—Brawler is the one who looks like he’s the gangster’s son while Johnny is the nice kid from down the hall whose Mom bakes treats for the new neighbors. They couldn’t be more opposite, which is why I don’t understand why I have the same feelings for both of them.
“I wish you weren’t staying with Johnny. Then I could at least see you like before. Or know that you’re okay. I don’t know what the fuck goes
on over there, and it kills me.”
“Other than being bored out of my mind, I’m fine there. Johnny’s good to me.”
His jaw ticks. “When someone’s not trying to kill you, you mean?”
“That wasn’t his fault.” Brawler gives me a strange look, so I quickly change the subject. “I miss you too, by the way.”
His gaze softens. He moves his hand up tentatively to cover my cheek, but then his body tenses, as if he’s trying to hold back. “I was so scared after the fight. I thought you were going to end up just like my sister. An innocent caught in the crossfire.”
I squeeze my eyes shut at his words. I’m no innocent. If anything, Brawler’s the innocent one in this duo.
“I was scared, too,” I confess. “I didn’t know how you were. Or Oscar. Or—”
“What’s keeping you here, Kyla?” Brawler asks, interrupting. “You have to tell me. I need a reason why you and I can’t just fucking leave this place right now.”
“Other than the fact that Johnny will hunt us down and kill us?”
“At this point, I would do it. We’d hide. Who’s to say they would find us? Or if they did, that I couldn’t end this?”
I flinch. I don’t want Brawler and Johnny fighting. Not at all. But I also know there’s some deep-seated hatred in Brawler, and I can’t blame him. I’m that way too.
I wrap my hands around his and squeeze, dropping our interlaced fingers in front of us. I just stare at him for a while, not knowing what to say. I never pictured I’d come to the Heights and meet anyone I’d consider a friend let alone someone more than that. Someone I’d trust. Someone I’d care for like this. I didn’t have a plan in place for this scenario.
“You still don’t trust me.”
“No,” I say automatically. “I do. I just know that when I tell you why I’m here…” I shake my head without finishing the sentence. I honestly can’t guess what his reaction will be. My circumstance, my life, it seems so extraordinary. Who would do what I’ve done?
Yeah, so maybe I’m scared to tell him, too. What if he thinks I’m a complete fucking nut job and drops me? I need Brawler. He’s the only sane person keeping me tethered to the normal life I’ll have in the future.
My heart rate kicks into high gear. I’m about to tell Brawler what’s going on. Doubt and anxiety crash together. What if he tells someone? What if he decides he doesn’t want to get mixed up in my shit? “I don’t know if I can tell you,” I say honestly. The corners of my eyes fill with hot tears. I will myself not to cry. I’m fucking stronger than that. I’m braver than that. But I have something to lose now. Before, in my old life, I didn’t have anything that mattered to me. Something I wasn’t willing to give up. Now, I do. I don’t want to give Brawler up, and I don’t want to change my course of action either.
I take a few deep breaths, trying to settle the chaos firing in my body. I start to shake, and Brawler looks on helplessly. He picks me up and sets me on the desk, then moves closer, forcing my knees wide, so he can step inside and place his hands on either side of me. He stoops to eye-level. “I’m one-hundred percent in this, Kyla. Tell me.”
I wipe my hands down my thighs and then squeeze the area above my knees. “You know how you lost your brother and sister?”
He nods.
“I’m going to take a couple leaps of faith here,” I tell him, biting my lip. I’m silently pleading he’ll understand what I’m about to say. “You lost your brother and sister, and you hate the Heights Crew because of it. It makes me wonder if at any time you might have thought about taking your hatred one step further. Like, what would you do if you ended up in a room alone with the person who shot your brother? Or the person who shot your sister?”
“I don’t know who shot them,” Brawler says. His gaze searches mine, and I can tell he’s already trying to put the pieces together just from the tiniest bit I just shared with him.
“Say you did,” I start again. “What would you do?”
He blinks.
“First reaction,” I say, because if I know Brawler as well as I think I do, I think he’d talk himself out of it.
“First reaction is I’d kill them,” he says flatly.
I nod.
His gaze narrows.
I breathe in deep. “When I was twelve, my parents were murdered. They were shot,” I say, trying to calm my beating heart. I can think about my parents all I want inside my head, but the moment I start to talk about them aloud, it starts to break me. Like talking about it makes it real.
Brawler’s shoulders pull back. I wonder if he knows where I’m going with this yet.
“They bled out in the alley. They were out on their weekly date. They always had date nights on Fridays. The neighbor lady was watching me when the police showed up to tell us what happened.”
“Kyla, I’m so sorry.”
It’s funny how I’ve acclimated to this new name. I am Kyla now, the fusion of two people who meant the most to me in this whole world. I don’t even think of me as that little girl anymore. I can’t.
“Like your sister’s death, it was a senseless murder. It didn’t need to happen. My parents weren’t some criminals, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Brawler lifts his hand to tuck a strand of hair around my ear. “Why did you ask me what I would do if I knew who killed my brother and sister?”
Here we go. I’m so close to the truth I might as well say it now. There’s no going back. “Because I know who killed them, and I’m going to make them pay.”
Brawler stands to his full height and turns, his hands diving into his hair. “Fuck, Kyla.” But he’s not mad, he’s sad. “What the fuck is wrong with this world?” he asks, looking up at the ceiling of the cramped room we’re in, but he’s not asking the ceiling, he’s asking whoever’s above that. The angels, maybe? Like the ones on his neck. One dark. One light.
I gasp. I’m the dark angel. It’s just dawned on me now. A harbinger of death, and I don’t care. I only hope that once I do this, I can turn light again. I hope I won’t be too far gone.
“Who is it?” Brawler asks. “The person who killed your parents? I’m guessing he’s in the Crew.”
I remember when I found out who it was. The policeman, explaining to my aunt and uncle that they knew who did it, but that there was nothing they could do about it. No evidence. No witnesses. It was a gang hit after all. Like Johnny said, they can clean up almost anything.
My stomach rolls. In that moment, I’m the embodiment of Brawler’s tattoo. Half bad. Half good. I know what I’m doing is wrong, but that’s not going to stop me, anyway. It only makes me more determined.
“Who is it?” Brawler asks again.
I picture myself on the day I found out, hiding around the staircase as my aunt and uncle talked to the homicide detective in charge of my parents’ case. He was explaining to them they were going to shut the case down. I remember my aunt’s sobs. Even now, I don’t know how she heard what he said through all her pain. “We know who did it, but our hands are tied. The DA won’t prosecute.”
“Who?” My uncle asked. “Who did it? You can at least give us that much.”
“Kingston Marx.”
I meet Brawler’s stare with one of my own. “Kingston Marx.” The inflections, the tone, everything I use to say that name is just how I heard it the first time all those years ago.
The color drains from Brawler’s face. “Kyla…”
I steel my shoulders. “Big Daddy K killed my parents as an initiation to take his spot atop the Heights Crew. I guess that’s what those vile, fucked up, murderous fucking assholes do. Prove their allegiance. Prove they’re badass enough. Prove—”
“—they’re less than human,” Brawler says, finishing for me.
I nod, swiping at my eyes.
Brawler approaches me. It might just be me, but he seems skittish now. Like maybe I have completely ruined this whole thing, but honestly, I’m glad someone else in the world knows my parents�
�� story. Knows my story. “You can’t kill Big Daddy K,” he says. I open my mouth to tell him some indignant phrase like ‘Fucking watch me’, but he continues, “It’s just not possible. Even if you did, what then? It’s a death wish.”
“Thanks for trying to mansplain this to me. You don’t think I’ve thought about everything? You’ve known about this for a whole half a minute, I’ve had six years. I know what I’m doing.”
“Okay, okay,” he relents. His voice is soft, but then his face turns hard the longer the silence grows between us. “That doesn’t mean I have to fucking like it.”
I jump off the desk. “You don’t have to, and I don’t care. I’m doing it. When I’m done, I’m leaving the Heights behind me. You just said you wanted to run away with me, can you wait? I have to do this, but then we can go. I’m starting a new life. One that’s not dictated by what someone did to me, but by what I want to do. You can do it, too, Brawler. You can leave the Heights with me, and we can both start over.”
“Together. With Oscar?”
His gaze slices through me, but who I want to come with me is the least of my worries. “If he’ll come.”
Brawler swallows. “Does he know any of this?”
“Are you kidding? He’s in the Crew.”
“Who else knows?”
“Just us.”
“And the people on the other end of your cell phone?”
“My aunt and uncle,” I say, sticking my chin in the air. “They have no idea what I’m doing, and it’s going to stay that way. They took me in after my parents died.”
Brawler does a few laps around the room. Every once in a while, he glances over at me. He’s not mad, per se, but it’s evident he’s having some sort of war with himself. “You’re so fucking stubborn,” he says finally.
I shrug. Not the first time and not the last time I’ll hear those words directed at me.
He moves in front of me. “I’m in,” he says. “On everything. I’ll keep your secret. I’ll help you stay. I’ll even pull the goddamn trigger.”
“No. That’s me.” Once again, I get a quick hit of satisfaction by imagining Big Daddy K’s brains being splattered all over the place. Vengeance will be mine and mine only. “It’s important that I do it.”