SPEED (A 44 Chapters Novel Book 2)

by BB Easton

  “Earlier, you said you had a rough night.”

  “Fuck if I know.” Knight sat up too, so I swung my legs over the side of the chair. He did the same, sitting next to me. Facing straight ahead, Knight said, “I just had a couple of SoCo shots, but the next thing I knew, Tracey’s boyfriend and all three fucking bartenders were dragging me out the back door by my arms and legs. They said I broke a bottle on the edge of the bar and lunged at some motherfucker for no reason.”

  Hopping off the chair, Knight picked his pants up off the ground and stepped into them. “I didn’t believe them, but when I looked down, I still had the motherfuckin’ bottle neck in my hand, so…”

  Knight shrugged, then dug around in his pockets until he found his cigarettes. He was trying to act like it was no big deal, but I knew him. Knight was a control freak. He had an inferno of rage churning inside him, but he prided himself on keeping that shit in check. Even when he did get into a fight, which had been often before he joined the military, Knight’s actions were always eerily calm and calculated.

  But when he did lose control, it was like taking the lid off Pandora’s box. I could only imagine what the scene at Spirit of Sixty-Nine must have looked like earlier.

  “You blacked out,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Popping a cigarette into his mouth, Knight said, “Yeah, I guess.” Then, he gestured toward the hallway. “You comin’?”

  I hopped off the chair and followed him back down the hallway we’d just christened and out onto the fire escape landing.

  “Do you ever have flashbacks or, like, panic attacks?” I asked, pulling a cigarette from the pack of Camel Lights Knight had extended to me.

  Knight lit my smoke, then his own. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, certain shit will trigger memories sometimes, but that’s fuckin’ life, right?”

  “I think it might be post-traumatic stress disorder,” I said, trying to sound as casual about it as possible. “I talked to my psychology professor, and that’s what he thinks. He had it too, after Vietnam. He gave me some strategies that might help, if you ever feel like talking about it.”

  Knight rolled his eyes and exhaled a slow stream of smoke. I expected him to shut me out completely at that point, like he usually did, but instead, Knight said, “Yeah, that’s what the VA doctor said, too.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You talked to a doctor?”

  “Yeah. They made me after I got all claustrophobic inside of a tank and flipped the fuck out.”

  Oh Jesus.

  I wanted to grimace, to react, but I did what Dr. Raines had said and just listened. No judgment. No interrupting.

  Exhaling, Knight said, “You know what the doc said? He said it wasn’t PTSD from combat. It was PTSD from being locked inside of small places when I was a kid.”

  Being what inside of what?

  I felt nauseous. I felt murderous. I felt…

  Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react. Just smoke and nod. Smoke. And nod.

  I took another drag, but I didn’t fucking nod.

  Knight stared down the alley toward the parking lot, seemingly lost in thought. I was just about to clear my throat or run for the hills before he flipped out again when he continued, “Candi used to hang out at these fucking biker bars all the time, trying to score some dope or find a new boyfriend—I don’t fuckin’ know. All I know is that she used to leave me locked outside in the car for hours instead of forking up the money for a babysitter. Once I got old enough to figure out how to open the doors, she started making up all this scary shit that would happen to me if I got out of the car.”

  Knight took another drag, smoking on autopilot, as he stared out into the abyss. The humidity from all the rain caused his smoke to hang heavy in the air. It clung to him like all those horrible memories that he just couldn’t shake.

  “When I got old enough to figure out that she was full of shit and started running away, my mo—” He stopped himself. “Candi started leaving me locked inside whatever piece-of-shit trailer or apartment we were living in at the time.”

  I almost reached out and touched him, but Knight had turned away from me. It was as if he was in some kind of daze, and the last thing I wanted was to snap him out of it at the wrong moment.

  “One time, when I was, like, seven, I got hungry and tried to make myself some macaroni and cheese, only I got bored waiting for the water to boil and started watching cartoons. I didn’t even realize there was a fire until half of the kitchen was up in flames.”

  “Oh my God,” I blurted out, then immediately cupped my hands over my mouth.

  Knight didn’t acknowledge my outburst though. He was so wrapped up in his own mind that I don’t know if he could even hear me.

  “I couldn’t get out,” he continued, devoid of emotion. “And the only phone in the house was in the kitchen.”

  “What did you do?” I asked—that time, on purpose. I couldn’t just stand there and not talk to him.

  Knight’s hands dangled by his sides. The ash on the end of his cigarette grew longer. His body had been completely abandoned. I knew how that felt. I wondered if he was watching himself talking to me from somewhere else.

  “I tried all the windows,” he said, sounding like a robot, “but I couldn’t get them to open, so I used a broom handle to knock the phone off the wall in the kitchen and dragged it as far as the cord would stretch to call 911. I’d learned about 911 at school. The fire department came and got me out. I thought it was cool, riding in the fire truck, but then they wouldn’t let me go home, even after Candi finally came to get me. No one would tell me what the fuck was going on. They put me in this institution-type place until Candi could get her shit together enough to get custody back, but that whole time, I thought I was in jail for starting a fire. I thought I’d been taken away from my mom for being bad.”

  I stood there, impotent, as Knight’s untouched cigarette fell from his lifeless fingers to the concrete. He was gone. He’d left his body behind, reciting a prerecorded story, but the rest of him—his heart and soul—had just vanished. It broke my heart to see him like that, but what shattered it completely were the words that came out of his mouth next.

  “That’s when she started locking me in the closet.”

  I flicked my cigarette butt into the flooded alleyway and launched myself at him. Wrapping my arms around Knight’s waist, I pressed my cheek into his bare back and squeezed my love into him. But it was no use. Knight’s strong, tall, tattooed body had been evacuated. Knight might have gotten that McKnight coat of arms inked across his back under the guise of family pride, but I knew the truth. Knight had no family—he’d just needed a shield.

  I’d pieced together from things he’d said before that Candi’s boyfriends had been verbally and physically abusive. I knew his mom had a history of drug and alcohol addiction. But I never knew just how traumatic his childhood had been. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to draw me a fucking dragon.

  Knights don’t draw dragons. They slay them.

  The thought gave me an idea. A risky, stupid, don’t-try-this-at-home idea.

  “Come with me,” I said, taking Knight by the hand.

  He didn’t fight me or ask any questions. Whatever self-protective state of hypnosis he’d entered while he told me his story was definitely still in full effect.

  Leading him back into the building, I didn’t stop until we were both facing Knight’s black vinyl dentist-style tattoo chair. It was identical to the seven other black chairs in the open room, bolted to the floor, four chairs on one side of the shop and four on the other. Each station came equipped with a red metal tool chest to hold supplies and a large mirror. Knight’s was in the far back corner, and the only thing that differentiated it from all the others was the framed picture of two teenagers with shaved heads standing in front of a tacky fake Christmas tree.

  “Knight”—I looked at his glassy eyes and locked-jaw expression—“I want you to try something that I think will make you feel better. Okay?” I
spoke loudly and slowly, as if his consciousness had a hearing impairment and just needed me to enunciate a little better.

  Knight didn’t respond.

  “It’s a therapy technique called The Empty Chair,” I continued, holding his lifeless hand. “I want you to pretend like your mom is sitting in this chair, then I want you to say whatever the fuck you’ve always wanted to say to her. You can call her a whore. You can tell her you hate her. You can tell her you love her. Hell, you can punch her right in her invisible face if you want. You can get all that shit off your chest here, in a safe place, without hurting anyone.”

  Knight didn’t respond.

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll give you some space,” I said, backing away.

  Heading down the hall, I stopped and pulled a cigarette out of my purse—a bright green one this time—and stepped back out onto the fire escape. As I stood and smoked, wearing nothing but an extra-large T-shirt in the middle of the night in the middle of Little Five Points, it began to sink in just how broken Knight really was.

  God, I’m a fucking idiot, I thought. I can’t fix him. So far tonight he’s blacked out, tried to stab someone with a broken beer bottle, and now he’s gone completely fucking catatonic. Maybe I should take him to a hospital. I feel pretty sober now. I could probably get us there in one—

  A loud, metallic crash scattered my thoughts and sent my feet flying back into the shop. I skidded to a halt as soon as I saw what had made the sound. Knight had ripped his tattoo chair out of the floor, thrown it into the center of the shop, and was kneeling over it, hacking it to ribbons with the butterfly knife he kept in his pocket. His back and shoulder muscles flexed and glistened as he stabbed and slashed at the innocent chair.

  Suddenly, the blade glinted in the air as Knight flipped it shut with a flourish of twists and flicks of his wrist. When he shoved it back into his pocket, I breathed a sigh of relief, then gasped it all back in as Knight began ripping fistfuls of vinyl and foam away from the metal frame with his bare hands. I could hear him muttering under his breath. Words like whore and fucking and worthless rose above the others as Knight took the chair’s life.

  I stood in stunned silence as a chasm of heartache and fear opened in my chest, threatening to swallow me whole. I didn’t know what to do. Or how to undo what I’d already done. I’d just unleashed the very thing that Knight had been afraid of his entire life. The thing he’d kept buried beneath all others. His secret wish. His sickest desire.

  Knight wanted to kill his own mother.

  With his bare fucking hands.

  I had to figure out a way to put that monster back in its cage—or better yet, set it free—without having it turn on me. Or worse, turn on Knight. I closed my eyes as the piles of foam on the ground grew and visualized my psychology textbook. Flipping through the pages, I finally found what I’d been looking for.

  When I opened my eyes, the destruction had stopped. Knight’s glistening, shirtless body loomed over the wreckage, heaving like he’d just run a marathon.

  With hesitant steps, I walked over to him and placed a shaking hand on his hunched shoulder. Taking a deep breath, I mustered all the courage, all the acceptance, all the false confidence my voice was capable of portraying and said, “Now, let’s go bury her.”

  Without another word, Knight and I picked up the pieces of his tattoo chair, walked them outside, and laid them in the dumpster in the alleyway. When every last spring and chunk of foam had been tossed inside, I bowed my head, said the only prayer I knew, and then gently closed the lid.

  Turning around, I looked at Knight and was relieved to see him looking back. He was in there, watching me. And his icy-gray eyes appeared to be melting.

  Shit.

  “Hey,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sor—”

  “Shut up.” Those were the first words Knight had uttered since going catatonic on me.

  But I couldn’t shut up. “I shouldn’t have…I don’t know what I’m doing. Tell Bobbi I’ll pay for—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Knight stomped forward and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Shut the fuck up, Punk!”

  I wanted to slam my eyes shut, but I couldn’t look away from the errant tear clinging to his feathery blond eyelashes. Whatever Knight was about to do to me, say to me, I deserved it.

  “What you did back there”—Knight let go of me with one hand and shoved his finger in the direction of the building behind him—“you don’t fucking apologize for that. Do you understand me?”

  I blinked away my own threatening tears and stared back in confusion.

  “Something fucking happened”—Knight turned his finger on himself, jabbing it into his chest—“inside me. I just got nineteen years of anger and fucking hatred and…and goddamn poison out of my system, and the only person who got hurt was a fucking chair. How the fuck did you do that?”

  “You did that,” I said, sniffling to keep my emotions at bay. “You made yourself feel better, Knight. You’re the one who told me what happened. You didn’t have to do that. And you even told your mom how you felt—well, before you killed her…”

  And there it was. The smile that I would have moved heaven and earth to see, elicited by my stupid little joke. Knight’s chiseled lips split in half, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. His pale gray-blue eyes twinkled like colorless diamonds in the light emanating from the parking lot. And his laugh, deep yet boyish, put me at ease.

  It told me that everything was going to be okay.

  That we were going to be okay.

  It fucking lied.

  The next morning, I woke up in my happy place—draped over Knight’s chest on the black leather couch in the Terminus City Tattoo break room. Although I’d woken up like that dozens of times, it never got old. There is a divinity to feeling someone else’s body humming and beating and breathing in perfect concert with yours—an ancient kind of magic. I lay there and soaked it up until my limbs began to tingle and my bladder began to scream.

  The clock on the microwave—the only light source in the room—read 8:52. Ugh. Why was I awake so early?

  The shop didn’t open until noon on Sunday, but I decided to go ahead and get up. I didn’t want to be within a five-mile radius when Bobbi got there and saw that Knight’s entire tattoo chair had been ripped out of the floor.

  When I peeled my naked body off of Knight’s naked body and stood up, the world suddenly took a nosedive to the right. I managed to grab on to the armrest of the couch before I went down with the ship. Thank God. Sliding to the floor, I sat with my back against the couch and waited for the dizziness to stop.

  I should probably eat today. Not that I have a choice. Knight’s going to force me to eat breakfast as soon as he wakes up anyway—just like he always does. Bossy asshole.

  I thought about all the times he’d forced me to eat in front of him. I’d fucking hated him for it at the time—I used to cry and pout—but I understood now. That was his way of loving me. Knight was the only one who’d ever noticed my eating disorder. Even my mom and I had been shocked when the nurse at the hospital told us my diagnosis the year before—anorexia nervosa. But Knight had known all along. And more than that, he’d fucking cared.

  Harley never said shit about my weight. He didn’t care if I ate or not. Probably because he didn’t care about anything. Including me.

  Harley. I grimaced just thinking about him.

  I tried again to stand up—that time slower and more successfully. Walking over to the right side of the room where I knew the counter and cabinets were, I reached above the microwave and quietly took out a small box. Even after nine months, Bobbi hadn’t gotten rid of it. The thought made me smile.

  I carried Knight’s box of toiletries down the hall to the restroom where I peed and brushed my teeth with his toothbrush. When I caught my reflection in the mirror, I almost screamed. I looked as cracked out as a human could look, minus the track marks. All of my black eye makeup had run down my face in the rain.
My shaggy, wavy bleach-blonde hair had air-dried into some Robert Smith-style Afro. My reddish-brown roots were close to two inches long. I had a scabbed-over bite mark on my shoulder where Knight had gone fucking vampire on me the night before. And my body looked like an anatomy class skeleton that had been shrink-wrapped in translucent, freckled skin.

  Jesus Christ.

  How was that girl graduating in two weeks, a year early, with honors? I was the world’s most functional fuckup.

  I grabbed my purse and clothes out of the hallway and went to work, putting myself somewhat back together. My tank top was still pretty wet, so I just pulled the extra-large Terminus City T-shirt I’d been wearing the night before back on, rolled up the sleeves, and tied the bottom in a knot. I washed my face, shoved a handful of bobby pins into my hair, and threw on the only makeup I had in my bag—lipstick, blush, and concealer. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but it was better than looking like an extra on Night of the Living Dead.

  I took the box back into the break room and gave Knight’s shoulder a little nudge. He was out cold. Looking at the clock again, I decided to just let him sleep. He’d had a long night. Fuck. He’d had a long nineteen years.

  Grabbing my purse and shoving my feet into my boots, I decided to hit up a drive-through and surprise Knight with breakfast. I propped the back door open with the chunk of cement we always used, and checked my phone as I walked through pond-sized puddles out to my car. I couldn’t believe the damn thing hadn’t died yet. I also couldn’t believe that I had three recent missed calls from Harley. I had just assumed I was never going to hear from him again. Maybe my annoying-ass ringtone was what woke me—

  “There’s my little whore.”

  My feet froze at the sound of his rough voice. It was grittier than ever, like he’d been up all night smoking glass shards and gargling gasoline. I looked up slowly and saw Harley leaning against his driver’s side door, facing me. He’d parked right next to my car—which, in the light of day, I could see was parked right next to Knight’s truck.